JJL LP2 Post19: What were your Top 5?

Learn to Lead with Your Strengths is our current Learning Project here on Joyful Jubilant Learning. If you are here for the first time, you can easily catch up with us here!
[Post 18 can be found here.]

Part Two Continues with Tom Rath's StrengthsFinder 2.0

Week 2: Ending June 23. Get your own copy of StrengthsFinder 2.0. Read and annotate the first 31 pages. Page 31 will instruct you to log on to www.strengthsfinder.com and take your assessment. Thereafter, Week 3: Ending June 30. We’ll look at the second part of the book, where we work on applying our strengths.

Our Project Mantra: Read, Learn, Live

My Results ~~~~~~~~

Whoa! I did not expect this would happen at all, even though I had wished it would.

My results surprised me: 3 of my top 5 have changed.

They surprised me in that I have become a ‘gullible believer’ in all things Gallup – they say that your talents will largely remain stable and true, so it was somewhat of a jolt for me when they emerged differently. My first reaction was to sit back, stare at the results onscreen and think, I wonder if something went wrong.

On the other hand, it was a pleasant surprise, for frankly, I like the person these portray better than I liked the person who first took the Clifton StrengthsFinder seven years ago: She was driven to the extreme, with any sense of balance banished to neglect. Over the years, I have set goals for myself to listen better, be more open-minded and inquisitive, and relate better to more people, thus there is a taste of sweet success in seeing Input and Relator emerge as talents for me. To see Learner included was an affirmation – with StrengthsFinder 1.0 I always believed Learner had to be at number 6, it just had to!

However, and this is a however which kind of bothers me, I think that I have learned to ace this assessment, and even when I coach myself to be completely truthful there are certain truths with which nothing else is now acceptable to me having learned what I have learned, and I will pick what I believe to be the right answer— It is not a lie, for it has become my real truth. I honestly cannot be certain if this is an assessment for me, or an intellectual exercise which is part of the way I naturally seek to grow.

Then again, my Learner would probably say that’s a good thing. So actually, I don’t know if it bothers me, or if it is simply bothersome. Where is that Deliberative strength of mine when I need it? The talents which were replaced were Focus, Achiever, and Deliberative, and I am quite certain that if we were given a Top 8 instead of 5, they’d still be on my list, for they are three things I will never stop being – I still believe my StrengthsFinder 1.0 was not wrong.

Now this is the important distinction: According to both Marcus Buckingham and Tom Rath, the two gurus of our full Learning Project, I have not worked on improving my weaknesses. What I have done, is concentrate on once-lesser strengths, enabling them to become my dominant strengths – in other words, Learner, Input (which are closely connected) and Relator were always my strengths too- they were sleepers. I have taken for granted those which were once dominant (the ones which dropped off my previous Top 5), or put them on the back-burner, feeling they will continue to serve me well, no matter what.

Or am I talking myself into all this?

How about a quick survey JJLers? Use the comments of this post to give me these answers, and let’s chart our community.

1. What were your Top 5?

2. If you took StrengthsFinder 1.0, were your results the same or different?

3. How did you feel about your results?

A little easier to see than my commentary about them, these were my results:

SF 1.0 Results: 1-Deliberative, 2-Focus, 3-Maximizer, 4-Responsibility, 5-Achiever
SF 2.0 Results: 1-Responsibility, 2-Learner, 3-Maximizer, 4-Input, 5-Relator

Share yours?

---

An Update:

This came into our Community Mailbox ~ thank you Melissa!

Hi there, I don’t know if this will work but I hope so.

I noticed your post about your Top 5 changing.

I have an explanation for you.    When you get the free access codes through the various books, you only get access to the Top 5.  In reality, all 34 strengths are ranked.  To see them, you could contact Gallup and for a price you could get coached on all 34.

I have taken it probably 6 times now.  And I have been able to access my top 10 for 5 of them and all 34 for 2.   Out of the top 10, 7 always stay the same for me.  It can be very deceiving only seeing the top 5 as 1 or 2 questions coming out differently could vary your scores of the top 5.

