Focus on your strengths – StrengthsFinder 2.0 Review

David Conway    Business Advice, Professional     book review, clifton, strengthsfinder

Recently a friend bought me a rather interesting book. It’s called StrengthsFinder and the premise is that when people focus on their strengths (rather than their weaknesses), they achieve more.

We all tend to focus on our shortcomings but trying to fix an area of weakness is harder and takes longer because it doesn’t come naturally. Becoming great in areas where you’re already good is far more likely to lead to success.

To give an example; imagine if Usain Bolt (the World’s fastest man) had decided to improve his ability to swim while he was running the 100m in 10.5s… Today he’d still be a guy who can “run pretty quick”. Instead he honed his natural strength to the point where he is the current World record holder with a time of 9.58s.

The book itself is pretty short but it makes for interesting reading and is something I will return to from time to time. Each book contains a unique code for an online test. It takes about 30 minutes and consists of 180 questions. You only have limited time to answer each question (20 seconds max) before it automatically moves forward. This forces you to go with your gut and answer questions truthfully without thinking too much.

At the end you receive your Top 5 strengths (out of 34 themes) along with a detailed description personalised to your answers along with various questions and suggestions on developing your strengths. These are your areas of natural talent and should be built into powerful personal assets.

Below is a list of the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder themes.

Achiever
Activator
Adaptability
Analytical
Arranger
Belief
Command
Communication
Competition
Connectedness
Consistency
Context
Deliberative
Developer
Discipline
Fairness / Empathy
Focus
Futuristic
Harmony
Ideation
Inclusiveness / Includer
Individualization
Input
Intellection
Learner
Maximizer
Positivity
Relator
Responsibility
Restorative
Self-Assurance
Significance
Strategic
Woo

The results of my test were as follows (in order of significance):

1. Strategic
2. Futuristic
3. Ideation
4. Maximizer
5. Competition

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
Because of your strengths, 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. Chances are good that 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 occasionally opt to work by yourself. Perhaps you trust your talents, knowledge, and skills in identifying problems. You might consider numerous solutions before you pinpoint an appropriate course of action. Sometimes questions and answers materialize without much effort on your part. Driven by your talents, you might have a knack for identifying problems. You might generate alternatives for solving them. Sometimes you consider the pros and cons of each option. Perhaps you factor into your thinking prevailing circumstances or available resources. Maybe you feel life is good when you think you may be choosing the best course of action. It’s very likely that you generate ideas quickly. You draw clever linkages between facts, events, people, problems, or solutions. You present others with numerous options at a pace some find dizzying. Your innovative thinking tends to foster ongoing dialogue between and among the group’s participants.

Futuristic

Shared Theme Description
People who are especially talented in the Futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.

Your Personalized Strengths Insights
Instinctively, you are typically enthused about what you can accomplish in the coming months, years, or decades. Your ability to think about the future naturally feeds your desire to be the very best. Chances are good that you intentionally take steps to be the mastermind of your own future. You refuse to leave your destiny to chance. You probably resist placing it in someone else’s hands. You trust your own intelligence and imagination when setting a direction for your life. It’s very likely that you think intensely to conceive vivid mental images of the future. Many individuals lack your ability to envision what will be possible in the coming months, years, or decades. As a result, they regularly rely on you to do this visioning for them. Because of your strengths, you have a capacity for envisioning what the coming months, years, or decades could, should, or will be like. Frequently you are prompted to transform your ideas into things you can touch, taste, see, smell, or hear. Driven by your talents, you are eager to get started on a project once you realize what you can accomplish in the coming weeks, months, or years. You work very hard to breathe life into your big dreams. These often push and pull you into the future.

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
Chances are good that you sometimes opt to systematically study particular subjects, rules, processes, mechanisms, or programs when you work alone. In your opinion, deciding how to do something might be one of the advantages of being an individual contributor. Because of your strengths, you enjoy spending time with possibility thinkers. This is often the case when they present intriguing ideas that no one else has considered. You enjoy exploring the fascinating frontiers of medicine, politics, fashion, renewable energy sources, humanitarian aid, or the arts. Instinctively, you may opt to work separately from others. Even so, you might be sensitive about what certain people think of your contributions, accomplishments, talents, or limitations. It’s very likely that you automatically think of new and different ways to do things. Your mind is brimming with ideas. You probably are eager to share them with whoever will listen. By nature, you come to the assistance of individuals or groups that must invent new ways of doing everyday chores and tackling never-before-tried projects. Your imaginative mind creates all sorts of novel ideas. You probably enjoy brainstorming sessions. Why? No one is allowed to render a judgment until all the practical and outlandish ideas have been presented.

Maximizer

Shared Theme Description
People who are especially talented in the Maximizer theme focus on strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence. They seek to transform something strong into something superb.

Your Personalized Strengths Insights
Chances are good that you occasionally acknowledge your ability to think methodically. Perhaps you have been described as reasonable. Instinctively, you sometimes practice using your natural abilities rather than dwell on your limitations. You may choose to gather as many insights as you can about your dominant talents. Driven by your talents, you might deal with everyone the same way, even when people differ in their positions, age, talents, skills, knowledge, or production. To some extent, you contend it is unjust to give one individual special treatment while denying the same favor to others. It’s very likely that you are quite determined to enhance your talents rather than waste time worrying about your limitations. You often experience bursts of rapid growth each time you can use your talents, knowledge, and/or skills. By nature, you might figure out what makes some people unique and special.

