The Write Event

Madam Curie's Perspective on Strengths

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have
perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must
believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing
must be attained."

Marie Curie

Do you agree with that? I do. But, after interviewing hundreds of people I am convinced that very few specifically know what their innate talents are.

Testing can help us determine what our gifts are.

Coming up on the next post are some resources to try out. It includes some of the best tests that are also free. Print out the results from each you choose to take and see if you agree and then also ask someone who is fair and knows you well to offer feedback.

How to tell if it feels like a strength

I heard a true life experience about a corporate trainer who was having a miserable time dealing with her job. She was not hired to do that work, but rather she inherited the training responsibility when she was promoted. To hear her tell it it has never been easy for her even though she knows her subject well. She told me that she would have been happier and more productive in what she had done before.

She gave me her handwriting to look at as well as her StrengthsFinder Profile result. I looked at her writing first and was not surprised to find attention to detail, organizational ability, desire for routine work and a need to work on her own. Her SF Profile report confirmed that her strengths (or the potential to develop them) rested far from being in the public eye and having to communicate verbally in front of people every day. 

She made perfect sense when she spoke and was fluent enough but she said she had difficulty analyzing what people needed to know or answering complex questions. She never came to be at ease with it so the work just wore her out. The boss expected her to improve beyond reading from a script. She wanted to run away and no amount of coaching was helping.

It reminded me of a situation I was in some years ago. I worked in a classy retail boutique selling both old and new merchandise. Since the interworkings of the place were complex the store owner had a man write a special computer program to handle the complicated transactions that came up. The trouble was that no printed manual was available. I suggested that we needed one for future hires who would not have the training we had gotten. The logical person to write it was the woman who was sharpest on the computer. She knew the program backwards.

I spoke to her about it and she quickly replied that she could never do it. "I know it all but I can't teach it." She said, "I cannot analyze or anticipate what others might need to know to get past a snag. I just do it but I cannot write out the steps. My mind just doesn't go that way."

She was a wonderful worker, great with customers and sold very well in a low key way. Thinking back I see that she knew exactly what she could do well and that is where she concentrated her efforts. Her nonstrengths were clear to her too. She knew enough not to waste time and effort trying to master or fix them.

You can never achieve excellence by working on weaknesses. Instead, find out what you find easy to do, what you like to do, even yearn to do and then find a way to do it.  If you dread doing something it is not one of your talents or themes. A true talent makes you want to do more and more of it and you find yourself saying, "How soon can I do this again?" That might be a good test for the job you are in. 

My StrengthsFinder Profile results & your possibility for self-discovery

So, why should I be telling you about my S.F. Profile results? Mainly, because it will illustrate what you can learn about yourself if you take it too. Your results will be completely different, of course, Remember that you will not match anyone else's profile—well, only if you are one in 34 million. That shows how unique each of us is.

The ultimate goal is to identify your talents, the specific things that are the most natural for you.  A talent is defined by the "Now, Discover Your Strengths" book as: "any naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied." (Chew on that for awhile.)

(By the way, the book explains that this is not an all-inclusive list but they are the most dominant themes the Gallup Corporation discovered from the results of indepth interviews they conducted with two million people over 30 years.)

Sometimes talents are so familiar to us we don't even see them as particularly special. For example, empathetic people might think everyone has that capability. That is far from true. If you have it in strong measure it is a talent or theme that affects how you think and much of what you do.

Talents need to be developed in order to build them into useable strengths. Knowledge plus acquired skills applied to talents moves them toward becoming strengths. All the knowledge and acquired skills in the world will not produce excellence if the underlying talent is not there. You can get better at something you learn about and even gain some skill in performing it but you will not develop a true strength.

That is why it is so necessary to find out what your inherent themes of talents are; they give direction to your life once you see them clearly. You know what your raw materials are, which is liberating. Instead of pinching you and inhibiting you they open you up to many possibilities if you do some deep thinking.

I learned that doing handwriting analyses for companies. In one case they had a man who just couldn't seem to manage people with any degree of empathy. So, they packed him off to some corporate training session for which they paid big bucks. That didn't produce any real results; he got a little better as he tried to feel as others did but he still missed clues. He had no feel for what true empathy is so his studied timing was "off" and he was a poor match in the particular job he held. I got called in to help with conflict resolution. He had other amazing talents, which his handwriting supported. He had no clue about empathy. (Too bad the StrengthsFinder profile was not available then.) He was given another job in the same company and fared much better because he dealt more with data than people. He was a superb analyst and strategist.

In another post I mentioned I first read a library copy of the "Discover" book and scored myself after reading the 34 descriptions of the themes of talent presented. I figured I knew myself pretty well. Some months later I took the online questionnaire. The top five themes for me in order:

Maximizer, Strategic, Ideation, Intellection, Communication

Then one year later I took it again. The first four matched the first result exactly and in the same order even. The fifth one was different the second time. "Individualization"

I had listed that one along with Ideation on my own scoring along with 3 others I expected to show up: Empathy, Arranger, Developer

Here is the point and is something you will see too if you take the questionnaire: These results can be tracked as true as you look back on your life to see what has been easy for you to learn, what you have enjoyed doing and looked forward to doing more of again as soon as possible and what has put you in a state of flow.

