Comments on: #StrengthsDay – Input, Ideation, Strategic, Learner, Self-Assurance

By: Sam Radford

Sam Radford — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:05:30 +0000

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.

By: Sam Radford

Sam Radford — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:03:43 +0000

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?

By: Sam Radford

Sam Radford — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:00:35 +0000

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?

By: Brett Valenstein

Brett Valenstein — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:19:04 +0000

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!