StrengthsFinder 2.0 Report
Strengths Insight and Action-Planning Guide SURVEY COMPLETION DATE: 05-26-2016
Alena Prikhidko
Your Top 5 Themes
Positivity
Strategic
Individualization
Activator
Ideation
What’s in This Guide?
Section I: Awareness
A brief Shared Theme Description for each of your top five themes.
Your Personalized Strengths Insights, which describe what makes you stand out from others with the same theme in their top five
Questions for you to answer to increase your awareness of your talents
Section II: Application
10 Ideas for Action for each of your top five themes Questions for you to answer to help you apply your talents
Section III: Achievement
Examples of what each of your top five themes “sounds like” — real quotes from people who also have the theme in their top five
Steps for you to take to help you leverage your talents for achievement
Section I: Awareness
Positivity
Shared Theme Description
People who are especially talented in the Positivity theme have an enthusiasm that is contagious. They are upbeat and can get others excited about what they are going to do.
Your Personalized Strengths Insights
What makes you stand out?
Driven by your talents, you might have a fondness for most individuals, and as a result they may be attracted to you. Maybe they sense you understand what they are feeling, thinking, or experiencing at the moment. Perhaps particular people appreciate your ability to sense their emotions or your willingness to listen to their ideas. Chances are good that you realize the affirmations or acknowledgments you receive make you feel very good about yourself and life in general. Compliments and rewards are likely to contribute to your underlying sense of well-being. Because of your strengths, you typically enhance your own quality of life and sense of well-being. How? You freely and frequently compliment people. You acknowledge the contributions of individuals. You call attention to their talents, knowledge, and/or skills. By nature, you support the people around you by acknowledging their outstanding accomplishments and stellar performances. Instinctively, you feel all is well with your life when people ask you to be their personal mentor, adviser, or consultant.
Questions
- As you read your personalized strengths insights, what words, phrases, or lines stand out to you?
- Out of all the talents in this insight, what would you like for others to see most in you?
Strategic
Shared Theme Description
People who are especially talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
Your Personalized Strengths Insights
What makes you stand out?
Because of your strengths, you are innovative, inventive, original, and resourceful. Your mind allows you to venture beyond the commonplace, the familiar, or the obvious. You entertain ideas about the best ways to reach a goal, increase productivity, or solve a problem. First, you think of alternatives. Then you choose the best option. Instinctively, you generate innovative ideas. You offer unique perspectives on events, people, and proposals. You probably inspire people to start projects and launch initiatives. You tend to identify a goal, devise numerous ways of reaching it, then choose the best alternative. This explains why you see opportunities, trends, and solutions before your teammates, classmates, or peers see them. Chances are good that you can reconfigure factual information or data in ways that reveal trends, raise issues, identify opportunities, or offer solutions. You bring an added dimension to discussions. You make sense out of seemingly unrelated information. You are likely to generate multiple action plans before you choose the best one. It’s very likely that you usually feel satisfied with life when your innovative thinking style is appreciated. You automatically pinpoint trends, notice problems, or identify opportunities many people overlook. Armed with this knowledge, you usually devise alternative courses of action. By evaluating the circumstances, available resources, and/or the potential consequences of each plan, you can select the best option. By nature, you occasionally marvel at your ability to vividly express your thoughts and feelings.
Questions
- As you read your personalized strengths insights, what words, phrases, or lines stand out to you?
- Out of all the talents in this insight, what would you like for others to see most in you?
Individualization
Shared Theme Description
People who are especially talented in the Individualization theme are intrigued with the unique qualities of each person. They have a gift for figuring out how people who are different can work together productively.
Your Personalized Strengths Insights
What makes you stand out?
Because of your strengths, you might identify situations where you can assist people by using your talents. To some degree, you want to concentrate on doing what you do well. Perhaps this is your pathway to success. By nature, you might aid certain individuals by making recommendations, suggesting changes, or providing advice. To some degree, you feel this is your forte — that is, strength. Chances are good that you sometimes aid people by sharing your point of view. You might be more forthcoming — that is, frank or direct — when someone asks for your impressions about a particular person, event, or situation. Driven by your talents, you sometimes enjoy helping individuals savor their moments of excellence. Perhaps you enable certain people to distinguish between their ordinary and extraordinary accomplishments. Instinctively, you might assist certain individuals by sharing with them information you have acquired, skills you have mastered, or experiences you have had. In some situations, you may claim to be a good instructor, tutor, or trainer.
Questions
- As you read your personalized strengths insights, what words, phrases, or lines stand out to you?
- Out of all the talents in this insight, what would you like for others to see most in you?
Activator
Shared Theme Description
People who are especially talented in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.
