Roy Blumenthal: Five Most Dominant Themes of Talent

On the advice of a friend, I bought Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton's book, NOW, DISCOVER YOUR STRENGTHS. I bought it primarily because the book contains a code to do the web-based strengths finder test.

So, needless to say, like any good activator, I did the test immediately, before reading the book. This is the result...

The Signature Themes report below displays my five most dominant themes of talent, as indicated by my responses to Clifton StrengthsFinder, The Gallup Organization's Web-based talent assessment tool.

Activator:
People strong in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.

Ideation:
People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find 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.

Input:
People strong in the Input theme have a craving to know more. Often they like to collect and archive all kinds of information.

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.

I would have thought 'Ideation' would have come first, with 'Strategic' second, and 'Activator' third. But on second thoughts, the order is probably right. Fascinating stuff (for me).

Please note that the online test appears to be a bit of a marketing gimmick from Gallup International. In order to get the order of the remaining 34 strengths as discovered by the test, you've got to pay them around US$550. Which I'm simply not going to do. That's ridiculous.

Basically, if you buy the book cos of the free test... Yes... it's a good test. Yes... the methodology appears to be correct. Yes... the results are useful and interesting to a certain extent. However... I would really like to see my BOTTOM five strengths. So if that's what YOU want if YOU buy the book, you ain't gonna get it.

The pic is titled 'CSP Tug of War' by Christopher Potter. I sourced the pic by searching stock.xchng for the term 'strength'. Used with permission, based on Christopher's licensing condition that the work is free to use, with a request from him that I let him know how I've used it.