StrengthsFinder 2.0, Page 7

  Whatever your role, take responsibility for helping others think through their decisions. You can see factors that others may not see. You will soon be sought as a valuable sounding board.

  Explain your process of careful decision making—that you highlight risk in order to take control and reduce it. You don’t want others to misconstrue your Deliberative talents for tentativeness or fear of action.

  You inspire trust because you are cautious and considerate about sensitive topics. Use these talents by taking on opportunities to handle delicate issues and conflicts.

  Rather than take foolhardy risks, you are apt to approach a decision cautiously. Trust your instincts when you believe that something is too good to be true.

  During times of change, consider the advantages of being conservative in your decision making. Be ready to explain these advantages to others.

  Don’t let anyone push you into revealing too much about yourself too soon. Check people out carefully before sharing confidential information. You naturally build friendships slowly, so take pride in your small circle of good friends.

  Partner with someone with strong Command, Self-Assurance, or Activator talents. Together you will make many decisions, and these decisions will be sound.

  Temper the tendency of others to haphazardly move into action by declaring a “consideration” period before decisions are made. Your caution can serve to steer others away from folly and toward wise conclusions.

  Give yourself permission to withhold your opinion until you get all the facts and have an opportunity to ponder your stance. You are not someone who embraces change immediately; you are apt to reflect on possible outcomes so that all the angles are covered. As a deliberative person, you function as a “brake” for more impulsive types who wish to move quickly.

  Working With Others Who Have Deliberative

  Ask this person to join teams or groups that tend to be impulsive. She will have a temporizing effect, adding much-needed thoughtfulness and anticipation to the mix.

  This person is likely to be a rigorous thinker. Before you make a decision, ask her to help you identify the land mines that may derail your plans.

  Respect the fact that this person may be private. Unless invited, do not push to become too familiar with her too quickly. And by the same token, don’t take it personally if she keeps you at arm’s length.

  DEVELOPER

  You see the potential in others. Very often, in fact, potential is all you see. In your view no individual is fully formed. On the contrary, each individual is a work in progress, alive with possibilities. And you are drawn toward people for this very reason. When you interact with others, your goal is to help them experience success. You look for ways to challenge them. You devise interesting experiences that can stretch them and help them grow. And all the while you are on the lookout for the signs of growth—a new behavior learned or modified, a slight improvement in a skill, a glimpse of excellence or of “flow” where previously there were only halting steps. For you these small increments—invisible to some—are clear signs of potential being realized. These signs of growth in others are your fuel. They bring you strength and satisfaction. Over time many will seek you out for help and encouragement because on some level they know that your helpfulness is both genuine and fulfilling to you.

  Developer Sounds Like This:

  Marilyn K., college president: “At graduation time when a nursing student walks across the stage and gets her diploma, and about 18 rows back some little kid is standing on a chair with a group yelling, ‘Yeah, Mom!’—I love that. I cry every time.”

  John M., advertising executive: “I’m not a lawyer, doctor, or candlestick maker. My skills are of a different type. They have to do with understanding people and motives, and the pleasure I get is from watching people discover themselves in ways they never thought possible and from finding people who bring to the table talents that I don’t have.”

  Anna G., nurse: “I had a patient, a young woman, with lung damage so bad that she will have to be on oxygen forever. She will never have the energy or the strength to live a normal life, and I walk in and she’s desperate. She doesn’t know if she is short of breath because she is anxious or anxious because she is short of breath. And she’s talking suicide because she can’t work, can’t support her husband. So I got her thinking about what she could do rather than what she couldn’t. It turns out that she is very creative with arts and crafts, so I told her, ‘Look, there are things you can do, and if those things bring you pleasure, then do them. It’s a place to start.’ And she cried and said, ‘I have the energy to wash only one bowl.’ I said, ‘That’s today. Tomorrow you can wash two.’ And by Christmas, she was making all kinds of things and selling them too.”

  Ideas for Action

  Make a list of the people you have helped learn and grow. Look at the list often, and remind yourself of the effect you have had on the world.