Your Personalized Strengths Insights
What makes you stand out?
Chances are good that you now and then boost some people’s spirits by bringing up a key point they shared with you. Perhaps you sense that certain individuals feel a bit more special when you listen to them and spotlight something they said. It’s very likely that you generate enthusiasm so people become as eager as you are to transform an idea into something tangible. You are energized, not paralyzed, by opportunities and possibilities. Driven by your talents, you may be able to compel some individuals or groups to move into action by using official-sounding words. Your extensive vocabulary might contain hard-to-understand terminology that sets you apart. Perhaps you speak with an air of authority that you fail to hear. So, if you display impatience and say, “Let’s get started right now!” people might refrain from questioning your order. Because of your strengths, you might generate in your friends some of your passion for moving ideas from the talking stage to the action stage. Perhaps your dedication to projects rallies individuals to work alongside you. By nature, you periodically determine for yourself or others what should be done. After you have made up your mind, perhaps you waste little time moving forward with projects or assignments.
Questions
- As you read your personalized strengths insights, what words, phrases, or lines stand out to you?
- Out of all the talents in this insight, what would you like for others to see most in you?
Ideation
Shared Theme Description
People who are especially talented in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.
Your Personalized Strengths Insights
What makes you stand out?
Chances are good that you regard yourself as logical and reasonable. You spontaneously reduce mechanisms, processes, proposals, ideas, or formulas to their basic parts. You figure out how the pieces interrelate. Your discoveries tell you why something does or does not function the way it should. By nature, you try to collect straightforward and precise words. Sometimes your enthusiasm for language causes you to expand your vocabulary. You might like to talk or write about philosophies, ideas, or theories that have not been proved or plans that have not been put into practice yet. Acquiring sophisticated terminology may be play for you, not work. Perhaps an unexpected chance to use these words in real life gives you satisfaction. It’s very likely that you attempt to read as often as possible because you enjoy it so much. During group gatherings, perhaps you introduce a few more questions, suggestions, solutions, or innovative ideas than other participants do. Instinctively, you sometimes seek out what is new or different. Venturing into unfamiliar territory might appeal to your adventurous spirit. Now and then, you like to test your limits as a human being in travel, work, sports, or thinking. Even when some people worry about your well-being, perhaps you trust you can take care of yourself. Driven by your talents, you may imagine a variety of ways of doing something when you know that your results, scores, or performances are being compared to those of everyone else. Perhaps your desire to be the best or the champion stimulates your creative thinking.
Questions
- As you read your personalized strengths insights, what words, phrases, or lines stand out to you?
- Out of all the talents in this insight, what would you like for others to see most in you?
Questions
- How does this information help you better understand your unique talents?
- How can you use this understanding to add value to your role?
- How can you apply this knowledge to add value to your team, workgroup, department, ordivision?
- How will this understanding help you add value to your organization?
- What will you do differently tomorrow as a result of this report?
Section II: Application
Positivity
Ideas for Action:
You probably will excel in any role in which you are paid to highlight the positive. A teaching role, a sales role, an entrepreneurial role, or a leadership role will make the most of your ability to make things dramatic.
You tend to be more enthusiastic and energetic than most people. When others become discouraged or are reluctant to take risks, your attitude will provide the impetus to keep them moving. Over time, others will start to look to you for this “lift.”
Plan highlight activities for your friends and colleagues. For example, find ways to turn small achievements into events, plan regular celebrations that others can look forward to, or capitalize on the year’s holidays and festivals.
Explain that your enthusiasm is not simple naivety. You know that bad things can happen; you simply prefer to focus on the good things.
You may get your greatest joy by encouraging people. Freely show your appreciation of others, and make sure that the praise is not vague. Consistently seek to translate your feelings into specific, tangible, and personal expressions of gratitude and recognition.
As you share your Positivity talents, be sure to protect and nurture them. As necessary, insulate yourself from chronic whiners and complainers, and intentionally spend time in highly positive environments that will invigorate and feed your optimism.
Don’t pretend that difficulties don’t concern you. Other people need to know that while you find the good in virtually every situation, you are not nai?ve. Recognize challenges, and communicate the reasons for your optimism. Your positive approach will be most powerful when others realize it is grounded in reality.
Because people will rely on you to help them rise above their daily frustrations, arm yourself with good stories, jokes, and sayings. Never underestimate the effect that you can have on people.
Avoid negative people. They will bring you down. Instead, seek people who find the same kind of drama and humor in the world that you do. You will energize each other. Deliberately help others see the things that are going well for them. You can keep their eyes on the positive.
Questions
- Which of these action items speak to you? Highlight the actions that you are most likely to take.
