One of my favorite aspects of the StrengthsFinder™ assessment
involves receiving full permission to do all the things that feel most natural, most easy, most fun for me. If you haven’t yet taken the assessment to learn your top five natural strengths, I highly recommend it!
The Gallup folks who developed the StrengthsFinder™ assessment define a strength as “near perfect performance in an activity.” While “near perfect performance” seems like a high standard, I have noticed with my own strengths over the years that I do, indeed have near perfect performance and it’s nearly effortless! How cool is that?
I recently had this reinforced in a simple, yet powerful way while getting a birthday card for my brother-in-law. I sometimes find him hard to buy for, but this time I had an idea. He lives near the beach in San Diego and just bought a second home in Maui. He loves the beach and the ocean! I wanted to find him a birthday card about his birthday being a great day at the beach.
One of my top five StregthsFinder™ strengths kicked into gear: Individualization, which involves loving noticing and responding to the specific uniqueness in each person. I can’t always tell what excites my brother-in-law, but in this case I knew my birthday card idea hit the bulls-eye for him. Except that there wasn’t a card in the greeting card store with that message and image!
Now what? Well, I love making torn-paper cards (my own Individualization), but I wasn’t at all sure he would appreciate the hand-made card. I felt excited about the idea, so I decide to proceed. And I loved making the card and the finished product. I mailed it and forgot about it.
Until a few weeks after his birthday, when my sister told me that my brother-in-law loved his card so much that he wanted to frame it! That brought tears to my eyes. I love that me being me, doing what I love to do naturally and easily had impacted him so strongly . . .
What would each of our lives be like if we focused every day on doing more and more of what strengthens us, what we are naturally gifted at, what we love to do?
As I have imagined how yet another blog could be useful to small business owners and solo practitioners, I realized I could share processes and ideas that have changed my business and my life.
Who do I love? The Gallup folks who spent 25 years and millions of dollars to identify the most prevalent human strengths. They discovered 34 dominant themes/strengths, defining a strength as consistent near-perfect performance in an activity.
I first learned about the StrengthsFinder™ in 2001 when I read the book, Now Discover Your Strengths. I then used my personal code from the back of the book to take the online StrengthsFinder assessment.
Here are my top 5 strengths from my StrengthsFinder™ assessment:
- Maximizer
- Empathy
- Connectedness
- Activator
- Individualization
The short version of what this means about me: I love transforming strong into superb; I sense the feelings of others; I know that we're all connected and things happen for a reason; I make things happen - turning thought into action; and I love supporting people in their uniqueness and in living from their strengths.
When I first took the StrengthsFinder™ assessment, it made sense, felt right and then I forgot about it. For a few years.
Until I read StrengthsFinder 2.0 a couple of years ago when a lightbulb went on (Connectedness) and I got it that I wanted to orient even more of my work around my strengths. I began having my coaching clients take the StrengthsFinder™ assesment (Individualization) so that I could better support them in putting their strengths into play more consistently (Maximizer and Activator).
So naturally easy for me, so fun, so fulfilling - what could be better?
And, my clients love learning and more fully using their strengths. Gallup has surveyed more than 10 million people worldwide about how positive and productive people are at work and only one-third "strongly agree" with the statement: "At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day."
As a Maximizer, Activator and Individualizationist, that breaks my heart. So I'm doing my part. I am thrilled to have created a business in which I do what I do best every darn day! And, I am honored and excited to support others in creating and developing their businesses so that they do what they do best every day.
Who do I love? StrengthsFinder™!
No accident that this blog's named Strong You, Strong Biz . . .
