3 Assessments to Uncover Your Personal Talents Explained: Assessment 2

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This is the second post in 3 post series on how to discover and become aware of  personal talents through self-assessments.

In my first First post I covered Kolbe Assessment. Please read  my last post to find out more about Kolbe.

Today I will  cover Strengths Finder 2.0 assessment.

Let’s get right into it and  find out what is about and is it worth to bother to take the test.

Test is provided by Gallup Research Organization. Gallup has studied human nature and behavior for more than 70 years.

Gallup’s reputation for delivering relevant, timely, and visionary research on what people around the world think and feel is the cornerstone of the organization.

How did I find out about them?

I did some research on Amazon some time ago and discovered a book by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton “Now, Discover Your Strengths“.

Marcus Buckingham worked for Gallup organization as a Sr. Researcher. He is not longer with them. He opens his own company The Marcus Buckingham Company. You can get more information about him here.

Marcus Buckingham spent years interviewing thousands of employees at every career stage. He is widely considered one of the world’s leading authorities on employee productivity and the practices of leading and managing.

According to Marcus:

Companies that focus on cultivating employees’ strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success.

Marcus Buckingham has been the subject of in-depth profiles in The New York Times, Fortune, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.

Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D., was cited by the American Psychological Association as the Father of Strengths Psychology and the Grandfather of Positive Psychology. He was a chairman of Gallup, Inc., and he invented the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment.

I heard about their book from several different sources before, but as often happens I did procrastinate to get it. Eventually I borrowed the audio version of it and I loved it. Book comes out in 2001. I did some research  and find out that new book was now available called: “Strength Finder 2.0” and was written by Tom Rath.

Tom Rath is Gallup Global Practice Leader and has written 3 bestselling books. His first book, “How Full Is Your Bucket?”, was a #1 New York Times and #1 Business Week bestseller. Rath’s 2007 book, “Strengths Finder 2.0″, is a long-running #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller and was listed by USA Today as the top-selling business book of 2008.

I ordered book from Amazon and at the end of the book, there is a code which is unique to the book you buy. You can use this code to take an online assessment in their website. It is only valid for 1 person and will not work once you enter the code.

I personally had a small problem with my new book. I scratched the code, went to their website, entered it and find out that my new code wasn’t working. I was so impatient to take the test, and here I am can’t do anything with that. Fortunately their staff got back to me pretty fast after I emailed them with a request for a new code. I apply the code they sent  and took the test.

Strengths Finder 2.0 Assessment

According to Gallup, Strengths Finder 2.0 is a new and improved version of assessment. If you bought  “Now, Discover Your Strengths” you will get test Version 1.0.

The only way to take this assessment is to buy a book. I did research and I did not find a way to buy just a code without buying a book. To get newer version 2.0 you must buy one of those books:

“Strengths Finder 2.0” by Tom Rath or “Strengths-Based Leadership” by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie (this is newest book, 2009)

I got both of those books. If you interested in leadership and running your own company, you might want to get both, but information  is very similar.

Most of those 2 books take most space to describe the 34 themes of talents.The whole idea here is to identify your top 5 themes that is unique to you (your dominate themes).

They mentioned that there is much more than 34 themes, but those 34 is most dominant and enough to find out about our unique strengths.

Here is my Top 5:

Connectedness, Input, Learner, Woo, Empathy

Another 29 Themes are:

Achiever, Activator, Adaptability, Analytical, Arranger, Belief, Command, Communication, Competition, Consistency, Context, Deliberate, Developer, Discipline, Focus, Futuristic, Harmony, Ideation, Includer, Individualization, Intellection, Maximizer, Positivity, Relator, Responsibility, Restorative, Self-Assurance, Significance, Strategic.

After you I took a test, they gave me an option to print out the reports. You will have your own user name, so you can access your reports any time you want.

Inside the book and in reports you will discover description of all themes, ideas for actions and how to deal with other people who have certain theme of talent.

Here the information from their website:

Once you have completed the online assessment, you will receive a comprehensive Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide that is based on your Strengths Finder 2.0 results. This guide includes:

• Your top five theme report, built around the new Strengths Insight descriptions

• 50 Ideas for Action (10 for each of your top five themes) based on thousands of best-practice suggestions we reviewed

• A Strengths Discovery Activity that helps you think about how your talents, investment, experience, skills, and knowledge work together to build strengths

• A Strength-Based Action Plan for setting specific goals for building and applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year

Here is an example of one of the descriptions for one of my themes “Input”

Instinctively, you are grateful when your questions are answered, your studies yield new information, or your knowledge increases. You routinely deepen your understanding through conversations, the media, the Internet, books, or classes. You resist spending the majority of your time on topics that are not in line with your natural abilities. Instead, you choose to take advantage of your talents — and by doing so, you consistently produce topnotch results. It’s very likely that you can simplify the most complex, convoluted, or intricate procedure. People usually rely on you to offer clear and easy-to-comprehend explanations. Driven by your talents, you naturally harbor feelings of good will toward almost everyone you meet. From the start, you probably pose questions that reveal to you another person’s strengths, interests, or goals. Knowing as much as you do about an individual allows you to appreciate him or her more than others can. People often turn to you for insights about strangers or newcomers to the group. Your knowledge usually helps them to accept these outsiders sooner rather than later. Chances are good that you probably gather lots of information, facts, or insights from a variety of written materials. Fortunately, your passion for reading fills you with the reassurance you need to render a proper decision, state the right points, or tackle an assignment correctly. Because of your strengths, you enjoy reading as long as you can savor each sentence and consider each idea. Your goal is to comprehend everything you read. It makes no sense to you to rush through books, magazine or newspaper articles, Internet sites, or other forms of written material just to say you finished them.

You already probably decided for yourself if it worth it or not to invest $13 in book. My view is that it is probably the cheapest investment you can make to become aware of your talents.

All other assessments that worth look at cost much more than Strengths Finder 2.0.

Here are my words of precaution. Do not take everything  for granted and do not get discourage if you do not like something after you pass the test.

At the end of the day, it is you who will decide what’s better for you and how you can apply the information to your advantage.

Take some time to reflect on results and think how you can apply them in your situation. Those can be a life changing for some people, for some a way to find out more about their unique talents and make decisions that may lead to completely different level and quality of life.

Hope it will help to bring you closer to your true self and help you to live life you are capable of living.  It definitely gave me more understating and even more questions to answer.

To take the test get this book or this book.

Good Luck ans see you in a last post in this series

I want to find out what you think about this assessment and talents in general. What your experience with this test.

Do you think talents exist at all or maybe we get all of our talents through learning, practice and repetition?