  Seek roles in which your primary responsibilities include facilitating growth. Teaching, coaching, or managing roles might prove especially satisfying for you.

  Notice when others succeed, and tell them. Be specific about what you saw. Your detailed observations of what led to their victory will enhance their growth.

  Identify the mentor or mentors who recognized something special inside you. Take the time to thank them for helping you develop, even if this means tracking down a former schoolteacher and sending him or her a letter.

  Partner with someone with strong Individualization talents. This person can help you see where each person’s greatest talents lie. Without this help, your Developer instincts might lead you to encourage people to grow in areas in which they lack real talent.

  Carefully avoid supporting someone who is consistently struggling in his or her role. In such instances, the most developmental action you can take is to encourage him or her to find a different role—a role that fits.

  You will always be compelled to mentor more people than is possible. To fulfill this inner drive while maintaining a primary mentoring focus, consider the impact of being a “mentor for the moment.” Many of the most poignant and memorable developmental moments occur when the right words are delivered at the right time—words that clarify understanding, reignite a passion, open eyes to an opportunity, and change a life course.

  Don’t over-invest in losing causes. Your natural inclination to see the best in people and situations can create a blind spot that will keep you from moving on to more opportune situations.

  Your Developer talents might lead you to become so invested in the growth of others that you ignore your own development. Remember that you cannot give what you do not have. If you want to have a bigger impact on the well-being and growth of others, you need to keep growing yourself. Find a mentor or coach who can invest in you.

  Make a list of the people you would like to help develop. Write what you would consider to be each person’s strengths. Schedule time to meet with each of them regularly—even if for only 15 minutes—and make a point of discussing their goals and their strengths.

  Working With Others Who Have Developer

  Reinforce this person’s self-concept as someone who encourages people to stretch and to excel. For example, tell him, “They would never have broken the record by themselves. Your encouragement and confidence gave them the spark they needed.”

  Look to this person when it is time to recognize your coworkers. He will enjoy selecting the achievements that deserve praise, and his colleagues on the receiving end will know that the praise is genuine.

  Ask this person to help you grow in your job. He is likely to pick up small increments of progress that others miss.

  DISCIPLINE

  Your world needs to be predictable. It needs to be ordered and planned. So you instinctively impose structure on your world. You set up routines. You focus on timelines and deadlines. You break long-term projects into a series of specific short-term plans, and you work through each plan diligently. You are not n
ecessarily neat and clean, but you do need precision. Faced with the inherent messiness of life, you want to feel in control. The routines, the timelines, the structure, all of these help create this feeling of control. Lacking this theme of Discipline, others may sometimes resent your need for order, but there need not be conflict. You must understand that not everyone feels your urge for predictability; they have other ways of getting things done. Likewise, you can help them understand and even appreciate your need for structure. Your dislike of surprises, your impatience with errors, your routines, and your detail orientation don’t need to be misinterpreted as controlling behaviors that box people in. Rather, these behaviors can be understood as your instinctive method for maintaining your progress and your productivity in the face of life’s many distractions.

  Discipline Sounds Like This:

  Les T., hospitality manager: “The turning point in my career was attending one of those time-management courses some years back. I was always disciplined, but the power grew when I learned how to use that discipline in an organized process every day. This little Palm Pilot means that I call my mom every Sunday rather than letting months go by without calling. It means I take my wife out for dinner every week without her asking. It means that my employees know that if I say I need to see something on Monday, I will be calling on Monday if I haven’t seen it. This Palm Pilot is so much a part of my life that I have lengthened all of my pants pockets so that it fits right there on my hip.”

  Troy T., sales executive: “My filing system may not look that pretty, but it is very efficient. I write everything by hand because I know that no customer is going to see these files, so why waste time making them look pretty? My whole life as a salesperson is based on deadlines and follow-up. In my system, I keep track of everything so that I take responsibility not only for my deadlines and follow-up but for all of my customers’ and colleagues’ as well. If they haven’t gotten back to me by the time they promised, they’re going to receive an e-mail from me. In fact, I heard from one the other day who said, ‘I may as well get back to you because I know you’re going to call me if you haven’t heard from me.’”