Once you take your StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment you will have access to the real prize (kinda like that Cracker Jack box), the Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide. Though it is only tailored to your Top 5 results, as Melissa points out, the commentary within it readily shows you how your answers to a few questions led to your compilation. All can be learned from.

Comments

[David Zinger]

One of my 5 changed from 1.0 to 2.0. I think part of this is statistical based on how close your strengths are together - responding differently to 1 or 2 questions can change the order or results.

In some ways I think if you pick 5 of your best it does not matter what the 5 are what matters is what you do with it. And you have done lots Rosa.

Stay strong...

David

[Rosa Say]

Mahalo nui loa for the encouragement David!

As we learned in Part One of our project, no one knows us as well as we know ourselves, and about six months from now - when there is some distance in my memory of the assessment questions - I think I will repeat what I had done when Now, Discover Your Strengths first came out:

Newly released, I took the book with me on a vacation without internet access. I read each of the 34 talent theme descriptions and simply picked out the ones I thought sounded most like me, rating them myself from the strongest-felt to the least-felt. When I finally did take the assessment it was largely affirmation.

The question again becomes, will your talents change? Gallup research says no, and they may be right, however I still have to believe that your intention can and will trump innate behavior when your desire is strong enough. We are creatures of purposeful will when we decide to be, and the power of choice is our gift.

[tim]

I've been sitting on this for awhile. Your post finally encouraged me to go ahead and take the 2.0 test. I was like you, somewhat hesitant because I had grown sentimental about my top five strengths.

But I threw sentimentality to the wind and was pleasantly surprised by my results.

I had 3 of my first 5 in the results of 2.0. As way of affirmation, I can easily see where these three have been some of my main strengths all along. I can also see where my journey was three years ago and how certain changes may have altered my answers on this test.

Here's my results (in order):
1.0 - Strategic, Learner, Ideation, Intellection, and Maximizer.
2.0 - Strategic, Activator, Maximizer, Futuristic, and Learner.

I don't feel like I've lost two strengths from 1.0, but that I now have seven areas where I can find themes and potential.

[Paughnee]

2.0 - Harmony, Responsibility, Belief, Consistency, Input

I did not take the earlier version. I do feel that my top 5 are consistent with how I see myself.

[Rosa Say]

Thank you for sharing your talents with us Tim and Paughnee. One of the wonderful things about the StrengthsFinder assessment seems to be the affirmative quality of it; it's a truly great thing to recognize and take comfort in gifts which seem so familiar and right for us.

[Herman Najoli]

I am seated here with this book that I feel has just become mine. After completing the assessment and creating the display on the front cover of the book, there was a sense of personalization that the book seemed to bring to me. At first I felt as if I was being anointed with new strengths because I have never really looked at myself as having the strengths that the assessment came up with. It's really the first time I took a keen interest in Gallup's work (thank you JJL community), so I never took 1.0. Well, here are my top five:

Input, Futuristic, Achiever, Self-Assurance, Deliberative.

I like it. It feels natural. I had looked over all the themes before I took the assessment and I initially thought that I would have different results. After completing the assessment and reading about my top five, I was like, "Hmm... This seems like me... I think they got it right". I believe I still have the other strengths that I initially thought would be my top five but I'm not disappointed that they were not the top five. Great learning tool!

[Rosa Say]

You know, you're right Herman! At first I didn't bother with the book labels, thinking it was cute but gimmicky, but then after reading your comment I used them too, and it does give you this very personal feeling about having the book as a resource. They seemed to have smartly sized it specially for this purpose as well - more people will carry this with them than they will the larger Now, Discover Your Strengths test it updates.

[Mike]

I want to share Discover Your Strengths 2.0 with my team at work (about 40 people at different levels). Do you know of a facilitators guide? I want to make this a fun learning experience in what will be an otherwise boring 'talking heads' seminar. Please let me know. Thanks.

[Rosa Say]

What timing to meet you here at JJL with your question Mike! It is 6:30am here in Hawaii as I read your question, just prior to leaving the house for my two-day seminar with the Gallup University within their Great Manager program. I will ask our instructor and my assigned Gallup coach your question and get back to you!

Very excited about this, and about sharing more with all our JJLers who had been with David Zinger and I on this project. More soon,
~ Rosa