- How will you commit to taking action? Write your own personalized action item that you will take in the next 30 days.
Strategic
Ideas for Action:
Take the time to fully reflect or muse about a goal that you want to achieve until the related patterns and issues emerge for you. Remember that this musing time is essential to strategic thinking.
You can see repercussions more clearly than others can. Take advantage of this ability by planning your range of responses in detail. There is little point in knowing where events will lead if you are not ready when you get there.
Find a group that you think does important work, and contribute your strategic thinking. You can be a leader with your ideas.
Your strategic thinking will be necessary to keep a vivid vision from deteriorating into an ordinary pipe dream. Fully consider all possible paths toward making the vision a reality. Wise forethought can remove obstacles before they appear.
Make yourself known as a resource for consultation with those who are stumped by a particular problem or hindered by a particular obstacle or barrier. By naturally seeing a way when others are convinced there is no way, you will lead them to success.
You are likely to anticipate potential issues more easily than others. Though your awareness of possible danger might be viewed as negativity by some, you must share your insights if you are going to avoid these pitfalls. To prevent misperception of your intent, point out not only the future obstacle, but also a way to prevent or overcome it. Trust your insights, and use them to ensure the success of your efforts.
Help others understand that your strategic thinking is not an attempt to belittle their ideas, but is instead a natural propensity to consider all the facets of a plan objectively. Rather than being a naysayer, you are actually trying to examine ways to ensure that the goal is accomplished, come what may. Your talents will allow you to consider others’ perspectives while keeping your end goal in sight.
Trust your intuitive insights as often as possible. Even though you might not be able to explain them rationally, your intuitions are created by a brain that instinctively anticipates and projects. Have confidence in these perceptions.
Partner with someone with strong Activator talents. With this person’s need for action and your need for anticipation, you can forge a powerful partnership.
Make sure that you are involved in the front end of new initiatives or enterprises. Your innovative yet procedural approach will be critical to the genesis of a new venture because it will keep its creators from developing deadly tunnel vision.
Questions
- Which of these action items speak to you? Highlight the actions that you are most likely to take.
- How will you commit to taking action? Write your own personalized action item that you will take in the next 30 days.
Individualization
Ideas for Action:
Select a vocation in which your Individualization talents can be both used and appreciated, such as counseling, supervising, teaching, writing human interest articles, or selling. Your ability to see people as unique individuals is a special talent.
Become an expert in describing your own strengths and style. For example, answer questions such as: What is the best praise you ever received? How often do you like to check in with your manager? What is your best method for building relationships? How do you learn best? Then ask your colleagues and friends these same questions. Help them plan their future by starting with their strengths, then designing a future based on what they do best.
Help others understand that true diversity can be found in the subtle differences between each individual — regardless of race, sex, or nationality.
Explain that it is appropriate, just, and effective to treat each person differently. Those without strong Individualization talents might not see the differences among individuals and might insist that individualization is unequal and therefore unfair. You will need to describe your perspective in detail to be persuasive.
Figure out what every person on your team does best. Then help them capitalize on their talents, skills, and knowledge. You may need to explain your rationale and your philosophy so people understand that you have their best interests in mind.
You have an awareness and appreciation of others’ likes and dislikes and an ability to personalize. This puts you in a unique position. Use your Individualization talents to help identify areas where one size does not fit all.
Make your colleagues and friends aware of each person’s unique needs. Soon people will look to you to explain other people’s motivations and actions.
Your presentations and speaking opportunities will be most engaging when you relate your topic to the experiences of individuals in the audience. Use your Individualization talents to gather and share real-life stories that will make your points much better than would generic information or theories.
You move comfortably among a broad range of styles and cultures, and you intuitively personalize your interactions. Consciously and proactively make full use of these talents by leading diversity and community efforts.
Your Individualization talents can help you take a different approach to interpreting data. While others are looking for similarities, make a point of identifying distinctiveness. Your interpretations will add a valuable perspective.
Questions
- Which of these action items speak to you? Highlight the actions that you are most likely to take.
- How will you commit to taking action? Write your own personalized action item that you will take in the next 30 days.
Activator
Ideas for Action:
Seek work in which you can make your own decisions and act on them. In particular, look for start-up or turnaround situations.
At work, make sure that your manager judges you on measurable outcomes rather than your process. Your process is not always pretty.
You can transform innovative ideas into immediate action. Look for creative and original thinkers, and help them move their ideas from conceptual theory to concrete practice. Look for areas that are bogged down by discussion or blocked by barriers. End the stalemate by creating a plan to get things moving and spur others into action.
