It’s #StrengthsDay again. Every Wednesday on Awaken we profile one person based on their top five StrengthsFinder themes. You can find out more about it all here and submit your five themes for the chance to be profiled in the future.
This week we’re profiling Shannon Chapman. His five themes are:
- Futuristic
- People strong in the Futuristic Theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.
- Maximiser
- People strong in the Maximiser Theme focus on Strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence. They seek to transform something strong into something superb.
- Strategic
- People strong in the Strategic Theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
- Belief
- People strong in the Belief Theme have certain core values that are unchanging. Out of these values emerges a defined purpose for their life.
- Woo
- People strong in the Woo Theme love the challenge of meeting new people and winning them over. They derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection.
As we do each week, we’re going to kick the conversation off by asking the person being profiled to answer a few questions. If however you share any of the themes that Shannon has, you are welcome – and encouraged! – to share your experiences and insights relating to that theme. Even if you have thoughts based on others who have these themes, join in. It’ll make the conversation even richer.
Anyway, here are the questions for Shannon:
- Can you start by sharing a little about who you are and what you do?
- Which of your five talent themes do you feel is your strongest? Why?
- Which talent theme seems to fit you the best? Why?
- Are any of your talent themes misunderstood by the people around you, if so why do you think that is?
- Do you have any talent themes that you’re really not sure why it came up or were surprised by? Why?
- What other questions do you have?
For those of you who are still perhaps wondering what StrengthsFinder is all about still, I’d really encourage you to pick up a copy of StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. The book comes with a code to take an online assessment that’ll give you your top five signature themes.
These results don’t tell you what your strengths are. Rather they serve as signposts pointing you in the right direction. No assessment tool can describe you. But this is definitely a useful tool to help you understand more about yourself.
** One of the services I am now offering is a full mentoring programme for working towards living a strengths based life. This incorporates and builds on StrengthsFinder but also goes much further. Get in touch if you’d like to find out more.**
Ok, let the conversation begin. Be sure to check back later to see how the conversation is unfolding and be sure to add your own thoughts and questions.
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We may have a bit of a problem today in that there’s a good chance Shannon won’t be able to join us. That said, because it was too late to re-pick someone, I thought we’d just go ahead anyway and chat about the five themes. So, if you do have any of these themes – or no people who do – do join in with your thoughts and comments.
I actually have three of these themes myself, so I’ll share some of my own reflections too.
Futuristic for me is definitely a dominant talent theme. I NEED this to have an outlet or I find myself getting very frustrated and started to find pretty much everything draining.
For me, futuristic breathes life into me when it’s flowing. It’s like I’m plugging in for a recharge when I am in the futuristic zone. I find myself totally engergised just be the process of dreaming about, imagining, and creating future possibilities.
Just last night I wrote these questions in my notebook:
- What am I looking forward to at the moment?
- What am I dreaming about?
I feel like I NEED to be able to answer these questions. If I can’t, I know there is something wrong and it probably explains why I feel worn down and drained.
Anyone else with futuristic? What does it look like for you?
I’ll join your conversation… I don’t have Futuristic in my top 5 but it is in my top 10… I do share Maximiser and Strategic.
I have learned to live with the fact that I will never satisfied. My world is full of improvements that can be made, I can always see the finishing touch and constantly think, “..if only they did this or added that, it would be perfect!”
Example – I started a blog only days ago and have already re-designed it three times… I have probably edited this comment a few times over by the time I finally post it, and even then I’ll re-read it and wish I could un-publish it make it better!
Combine that with Strategic and and I honestly do know the best way to make those good things simply great! With people, I can see the amazing potential in their strengths and I know exactly the path to take to get them there.
I constantly make discoveries about mine or other’s gifts and with strategic I continue to sharpen and and sharpen on a path to excellence that I never ever reach because there is no “perfection”.
Interestingly, futuristic is in my top 10. My “best”strategies are always innovative solutions or theories to reach whatever it is that I am making superb. Goes brilliantly with my work in New Media.
