Mar 02 2010
Strengthsfinder’s 4 categories of strengths: a creative reworking
- StrengthsFinder for more effective social enterprises?
- Strengthsfinder’s 4 categories of strengths: a creative reworking
- Developing the “Ideation” strength from Strengthsfinder
- Love it, use it for Good: StrengthsFinder’s “Futuristic” strength
Overbearing corporate-ness is a problem with StrengthsFinder, its assumption that you must be manager at a Fortune 500 company if you’re reading it. That assumption turns off a lot of people, but there’s good stuff here if you can get past that.
That’s why today I want to have a little creative fun while looking at the 4 categories of strengths in StrengthsFinder and how to use your type of strength to help you be an effective leader and be part of a successful team.
StrengthsFinder for volunteer groups and families
Understanding your strengths is relevant not just for your working life whatever its shape, but for volunteer activities, organisations and even relationships.
My family did Strengthsfinder and it’s helped me understand and appreciate them and how we function together. It’s one of the core ways Malcolm and I run Touchwood, so I’ll continue to write about it for others out there looking to take more of a strengths-based approach to life.
I’m assuming you’re already familiar with the basics of StrengthsFinder, which is a tool that helps you identify your top 5 strengths from a list of 34. Now it’s about developing your strengths further and learning how to play your totally unique role as well as look for others to complement you.
How to be a great leader or part of a great team
To be an effective leader or part of a team, you need to 1) focus on your area of greatest ability then 2) build a team with complementary, very different strengths to yours.
Let’s start with you first.
The 4 types of strengths
Chances are, your strengths will fall into one of these categories: 
(These are my colourful intrepretations of the 4 types, complete with little icons and colour coding. I love designing this kind of stuff.)
OK, go find your strengths report and look up your strengths again if you’ve forgotten them. Ready? Now, let’s start with the first set: Strategic Thinking.
Strategic Thinking strengths
So far, I think everyone I’ve ever had take StrengthsFinder — which is about 35 people — has had at least one strength in Strategic Thinking. I love thinkers because you know, like attracts like and all that.
I mean, if you’re not into pontificating, analysing, discussing, then chances are you haven’t bothered to read this post. Because you find something as abstract as personal development boring and pointless.
Strategic Thinker: Does this sound like you?
A strategic thinker tends to love to read or discuss things, to learn.
They observe the past to learn its lessons, or live in the future. They assess something and find what’s wrong with it and then can come up with 50 ways to fix it.
They can also be accused of not getting things done, living with their head in the clouds, being procrastinators. Malcolm and I were both Class A procrastinators growing up — schoolwork wasn’t worth doing until the last minute.
Strategic Thinkers help the team make better decisions by analyzing information and thinking about what could be.
All five of my strengths are Strategic Thinking, which worried me at first, but I’ll get to why being so one-sided can also be a very good thing later.
On to the Persuaders, the Talkers: Influencers.
Influencing strengths
Obama is the guy I think of when I think of Influencers. Someone who likes people, working with them, speaking to them.
President Obama - a master Influencer
Influencers: Does this sound like you?
President Obama knows how to persuade people, to woo them and inspire them. The strength “Woo” cracks me up just for the name, but I knew someone with this strength and she was a master at getting people to do things. She just charmed them into it. She was very self-deprecating, so you don’t have to be flashy, you just have to enjoy being around people.
Influencers help you and your team reach a broader audience.
Since Malcolm and I are both Strategic Thinkers, we’re starting to look for an Influencer or two to help us better communicate what Touchwood is about. Someone who can help us distill our million ideas that make perfect sense to us and likely no one else, and tell a story that’s compelling and easy to understand. That’s what many Influencers can do, easily.
Relationship Building strengths
My Nana is a Relationship Builder. Her strengths are: Adaptability, Connectedness, Relator — all Relationship building strengths — plus Intellection (loves to discuss) and Responsibility (takes responsibility for what they say and do, as well as for other people).
Relationship Builders are the “glue that binds the team together,” as Strengths-based Leadership puts it.
Boy is that true! Nana is the matriarch of the DuBois clan, holding us all together through to 2nd and 3rd cousins all over the place.
Nana holding us all together in L.A.
She checks in with us all, keeping us up to date with what everyone else is doing. Because of her efforts, we DuBoises have a strong sense of family identity, despite the fact we all live very far away from each other and can only visit maybe once a year. Hard for me to say how much that sense of connection means to me and I know I have her in part to thank.
