It’s Wednesday. And Wednesday means it’s #StrengthsDay. Every Wednesday we profile one persons top five StrengthsFinder themes. We ask the person some key questions and explore these themes in more detail.
Not only this, anyone who shares any of the five themes is encouraged to join in as well and share your experiences with that particular theme. The more voices, the richer the conversation.
This week we’re profiling Brett Valenstein. Brett has these five themes:
- Input
- People strong in the Input Theme have a craving to know more. Often they like to collect and archive all kinds of information.
- Ideation
- People strong in the Ideation Theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to make new connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.
- 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.
- Learner
- People strong in the Learner Theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.
- Self-Assurance
- People strong in the Self-Assurance Theme feel confident in their ability to manage their own lives. They have an inner compass that gives them confidence that their decisions are right.
As always, we’re going to ask Brett to kick the conversation off by answer the following questions:
- 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?
Make sure you check back later to see how the conversation is unfolding.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
First off — I am so excited that I was picked for this weeks Strength Finder day — so cool!
Secondly — Sorry for the delayed response, I blame time zones!
Okay — to answer your questions:
1. I’m a 35-year old woman living in Denver and am an interior designer/interior architect as well as interior design and lifestyle blogger. I moved to Denver about two years ago from LA. I am originally from New York City and have also lived in Park City, Utah for a spell. I started my own design business in January 2009 and am learning the challenges of being an entrepreneur.
2. I definitely think that “Input” is my strongest theme. I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge, which is why I think a career in design was so appealing to me. In design, you never stop learning, whether it is about your clients, new products or even new parts of the world.
3. I think “ideation” fits me the best as I am an intellectually curious person. Deep conversations on important topics energize me. Don’t get me wrong — I love good cocktail party chitchat as well — I don’t think of myself as an overly intense person, I like to have fun too!
4. I will have to say that say “strategic” is my theme that is most often misunderstood. I’m a perfectionist so I often fall victim to “Paralysis by Analysis” and this can be frustrating to people around me. At times I have difficulty starting a project because I have so many ideas/paths in my head and this leads people to think that I’m lazy or a procrastinator.
5. I’ve suffered from low-self esteem for most of my life , so “Self-Assurance” was very surprising to me. I talked about “Self-Assurance” as one of my strengths with a friend familiar with the StregthsFinder test and she wasn’t that surprised. She said that when I’m talking about something I am truly passionate about that my self-assurance shines through and makes me very engaging and that I give off a lot of good positive energy.
6. I don’t have any questions now, but more may come up as the conversation continues!
I love seeing it when people connect a particular theme to their area of work. And I love it that someone else can connect the very same theme to a totally different area of work. It highlights the important fact that StrengthsFinder doesn’t tell you what your career should be; instead it highlights the important truth that we should use the themes we do have in whatever work we do. That said, we need to try and choose jobs that will at least give us that opportunity!
It’s great that you’re getting to have such tangible usage of your input theme through your work. It always encourages me when I see that.
Bearing in mind that StrengthsFinder highlights talent themes with the potential to become fully fledged strengths, what are some ways you could develop the effectiveness of how you use input? Are the skills you could work on or knowledge you could gain that’d help maximise that theme?
I’d love to explore the self-assurance theme with you more. You’ve already given one example of how a friend of yours sees this emerge. How though do you (or don’t you) see this come out in a work environment? If you really are confident in the service, for example, that you’re offering, does it come out when you’re selling that to a client?
Of your five themes, which would you say are dominant themes and which are supporting ones?
Dominant themes are those which you can’t really every switch off. They’re totally connected to who you are. Supporting themes would be those that are perhaps less prominent, but undergird your other themes.