Thanks for your comments, Karen. As a fellow maximiser I definitely resonate with your story about your blog! And you’re right about always seeing how things could have been improved.
It’s interesting to me to see your use of strategic alongside maximiser. I don’t have strategic but I can definitely see what a great combo those two are.
What does your job look like? Are you able to play to your strengths there?
Absolutely! My job is my life – in a healthy way of course!
My strengths are competition, maximiser, significance, acheiver, strategic.
I am International Project Manager of New Media for a large international NGO. At present I am developing a new global platform for online fundraising.
Have a guess what kind of project it is going to be… ? I can’t reveal too much about it, but what I can tell you is that it’s going to be the first of it’s kind, the best in it’s class and the biggest, have huge global impact, get done on time and on budget and in the best way possible! ha ha.
But seriously, I know no other way of doing things, it’ just my natural way of getting stuff done. Being a maximiser, God and I have an understanding… dont ask me to do something unless you really want the full production!
The other part of my job is also a perfect fit. I consult to our national organisations on how to maximise their New Media Fundraising strategies. I am also a strengthsfinder coach (maximiser again) and I use my natural fascination with strengths to help our staff maximise their income using their strengths too.
My favourite part, is that at the end of the day, by maximising the income potential of our Int’l NGO I am really helping the poorest people in the world – that’s significant enough for me!
I am a Maximizer. For this it means that I definitely gain energy and excitement not by helping say an sub-par business to get to average but rather helping a successful business jump to the next level in their success.
It also means that I typically find myself more effective in an organization that has history and is of some size rather than a new startup. I can maximize the org that already has processes and systems but just can’t see how to shift to the next level.
Thanks for stopping by, Chris! It strikes me that your Maximiser theme is a dominant one. Would you say this is the case? What other themes do you have as well as Maximiser?
The more I talk with people about Maximiser, the more I realise that, though I have it, I definitely have it as a supporting rather than a leading/dominating theme.
I suspect exposure to the SF brings out a little Maximizer in everyone. I know that once I knew about strengths, I started thinking about which strengths I saw in my friends and coworkers. When I took the SF a second time, Maximizer came up as my third theme.
I had Maximizer as my fourth strength and just to reflect on that a bit myself, I think it’s quite easy to have myself confuse Maximizer as being perfectionist, but in fact for the most part, it’s not really about making it perfect that gave me the most pleasure; but the fact that being able to take something that I feel I could harness it potential and doing whatever’s possible to make it shine above the rest gave me a lot of satisfaction.
Though personally I do have to say that find myself being underwhelmed (or even blatantly ignore, frankly :lolol:) by most things which I couldn’t see great potential that I could do something about. But usually just a glimpse of these “rough diamonds” in real life gave me a lot of spark in life, which gave me a lot of motivation to work on it.
And personally I find myself very inspired and wanting to get close to people who had realized their greatest potential in some way or the other.
Oh, by the way, I’m pretty much an avid reader of personal development books… guess that’s just part of me that couldn’t settle with not being able to maximize my capacity.
My top two are probably Adaptability and Activator over Maximizer.
My Activator complements Maximizer quite a bit as it allows me to jump into tasks with less than all of the information. This works well for me because more details and more options bog me down and cloud my thinking.
Less details allow me to see quick answers to where I am leading a task or project.
@Marijane | People with Maximiser do definitely tend to have a more heightened interest in other people’s potential. That’s definitely a Maximiser trait!
@Felix | Thanks for sharing! My wife, Rachel, has Developer as a top theme. It’s interesting to see because there are definitely similarities with Maximiser in terms of helping people move towards their potential. The difference though is that they seem to operate from opposite ends of the scale. Rachel loves helping people make even the tiniest of steps forward. She works with children as a speech therapist and is able to celebrate the smallest little breakthroughs. I – as a Maximiser – just don’t have the patience for that! More interested in working at the other end of the scale help people really move from good to great.