Finding Your Top 5 Strengths
By Joshua D. Glawson
2020 through 2021 has been a time of personal-growth for many, whether or not they continued to work in their pre-Covid, pre-Quarantine, jobs. It has been a season of struggle, change, downfalls, and growth. There is no telling what has been lost during these days, the only sure thing one can figure out is what they have gained if they have put themselves up to personal progress. No matter your stance on Covid-19, or Quarantine, it is eventually going to come to an end so it is best to take advantage of this period and use it toward self-improvement and preparation.
One of many great ways to find personal success in times like these is to not only grow in your craft, interests, career, and personal life, but also to strengthen the baseline of who you are, who you want to become, and how to best interact with the world. After all, communication and enhancing relationships with those around you can be just as invaluable as book knowledge, sometimes even more so. This growth can include finding your weaknesses and working on them, or just simply finding your strengths and honing in on bettering those. The latter is the method selected by Psychologist and author Don Clifton in his book StrengthsFinder 2.0. These strengths are commonly known as your “CliftonStrengths.”
If you’d like to improve your current career, or find one that better fits and utilizes your strengths, reading the book StrengthsFinder 2.0, is a good start. It includes an online assessment by Gallup and Tom Rath, which helps find your tested top 5 strengths. The book’s intention is not to help you find a new career, per se, rather to help build your current strengths and help you with any position you are currently holding in life. The book is extremely short, with rather large font, equaling maybe a few pages of standard reading. The assessment was only about 40 minutes, or less, and was fun to take. In some ways, it reminded me of the Myers-Briggs test, which has no relation to this book. I take the StrengthsFinder2.0 merely as a fun way to introduce yourself to the idea of building your strengths. I believe you have some strengths, if not many.
StrengthsFinder 2.0, book and test, is not deterministic of one’s strengths. The book admits a person may have many strengths including ones not listed, but it does help to find a general understanding of the potential strengths one has. Additionally, within each strength section, the author provides ways of best interacting with and utilizing that given strength.
This book is great for managers to give to their employees in order to help better understand one another while improving efficacious communication in the workplace. It may also be a great book for friends or partners to go through in order to improve communication and understanding between one another. Surely, it is a great book for individuals seeking self-understanding and improvement in their careers and personal life.
If you want an example of what those strengths might be, I will share with you my results. There are 34 total strengths listed in the book and assessment that the author calls The 34 Themes and Ideas for Action. After I took the assessment, I quickly received my top 5 strengths, and they were listed in this order:
- Strategic – one who thinks strategically.
- Futuristic – dreamer who sees visions of what could be and who cherishes those visions.
- Activator – the view that only action can make things happen.
- Ideation – fascinated by ideas, connections, and perspectives.
- Intellection – enjoys thinking and exercising the muscles of the brain.
The book goes further to suggest that each reader find the strengths that they believe they have listed within the book that the assessment might not have found. So, after reading through each strength and its respective description, I found additional strengths that I thought I possess.
Overall, I would recommend this quick book and analysis for anyone looking to better understand themselves. It can be given to loved ones whom you wish to help grow; to give to employees to build more understanding and productive work environments; and for organizations wanting to find practical measures of improving coherency.
