“Discover your strengths and then align your work with that,” is common advice these days. Most people now know that you’ll be more productive and creative when you’re working in your strength zone. You’ll also learn faster, so you’ll make more progress more quickly, and you’ll probably also be a more enjoyable team member and manager to work with because you’ll be enjoying your work. Best of all, you’ll be energized by your work and enjoy working.
But it’s not always easy to identify your strengths
Identifying your strengths is often not as easy as it sounds. Often we’re strong in performing tasks and ways of thinking that aren’t celebrated or rewarded in our family or social circles, and so we don’t even have a distinction for describing strengths in those ignored areas. Much of the time we’re also placing a lot of pressure on ourselves to make a decision about what work is right for us – and to make the “right” decision, and this pressure and fear clouds our vision. Add to that the fact that we’ve often spent 12 or more years practicing fitting into an educational system that encourages conformity and rewards only a small sub-sect of strengths and abilities, and then it’s easy to see how we can lose touch with our strengths. We’re so busy focusing on what our strengths “should” be that it becomes hard to see what they really are.
The other thing that gets in the way of finding your natural strengths is that we expect that our strengths are the things we’re good at. This is a bit of a myth. Sure, you’ll get good at the things that are your natural strengths faster, but it’s possible to have worked at something and become good at it, even though it’s not a natural strength for you. It’s also possible to have something that’s a natural strength that you’re very poor at – because you haven’t put time into developing the skills involved.
1. Your natural strengths make you feel strong
The best way to identify your natural strengths is by noticing how you feel when you’re doing different tasks and thinking in different ways. Your strengths are activities and ways of thinking that make you feel strong, energized and free.
I’m going to recommend 5 different assessments that you can also take to identify your strengths, but I highly recommend that you take a week or so first to notice and record what makes you feel strong, alive and free. This will serve 3 purposes:
- You’ll learn how to watch your emotions. This is a powerful emotional intelligence skill that’s useful in managing relationships, communicating, deciding what you want, and managing difficult emotions.
- You’ll most likely find that the assessments confirm what you noticed yourself. This is a very empowering experience and it’ll help you to develop greater trust in your self-knowledge.
- Every test is still always going to be an abstraction and over-simplification to some degree. You may pick up strengths that the tests overlook.
Once you’ve done this, a great way to identify and affirm your strengths is by taking a few assessments. This is a particularly powerful strategy when you take 3 or 4 or even 5 different assessments, because you’ll be able to compare your assessment results and notice the themes that keep popping up – these are your obvious areas of strength.
So here are 5 of my favorite assessments for discovering your natural thinking and doing styles:
2. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ($59.95) is probably the most well-respected personality and strengths assessment. You’ll discover the thinking, deciding, doing and relating styles that come most easily for you. There’s also this free version that’s based on Myers-Briggs. Because the Myers-Briggs test is so comprehensive and multi-layered, it’s a good idea to have a trained Myers-Briggs coach walk you through your assessment results if you want to get the most out of the assessment. I can recommend Wendy Daunheimer for this. In case you’re wondering, I’m an INTJ on Myers-Briggs, which means, amongst other things, that I’m both idealistic and pragmatic, I recharge by being alone, I’m punctual and I like to “figure” stuff out rather than feel my way through things.
3. Archetype Assessment
The Archetype Assessment ($18) is a great tool for discovering the stories and ethos that resonate with you – great for entrepreneurs who are working at clarifying their brand (hat-tip to @LaurieFoley for telling me about this test). My strongest archetypes were the Sage and the Creator, which means that I like to explain and teach, I like my work to be research-based and I like to create and innovate.
4. Primary Color Assessment
Rick Smith, the author of The Leap has a great assessment called The Primary Color Assessment (free) that will help you to discover your work strengths and a second assessment that will help you to see what direction you need to move in, if you want to be using more of your natural strengths at work. My primary color is “Atomic Tangerine” which means I’m high on curiosity and execution, so I like discovering new things and getting stuff done.
5. Wealth Dynamics Assessment
The Wealth Dynamics Assessment ($99 – Aff) shows you what working and wealth-creation styles come naturally to you – and what styles you need to team up with in order to be more successful as an entrepreneur. Damien Senn from People You Should Meet has a great 60min audio interview with Roger Hamilton, the creator of Wealth Dynamics:
My Wealth Dynamics Profile is Creator and Mechanic, which means that I’m innovative and love to create new ideas and see things in new ways and I’m also strong on creating processes and setting up the mechanics behind a business. I need to pair up with Stars and Dealmakers to be most successful.
6. Kolbe A Index
The Kolbe A Index ($49.95) measures a person’s instinctive method of operation, and identifies the ways he or she will be most productive. Martha Beck has written two great articles about the 4 “cognitive styles” that the Kolbe Index measures, and how knowing your cognitive style can help you to be more productive and enjoy your work more:
I’m a QuickStart Factfinder on the Kolbe Index, which means that I like to drill down to the details and learn deeply about new stuff, and I’m compelled to act on the stuff I learn very quickly. It serves me well, but it’s a recipe for obsession and I often have to learn how to hold my Factfinder back!