  Diedre S., office manager: “I hate wasting time, so I make lists—long lists that keep me on track. Today my list has ninety items on it, and I will get through ninety-five percent of them. And that’s discipline because I don’t let anybody waste my time. I am not rude, but I can let you know in a very tactful, humorous way that your time is up.”

  Ideas for Action

  Don’t hesitate to check as often as necessary to ensure that things are right. You feel an urge to do it anyway, and soon others will come to expect it from you.

  Accept that mistakes might depress you. Precision is a core part of who you are; however, you must find ways to move through these moments of annoyance to prevent becoming discouraged.

  Recognize that others may not be as disciplined as you are. More than likely, their clumsy process will frustrate you, so try to look beyond it, and focus on their results, not on their process.

  Exactitude is your forté; you enjoy poring over details. Seek opportunities to peruse contracts, important communications, or financial documents for errors. You can save yourself and others from making costly mistakes and looking foolish.

  Increasing efficiency is one of your hallmarks. You are a perfectionist at heart. Discover situations in which time or money is being wasted because of inefficiency, and create systems or procedures to improve efficiency.

  You not only create order, you probably also crave it in the form of a well-organized space. To completely free your Discipline talents, invest in furniture and organization systems that enable you to have “a place for everything and everything in its place.”

  Timelines motivate you. When you have a task to complete, you like to know the deadline so you can plan your schedule accordingly. Apply your Discipline talents by outlining the step-by-step plan you will use. Others will appreciate your cues because they will help keep everyone “on task.”

  Others may confuse your Discipline talents with rigidity. Help them understand that your discipline helps you pack more effectiveness into a day—often because you prioritize your time. When working with others who are not as disciplined, ask them to clarify deadlines so you can adjust your workload to accommodate their requests.

  Seek out roles and responsibilities that have structure.

  Create routines that require you to systematically follow through. Over time, people will come to appreciate this kind of predictability.

  Working With Others Who Have Discipline

  When working on a project with this person, make sure to give her advance notice of deadlines. She feels a need to get work done ahead of schedule, and she can’t do this if you don’t tell her the timelines.

  Try not to surprise this person with sudden changes in plans and priorities. The unexpected is distressing to her. It can ruin her day.

  Disorganization will annoy this person. Don’t expect her to last long in a physically cluttered environment.

  EMPATHY

  You can sense the emotions of those around you. You can feel what they are feeling as though their feelings are your own. Intuitively, you are able to see the world through their eyes and share their perspective. You do not necessarily agree with each person’s perspective. You do not necessarily feel pity for each person’s predicament—this would be sympathy, not Empathy. You do not necessarily condone the choices each person makes, but you do understand. This instinctive ability to understand is powerful. You hear the unvoiced questions. You anticipate the need. Where others grapple for words, you seem to find the right words and the right tone. You help people find the right phrases to express their feelings—to themselves as well as to others. You help them give voice to their emotional life. For all these reasons other people are drawn to you.

  Empathy Sounds Like This:

  Alyce J., administrator: “Recently, I was in a meeting of trustees where one of the individuals was presenting a new idea that was critical to her and to the life of this group. When she was finished, no one heard her opinion, no one really heard her. It was a powerfully demoralizing moment for her. I could see it in her face, and she wasn’t herself for a day or two afterward. I finally raised the issue with her and used words that helped describe how she was feeling. I said, ‘Something’s wrong,’ and she started to talk. I said, ‘I really understand. I know how important this was for you, and you don’t seem like yourself,’ and so on. And she finally gave words to what was going on inside her. She said, ‘You’re the only one who heard me and who has said one word to me about it.’”

  Brian H., administrator: “When my team is making decisions, what I like to do is say, ‘Okay, what will this person say about this? What will that person say about it?’ In other words, put yourself in their position. Let’s think about the arguments from their perspective so that we can all be more persuasive.”