You learn more from real experience than from theoretical discussions. To grow, consciously expose yourself to challenging experiences that will test your talents, skills, and knowledge.
Remember that although your tenacity is powerful, it may intimidate some. Your Activator talents will be most effective when you have first earned others’ trust and loyalty.
Identify the most influential decision makers in your organization. Make it a point to have lunch with each of them at least once a quarter to share your ideas. They can support you in your activation and provide critical resources to make your ideas happen.
You can easily energize the plans and ideas of others. Consider partnering with focused, futuristic, strategic, or analytical people who will lend their direction and planning to your activation, thereby creating an opportunity to build consensus and get others behind the plan. By doing this, you complement each other.
Give the reasons why your requests for action must be granted. Otherwise, others might dismiss you as impatient and label you a ‘ready, fire, aim’ person.
You possess an ability to create motion and momentum in others. Be strategic and wise in the use of your Activator talents. When is the best time, where is the best place, and who are the best people with whom to leverage your valuable influence?
Questions
- Which of these action items speak to you? Highlight the actions that you are most likely to take.
- How will you commit to taking action? Write your own personalized action item that you will take in the next 30 days.
Ideation
Ideas for Action:
Seek a career in which you will be given credit for and paid for your ideas, such as marketing, advertising, journalism, design, or new product development.
You are likely to get bored quickly, so make some small changes in your work or home life. Experiment. Play mental games with yourself. All of these will help keep you stimulated. Finish your thoughts and ideas before communicating them. Lacking your Ideation talents, others might not be able to “join the dots” of an interesting but incomplete idea and thus might dismiss it.
Not all your ideas will be equally practical or serviceable. Learn to edit your ideas, or find a trusted friend or colleague who can “proof” your ideas and identify potential pitfalls. Understand the fuel for your Ideation talents: When do you get your best ideas? When you’re talking with people? When you’re reading? When you’re simply listening or observing? Take note of the circumstances that seem to produce your best ideas, and recreate them.
Schedule time to read, because the ideas and experiences of others can become your raw material for new ideas. Schedule time to think, because thinking energizes you.
You are a natural fit with research and development; you appreciate the mindset of visionaries and dreamers. Spend time with imaginative peers, and sit in on their brainstorming sessions.
Partner with someone with strong Analytical talents. This person will question you and challenge you, therefore strengthening your ideas.
Sometimes you lose others’ interest because they cannot follow your abstract and conceptual thinking style. Make your ideas more concrete by drawing pictures, using analogies or metaphors, or simply explaining your concepts step by step.
Feed your Ideation talents by gathering knowledge. Study fields and industries different from your own. Apply ideas from outside, and link disparate ideas to generate new ones.
Questions
- Which of these action items speak to you? Highlight the actions that you are most likely to take.
- How will you commit to taking action? Write your own personalized action item that you will take in the next 30 days.
Section III: Achievement
Look for signs of achievement as you read these real quotes from people who share your top five themes.
Positivity sounds like this:
Gerry L., flight attendant: “There are so many people on an airplane that I have made it a point over the years to single out one or two on a flight and make it something special for them. Certainly, I will be courteous to everybody and extend to them the kind of professionalism that I would like given to me, but over and above that, I try to make one person or family or small group of people feel particularly special, with jokes and conversation and little games that I play.”
Andy B., Internet marketing executive: “I am one of those people who loves creating buzz. I read magazines all the time, and if I find something fun — some new store, new lip gloss, whatever — I will charge around telling everyone about it. ‘Oh, you just have to try this store. It is so-o-o cool. Look at these pictures. Check them out.’ I am so passionate when I talk about something that people just have to do what I say. It’s not that I am a great salesperson. I’m not. In fact, I hate asking for the close; I hate bothering people. It’s just that my passion about what I say makes people think, ‘Gosh, it must be true.’”
Sunny G., communications manager: “I think the world is plagued with enough negative people. We need more positive people — people who like to zero in on what is right with the world. Negative people just make me feel heavy. In my last job, there was a guy who came into my office every morning just to unload on me. I would purposely dodge him. I’d see him coming, and I’d run to the bathroom or go some other place. He made me feel as if the world was a miserable place, and I hated that.”
Strategic sounds like this:
Liam C., manufacturing plant manager: “It seems as if I can always see the consequences before anyone else can. I have to say to people, ‘Lift up your eyes; look down the road a ways. Let’s talk about where we are going to be next year so that when we get to this time next year, we don’t have the same problems.’ It seems obvious to me, but some people are just too focused on this month’s numbers, and everything is driven by that.”
