Over the next couple weeks I’ll be posting about my top 5 StrengthsFinder Strengths: Futuristic, Strategic, Responsibility, Restorative, and Competition.
This past year my personal skills and involvement in various projects has diversified a lot. I mean A LOT. I’m now working as Creative Director for a startup and my other design work is being noticed by more than my immediate world. My experience in strategy and future planning is being realized by people I’ve never directly tried to sell on my personal brand. So I thought it would be interesting, almost 10 years out from when I took first the Gallup StrengthsFinder test, to look through my top 5 strengths and see how they have impacted my life.
When I arrived at Greenville College as a freshman I was introduced to a Strengths-based curriculum. As new students we took the StrengthsQuest test and started classes that taught us not only about our Strengths, but how to use them effectively in school, work, and personal ministry. So much of my journey through undergraduate academics was viewed through the lens of Strengths. In fact, the creator of the system would come and speak to our campus once a year, extolling the virtues that Gallup wanted us to know and love.
It inevitably became the target of numerous inside jokes, the most popular being the pickup line, “What are your Top 5?”
Since you asked, mine are:
- Futuristic
- Strategic
- Responsibility
- Restorative
- Competition
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be looking at each of my top 5 and examining how they’ve affected me in my work and living. For me, it’ll be part nostalgia, part self-evaluation (for as Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”). I hope that if you read the series you will come away with a better understanding of my passions, quirks, and thought processes.
Either way, I’ll have fun.
If you’re not sure what the Gallup StrengthsFinder is, I encourage you to go get the book and take the sorter. It’s fun and enlightening.
ash wrote on 11 January 2012, at 11:02 pm //
Looking forward to this, I need more strengths talk in my life! One of my favorite parts of undergrad was being a strengths counselor: helping freshmen explore, appreciate, and utilize their strengths. And I miss it like crazy! Have your five stayed consistent from beginning of undergrad to now? If so, that’s some strong (heh) consistency.
joel wrote on 12 January 2012, at 7:44 am //
Well, I never retook the test because I like my original 5. Maybe I’ll retake it at the end of this project? That might be a good capstone. But, basically, I sense a few that have probably moved their way up, from below the top 5. Like, context, maximizer, etc.
I’m almost afraid to retake it because I like my top 5 so much.
ash wrote on 12 January 2012, at 11:31 am //
One of the things we learned during counselor training was that people tend to have a top six to ten-ish strengths, when viewed over the course of their lives. It all depends on your current situation, and what the needs are in your life: different strengths often come forward in different times of need. It doesn’t mean you’ve lost your original ones…it just means you’ve been needing another skillset.
So yes, it’s possible that you’d have a few new ones thrown into the mix (yay maximizer!), but it’s also possible they’d look exactly the same. Can’t wait to see what they are.
joel wrote on 12 January 2012, at 1:16 pm //
Right. Well, and the top 5 are basically interchangeable (at least this is what Chip told me before he passed), so some at different times. I would like to know my original full-order, but… not enough to pay for it