Executing strengths
Executers get things done.
For some mysterious reason, Executing types (Executioners?) rarely like taking StrengthsFinder. Or maybe I just don’t meet them. These strengths have only come up a handful of times so I know them the least. I also respect them enormously.
Executers: Does this sound like you?
One of our former Directors, Jenni, had Discipline as a strength. She loved To Do lists. Made them all the time, and then faithfully crossed items off the list as she completed them. We ribbed her about it but we also let her know how in awe we were of such organisational ability.
Executers are a definite essential to a project’s completion.
Executing strengths are like the complementary opposite to Strategic Thinkers. We ponder, they do. Incidentally, you might think doing is better, but I’ve seen plenty of botched jobs done by the Executer person who was so impatient to finish something they didn’t take enough time to think through the process. So we need each other.
Next time
More on developing your leadership style within your category of greatest strength.
A key point: the best leaders don’t try to be anybody else but exactly who they are. So stop thinking you need to be like Gandhi or Obama or Churchill to be a leader — you are one, you may just not know it. Yet.
What are your strengths?
Please post your strengths if you’ve taken the test and want to discuss them further. I find this stuff utterly fascinating and like nothing better than to hear about what people find easy to do and love doing.
For more info, check out Strengths-Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams and Why People Follow, which is what this article is based on, as well as the other articles about strengths and StrengthsFinder. Also check out Sam Radford’s Awaken blog where he’s been profiling different strengths.
Till next time.
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Rachel,
I can’t figure out if I’m an Influencer or a Relationship Builder! I think I’m probably a bit of both. I was Reunion Chair of our Fortieth Reunion, and am our Class President. I’ve run many committees, and am defintiely a “glue” in our class friendships–but I’m definitely a wooer and influencer.
Good job!
Big brava!
Is Malcolm your partner or husband?
Monique
Monique, you can certainly have both areas of strengths, though I’d imagine you’re probably more of an Influencer given your leadership positions. Remember, both types love working with people. I see you’re a writer too, so the list of talents just goes on and on.
Malcolm’s my husband and partner both, and Touchwood is kind of like one of our children.
Will write more about the different types of leader and you can decide for yourself which approach works best for you. Take care. -Rachel
Hi Rachel,
Very timely post for me as I am compiling the SF results for my finance team. We have also done the MBTI so I am also looking at any correlation between that and the SF. Of a team of 7 individuals we have all strategic strengths covered at least once. Fortunately, we also have a strong showing in the execution strengths as well with Achiever being the most represented. We over represent in Competition and Self-assurance as well and have also covered Activator, Command and Communication. No surprise though that we are least represented in Relationship Building categories.
For the record, I am an i(weak introvert)NTP and have the following strengths:
self-assurance, competition, ideation, restorative, futuristic.
Here are my 5 in order. Any help with career fits would be greatly appreciated.
Ideation
Restorative
Empathy
Strategic
Connectedness
Hi Todd,
I know 4 of your 5 well, since either Malcolm or I have them (we both have Ideation). Restorative is actually one that’s new to me, so I’ll need to look it up. You’ve got 2 strategic thinking, 2 relationship building and 1 executing so you’re more spread across the fields but I’d guess you’re good with people, that you listen well and people find you easy to talk to. What did your personalised results say? I find that’s where the most helpful insight is, since it takes into account all your other strengths.
Thank you so much for posting this, it’s most helpful. I was grappling with how to take all the details of 34 strengths and connect them to our overall working team. This gets at exactly what I needed.
My top 5 are
Ideation
Deliberative
Intelection
Context
Input
All strategic thinking except for Deliberative. Thats me carefully exectuting
Hi Mitch, Deliberative is another new one on me. How do you find it works out for you in reality?
I have a friend who has Context (looking to the past for answers) — he laughed when he saw that was his top strength because he’s an archaeologist.
hi Rachel
Deliberative helps me dodge conflict in tense social situations, situations where conflict would not be a good idea. Seeing where drama would potentially arise. With both Intellection and Deliberative, i have problems maintaining friendships.
My wife’s are all in the relationship building category
Adaptability
Empathy
Individualisation
Relator
Connectedness
My Brother’s are
Maximizer
Adaptablity
Intellection
Strategic
Empathy