Vivian T., television producer: “I used to love logic problems when I was a kid — you know, the ones where ‘if A implies B, and B equals C, does A equal C?’ Still today, I am always playing out repercussions, seeing where things lead. I think it makes me a great interviewer. I know that nothing is an accident; every sign, every word, every tone of voice has significance. So I watch for these clues and play them out in my head, see where they lead, and then plan my questions to take advantage of what I have seen in my head.”
Simon T., human resources executive: “We really needed to take the union on at some stage, and I saw an opportunity — a very good issue to take them on. I could see that they were going in a direction that would lead them into all kinds of trouble if they continued following it. Lo and behold, they did continue following it, and when they arrived, there I was, ready and waiting. I suppose it just comes naturally to me to predict what someone else is going to do. And then when that person reacts, I can respond immediately because I have sat down and said, ‘Okay, if they do this, we’ll do this. If they do that, then we’ll do this other thing.’ It’s like when you tack in a sailboat. You head in one direction, but you jinx one way, then another, planning and reacting, planning and reacting.”
Individualization sounds like this:
Les T., hospitality manager: “Carl is one of our best performers, but he still has to see me every week. He just wants a little encouragement and to check in, and he gets fired up a little bit after that meeting. Greg doesn’t like to meet very often, so there’s no need for me to bother him. And when we do meet, it’s really for me, not for him.”
Marsha D., publishing executive: “Sometimes I would walk out of my office and — you know how cartoon characters have those balloons over their head? I would see these little balloons over everyone’s head telling me what was in their minds. It sounds weird, doesn’t it? But it happens all the time.”
Andrea H., interior designer: “When you ask people what their style is, they find it hard to describe, so I just ask them, ‘What is your favorite spot in the house?’ And when I ask that, their faces light up, and they know just where to take me. From that one spot, I can begin to piece together the kind of people they are and what their style is.”
Activator sounds like this:
Jane C., Benedictine nun: “When I was prioress in the 1970s, we were hit by the energy shortage, and costs skyrocketed. We had a hundred and forty acres, and I walked the acreage every day pondering what we should do about this energy shortage. Suddenly I decided that if we had that much land, we should be drilling our own gas well, and so we did. We spent one hundred thousand dollars to drill a gas well. If you have never drilled a gas well, you probably don’t realize what I didn’t realize: namely, that you have to spend seventy thousand dollars just to drill to see if you have any gas on your property at all. So they dug down with some kind of vibratory camera thing, and they told me that I had a gas pool. But they didn’t know how large the pool was, and they didn’t know if there was enough pressure to bring it up. ‘If you pay another thirty thousand dollars, we will try to release the well,’ they said. ‘If you don’t want us to, we’ll just cap the well, take your seventy thousand, and go home.’ So I gave them the final thirty thousand and, fortunately, up it came. That was twenty years ago, and it is still pumping.”
Jim L., entrepreneur: “Some people see my impatience as not wanting to listen to the traps, the potential roadblocks. What I keep repeating is, ‘I want to know when I am going to hit the wall, and I need you to tell me how much it is going to hurt. But if I choose to bump into the wall anyway, then don’t worry — you’ve done your job. I just had to experience it for myself.’”
Ideation sounds like this:
Mark B., writer: “My mind works by finding connections between things. When I was hunting down the Mona Lisa in the Louvre museum, I turned a corner and was blinded by the flashing of a thousand cameras snapping the tiny picture. For some reason, I stored that visual image away. Then I noticed a ‘No Flash Photography’ sign, and I stored that away too. I thought it was odd because I remembered reading that flash photography can harm paintings. Then about six months later, I read that the Mona Lisa has been stolen at least twice in this century. And suddenly I put it all together. The only explanation for all these facts is that the real Mona Lisa is not on display in the Louvre. The real Mona Lisa has been stolen, and the museum, afraid to admit their carelessness, has installed a fake. I don’t know if it’s true, of course, but what a great story.”
Andrea H., interior designer: “I have the kind of mind where everything has to fit together or I start to feel very odd. For me, every piece of furniture represents an idea. It serves a discrete function both independently and in concert with every other piece. The ‘idea’ of each piece is so powerful in my mind, it must be obeyed. If I am sitting in a room where the chairs are somehow not fulfilling their discrete function — they’re the wrong kind of chairs or they’re facing the wrong way or they’re pushed up too close to the coffee table — I find myself getting physically uncomfortable and mentally distracted. Later, I won’t be able to get it out of my mind. I’ll find myself awake at 3:00 a.m., and I walk through the person’s house in my mind’s eye, rearranging the furniture and repainting the walls. This started happening when I was very young, say seven years old.”
Questions
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Talk to friends or coworkers to hear how they have used their talents to achieve.
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How will you use your talents to achieve?