Competition

Shared Theme Description
People who are especially talented in the Competition theme measure their progress against the performance of others. They strive to win first place and revel in contests.

Your Personalized Strengths Insights
Driven by your talents, you consistently aim to turn in the prize-winning performance. A second- or third-place finish can send you into an emotional tailspin. Your ability to pull out of it depends on your other talents. It’s very likely that you may aspire to hold the topmost position, particularly in a big organization. This lofty goal occasionally motivates you to broaden your knowledge base, enhance skills you already possess, or acquire new ones. When opportunities to advance your career present themselves, you might be determined to be the best prepared and most knowledgeable candidate interviewed. You may welcome the chance to vie with certain people for important positions. Chances are good that you may aspire to hold the top job in a huge organization. Perhaps you study the leader to find out what sets him or her apart from executives who applied, but were not chosen, for the position. By nature, you yearn to get ahead. You strive to acquire many of the status symbols and special privileges that come with rank, title, or position. Instinctively, you approach most win-lose situations in a practical and realistic manner. When you are intent on being victorious, you automatically extinguish any sentimental feelings you have toward your rivals.

There are very few things that I disagree with,and I actually found it quite spooky reading through for the first time. Obviously the whole point is to pick out the areas of highest strength (rather than worrying about my lack of dedication/enthusiasm for completing things I’m not interested in!)… but focusing on the positives makes a lot of sense to me and I have gained a great deal from the experience.

www.StrengthsFinder.com

Can You Make It as an Entrepreneur?

David Conway    Business Advice, Professional     advice, entrepreneur, startup

While it can be tempting to go it alone, especially if you think you have a killer business concept, you have to ask yourself, “Am I cut out for entrepreneurship?”

Everybody’s got a great idea, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to work. The successful entrepreneur has a deep-seated passion for being his or her own boss. It’s that kid with a lemonade stand, the kid with the paper route. If early in life you had that bug, you’re more inclined to have it later in life.

“I’ve interviewed hundreds of business owners in my work writing about small business. There are a few common characteristics and personality traits most of them have” says Vince Orza, dean of the Meinders School of Business at Oklahoma City University.

• They tend to be risk-takers. (Not bungee-jumping-type risk-takers per se, but fearless when it comes to pursuing what they’re passionate about.)
• Many had a burning desire from a young age to run their own businesses.
• Most are embarrassed of failure but not afraid of it.
• Multitasking seems to come naturally.
• Their work-ethic-o-meter is often off the charts.
• Most are confident beyond what would seem reasonable.

If this doesn’t describe you, it doesn’t mean you can’t try your hand at self-employment, but entrepreneurial experts predict you’ll be swimming upstream without at least a few of these at your core.

Scott Kluth, founder of Chicago-based CouponCabin.com, ran a lawn and snow service when he was 11 years old and brought in about $350 a week.

“If you asked my mom, she’d say I was an entrepreneur since birth,” says Kluth, whose online coupon service brings in about $13 million in annual revenues and employs 38 people.

He worked for Sears.com before launching his own company in 2003. What motivated him was a burning desire to have control over his own destiny. “I wanted to be focusing on my own success,” he maintains.

Allison O’Kelly, founder of Atlanta-based Mom Corps, also had a dream to run her own business from a young age, but found a successful career as an accountant for the audit and tax advisory firm KPMG before becoming an executive with Toys “R” Us. Her desire for more flexibility after her sons were born pushed her to finally pursue entrepreneurship.

O’Kelly describes herself as a risk-taker who is ultra-confident, especially when it comes to the business model for Mom Corps, a staffing company focused on getting moms part-time work. The company has 10 employees and annual sales of about $2 million.

“I was confident in my skills and what I had to offer,” she explains. “I always had the attitude that I could do this. I’m very positive about what I do. I never believe I can’t do something. That’s what makes me successful.”

While she admits there were times early on in her business when she was spending too much on things such as salary and marketing, and came pretty close to seeing her venture go under, she was able to persevere.

“I would be stupid to think there is no way I could ever fail, but that’s what I tried to tell myself,” she recalls. “I was going to do everything in my power not to fail because I would be embarrassed if I failed.”

Another attribute that great entrepreneurs possess is a commitment to a vision for a product or service they believe in, according to Deborah Bailey, author of “Think Like an Entrepreneur.”

“They can see the possibilities that others can’t, and because of that they may not get support or agreement from others around them,” she says. “Focusing on your vision will help keep you on track and keep you motivated through the ups and downs.”

Indeed, that’s the double-edged sword for many entrepreneurs: The blind commitment that drives them can also lead to stunning failures. But a true entrepreneur, says Oklahoma City University’s Orza, gets up and starts all over again.

So, do you think you have what it takes to make it as an entrepreneur?

Mom Corps’ O’Kelly maintains, “If you’re asking yourself the question, ‘How do I know?’ then you shouldn’t do it.”