the CEO flew out in the corporate jet to pay us a visit and snoop around (yes, the same one that loved the book & no I am not a brown-noser). Also, there are people who are so proud do be very direct to people and that they are not afraid to tell people what’s on their mind, but when people are direct to them, they don’t like it at all and they overreact. We went through a tripling in size during year 2, expanding from 50 to 150 in the business unit. When I met the Gallop team, heard the theory and read the book, I had a business epiphany. So in the beginning our strengths are fostered by failure or perhaps luck, but over our lifetimes they are more nurtured by success. Yet the audience craves an aura of statistics and science.

Each manager then assessed our current sales team, held similar discussions with every field sales unit, focused on maximizing their strengths for career success. Have you ever been around people who have no idea how they are When I was in high school and parts of college, I was pretty clueless about how I impacted other people with my personality. In my culture I would hear that quote a lot, the one of 99 % vs 1 % – not that I apply it.
Disconnected. On the surface that sounds trite, and it might be, but… well… just read the damn book. Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs book – a classic that I read in junior high – describes 12 different personality types (it’s not your average horoscope b.s. Their arguments in the short section titled I think this last point #3, UNBALANCED is actually two points:  UNBALANCED and EASILY MISINTERPRETED. Here is how you handle it. Knowing where each person’s strengths lie can help you place them in roles that make the most of their talents. At the end of year two I was offered the head of sales position for the entire company.I have since been a part of creating 2 new sales & marketing teams in start-ups.

If you’ve only had positive stimulus for a strength, unless you’ve been far more successful than average, then that strength must not shine as brightly as those for which you’ve had both positive and negative stimulus. I’m not saying that it can’t be useful in some respects.— By the way, have you run a regression analysis against all your employee “job fit” profiles to validate that the strengths you believe to be associated with job fit correlate to sales per month?

“Strengths come from exercise” is a statement that allows for much more possibility, much more self-directed potential. The most beneficial aspect of the StrengthsFinder tool is that it focuses on an employee’s awareness of their own strengths and each employee must look deep inside himself to identify these character traits.
When reading through these materials, finding your strengths seems self-absorbed in comparison. i’m sure the logic was solid, but their data was not reliable. Arrogant. Once the deliberation cycle is fulfilled, it’s like opening a floodgate. I was skeptical at first as most mangers are of any new management theory shoved down your throat by a company. Or worse, I’d better say I prefer X so my boss/team doesn’t question why I’m doing X). On the level of mechanics, the VIA test is transparent – before writing this reply to you I tried out the free test here: All that said, doing VIA for the purposes of replying to this discussion did give me some results that were personally thought-provoking. 150 people. One of its messages is that excellence also comes through lots of practice, luck and help from friends. Within the area of visual design and rendering, there are any number of talents that come into play, some of which are  included in StrengthFinders’ 34 themes (certainly ARRANGER, possibly CONNECTEDNESS) but if you’ve ever met someone with a talent at drawing or watercolor, you’d know there is more to doing it than just But then, it’s too easy to nitpick (ANALYTICAL, DELIBERATIVE, COMPETITION, FOCUS), isn’t it? The more you know what makes you tick, the more chance you have for success in life. Your distinction about context, management vs personal development, is quite sharp.

As for your caregiving situation example, well, that’s a touchy subject… definitely an area with diverse opinions about what constitutes a “good fit” or even just plain old competency. I’ve been skeptical of these kinds of personality classifications for a long time, because they all seem to be trying to simplify something that has too many variables to be simple. To quote a lawyer I once hired, “you can drive a truck through that loophole.” I also think it’s important when thinking about this stuff to get past the theoretical extremes and deep personality disorders — people who are 100% antisocial or profoundly narcissistic or whatnot — and deal with the more usual case of the people who have some non-absolute, highly situational, and moldable tendencies. However, that this should emerge as one of my top traits wasn’t something I had considered before… but it resonated for me. You can increase the feeling of productivity by challenging yourself within the area you’re good at, you don’t have to constantly torture yourself through something you’re not good at to feel productive. “Strengths are what strengthen you” is still a bit of a Fixed Mindset statement, with a hint of External Locus of Control. the “normal” people, the middle 80%, can not be categorized, patterned, branded, cuz their personality is way too fluid.