Find the common themes:
Have a look over all of your assessment results and your list of activities and ways of thinking that make you feel strong, alive and free… what are the common themes that keep coming up?
My common themes are creating, making stuff, coming up with ideas and making ideas real, researching, getting an in-depth understanding and sharing that in-depth understanding with others, discovering new things, figuring stuff out, getting stuff done.
What other assessments have you found useful?
And I’d love to know what your assessment results are for these assessments…
Hey Cath,
I love taking assessments.
I’ve taken quite a few including the Meyers-Briggs and the Primary color (as well as the Strengthsfinder).
I’m INFP, the dreamer/healer.
My primary color is “Razzmatazz” – a nice purple, high on Curiosity & leadership.
From the Strengthsfinder, adaptability, intellection, ideation, strategic and input are my top 5.
Creative and Dreamer show up often in any kind of profile I take, and I’m not really sure yet how to harness the dreamer. And nowhere in any test I’ve taken says I’m good at execution…
Well it’s good to know that I am still an INTP
What a quirky group that puts me in!
You know Cath, I never thought identifying my strengths was, well, not a strength. I’ve spent more time contemplating my passions rather than my strengths, figuring the latter was a given and fairly obvious. I think that assumption may not be so accurate!
I’m going to do as you suggest; spend a week or so recording my emotions. This should be an interesting challenge for an INTP in and of itself!
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Mike
Thanks for this posting, Cath, but then thanks for all your postings. The assessment I’d add is the “Enneagram” (“ennea” is transliterated Greek for “nine” for the nine key personal style types it measures). The site I’d recommend starting with is — http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/ — which is Don Richard Riso’s systematicization of the Enneagram. It now has several reputable Ph.D. studies, although neither it nor anything else has the length of studies done on the MBTI.
What I like about the Enneagram is its immediate, internal dynamism. That is, it not only can give one a handle on how one is showing up and functioning most of the time, but also how one shows up and functions differently under stress, and the direction that will likely be best for personal growth and, at least for some, spiritual growth. One long-time practitioner (a leader in a religious order) reports that he continually received praise for his incredible coaching intuition about people when “all he was doing” was carefully using the Enneagram.
I myself have used it to also give a series of talks which gained rapt attention as people found either themselves or their family members and friends in the talks, with new insight.
@Alexia: All those dreams and ideas… you need to pair up with executors to get them out into the real world!
And thanks for the reminder about StrengthsFinder – I can’t remember what my profile was. I should do it again sometime.
@Mike: INTP’s are amazing minds… and you’re never gonna fit into conventional society (you’re far too interesting). As an INTJ, I know the challenges of being INT. We’re in our heads and analyzing stuff so much that we squeeze the joy out of it sometimes. Enjoy recording your emotions this week – it’s a great activity for an INTP
@Mark: Thanks for the reminder about the Enneagram. I was type 1 – the Reformer, when I last took it.
You make some very good points for self-growth here Cath.
One of the TOP things I encourage people to do is to know themselves better: their purpose, goals, values, passions, strengths and beliefs. Because I have seen how this self knowledge can improve our lives on so many levels.
The thing I emphasize the most these days is asking yourself very powerful questions, which trigger big revelations about yourself and your life. It is an underused tool.
Cheers,
Eduard
Hi Cath
Like Alexia I, enjoying taking various assessments and being married to a management trainer means I am often a guinea pig for various strengths tests!
In Myers Briggs terms, I am an INFP and once I understood the balance of my thinking and feeling preferences things became much clearer.
One other assessment I would strongly recommend is
Now Discover your Strengths
by Marcus Buckingham & Donald Clifton
The Free Press, New York, 2001, ISBN 0-7432-0114-
Each book has an individual code on its cover which you tap in and then do the test online before reading the book for an in depth analysis of your top strengths and what areas of work are best suited to your character.
Gathering as much information about yourself helps you see were you can combine both your passion and strengths to both grow as a an individual and be of service with your work
Thank you Cath for your clear sighted encouragement for us all to be the best that we are.
Love and appreciation
Arabella
What a happy day!
Trying to find the way in to all my projects — too many, too many — I discovered you! Assessing my strengths and styles is a great way to look productive without really getting anything done.
But if I actually follow through, maybe I can get over it — and be on my way. You know all the research about change — how long it actually takes to get it underway — the contemplation of change, the preparing, the backing off, the beginning. I think I am beginning!!
Thank you for being part of the process~
Linda
[...] areas where you’ll do best to invest your time and energy when it comes to developing mastery. A variety of personality profiling tools can also be really helpful for discovering your natural strengths and [...]
Thanks you so much for suggesting these tests! I took the primary colors one and of course, I’m dead right in the center. I’ve always felt i’m a balance of chaos and borderline OCD (not just in organization but in life in general) and this, along with many of the personality assessments I’ve taken, confirm it.
I guess I have try out the other tests you’ve suggested! Thanks again!