I will share with you how I identified these themes as most natural for me telling you about preferences and choices I made all through my life along with what I avoided or didn't feel good about doing. It makes sense to me now. I am not about to waste time obsessing over weaknesses anymore. I have done plenty of that up until now. How about you?

Gallup Corp's answers to questions and more on what handwriting reveals

Is artistic, musical, or verbal talent captured by StrengthsFinder?
A. StrengthsFinder does not measure musical talent, mathematical talent, or public speaking talent. Nor does it measure the poetry of your prose, the timbre of your voice, or the beauty of your brushstrokes. If you do indeed possess these talents, you will discover them by the most direct method possible: public expression. The proof of these talents is in the performance: "Can I play the piano, or not?" "Can I speak in public, or does it terrify me?" "Can I paint, or will I never be a Michelangelo?"

By contrast, StrengthsFinder helps most by measuring those talents that are woven so tightly into the fabric of our lives that we, and others, fail to discern them. Talents within the Focus theme -- such as the talent to discern what is important from what is not -- or within the Command theme -- such as the talent to confront people and subjects dispassionately -- do not reveal themselves in one, very public performance. Instead, if we possess them, these talents reveal themselves in every one of our actions and interactions. They can become so familiar, so commonplace, that we cease to value them. And yet they pervade, and to a great extent, explain everything we do. The chief purpose of StrengthsFinder is to help you step back from yourself for just a moment so that you can identify, value and then refine these talents in all of your endeavors -- whether in music, art, public speaking, or business.

Handwriting reveals artistic leanings, and that can include musical talent. It shows literary ability and suggests the presence of having a way with words, such as fluency and fluid thinking ability.

Q. Can talents be misused?
A. Yes. Talents are morally neutral, as are knowledge and skills. No talent is "good" or "bad." How you use a talent is what counts. Each talent is simply a recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. Naturally, each talent holds the potential to be built into a strength. For example, it is useful for a person to focus on his Command theme, acquire the relevant product knowledge and selling skills, and build these talents into a strength for selling. However, the same talent can also be cultivated for negative ends. It is not useful for a person to focus on his Command theme only to become confrontational and belligerent with his friends, family, and colleagues. This is misuse and self-indulgence. To build a genuine strength, always focus your efforts toward a productive application.

Handwriting offers clues about defiant attitudes as well as domineering propensity and lack of fellow-feeling.

Q. Is it possible to overdevelop a theme of talent?
A. No. It is impossible to be too talented or too successful. A person can always do what he or she does best -- better. An Olympic gymnast can always develop better control and form, and a teacher can always develop a better method of reaching students.

However, if you focus on developing only one theme of talent, other themes may suffer as the natural balance among your themes is upset. For example, in a genuine effort to best use the unique strengths of her teammates, a manager may choose to concentrate her own development efforts solely on her Individualization theme. Such intense focus on this theme -- and lack of attention to other themes -- could cause her to make so many exceptions for individuals that she allows her team members to repeatedly miss deadlines they are expected to meet. If this happens, the manager, her individual team members, and the team as a whole will suffer from her lack of attention to her Responsibility theme.

To most effectively work from your strengths, strive to properly balance your themes of talent -- and consider them singly and in combination with each other.

The two tools of the StrengthsFinder Profile and handwriting analysis used together, round out a fuller picture of a person's themes or patterns—a good foundation of a coaching relationship.

Comments on the value of the StrengthsFinder Profile

The profile will give you insight into your natural patterns, your talents, which you may not be able to recognize as anything special.  Possibly you don't spend much time analyzing yourself or you are so close to or so used to your natural bents you miss seeing the treasure they are. The potential exists to hone talents into strengths but you have to do the work to make that happen.

If you put your efforts into building your strengths and give up trying to focus on your weaknesses you will be working toward being at your best.  Most people do give most attention to their weakness, according to the Gallup statistics. That will never produce excellence. It works in the reverse because it ties up energy and ends up being a source of frustration. The limit attention of attention that weaknesses should get is to manage them to the point of damage control.

An anonymous reader's comments on the SF Profile:

Mentoring, not hand-holding, October 15, 2003
Reviewer: A reader
I've read quite a few of these kinds of books starting way back when with "What Color is Your Parachute," through "The Acorn Principle" and "Please Understand Me." This has been a long-term process of discovering my interests, talents, abilities, skills, knowledge, preferences, and potential - always with the intention of finding my true calling in life.

But this book is not just another addition to that list; this is a superior method for focusing in on very specific talents and strengths and clarifying your own thinking about your life choices. The assessment and categories of strengths are more straightforward than taking the Meyers-Briggs or other similar tests. The book confirms some of what I already knew, but completely clarified the concept of natural talent combined with skills and knowledge creating the strengths that one can use throughout their life.

People have complained in other reviews that some of the book is "fluff" or that it doesn't tell you what job to go get. This is only true for people who want one 250-page book to answer some of the greatest of life's questions. I greatly appreciate that the authors give simple, straightforward examples and their own theories quickly and pointedly. They leave it up to ME to make decisions based on that information.

If you are prepared to do the work over the course of time and use this book as a mentor (not a nanny who tells you what to do) you will gain great insight into yourself and your path.