Get out your notebook and begin working your way through these. Make sure you write something for each question. You can adjust and refine your answer later. Get something down and move on to the next question.
John Maxwell says that if he really wants to know a person there are three areas he looks for:
What makes you laugh?
What makes you sing?
What makes you cry?
What do you want?
What do you think about most? (Day Dreams and Mind Wandering)
Where do you spend your money? (Checkbook and Credit Card Register)
What do you do with your time off? (Hobbies and Interests)
Who do you spend time with? (Friends and Associates)
Who do you admire? (Models and Heroes)
What do you laugh at?
What Are Your Top Of Mind Responses
If you want to uncover your strengths, passions, and needs you are motivated to meet, monitor your spontaneous top of mind responses to a variety of situations and circumstances.
Suppose you are sharing dinner with seven people who all have different strength sets...
You all just finished a nice dinner and the dessert falls on the floor. Read the following responses and think about which one you are most drawn to.
The person with coordination talent says, John, you get the mop, Jill, you get a rag, Bill, you go buy us another pie.
The person with hands on serving talent says, nothing, just goes and gets the stuff to clean up.
The person with strong empathy says nothing. Goes and places an arm around the person who dropped it and whispers, "It is ok, we didn't need desert. The rest of the dinner was so nice."
The person with blunt truth-telling talent says, “Look everyone, the pie is falling!”
The trainer/teacher says, “What can we learn from this? Next time, perhaps we can serve the dinner with the meal, then there will be no opportunity for it to fall.”
The encourager says “Hey everybody, this is great. We had a great meal anyway. Doesn't everyone think Sally fixed a great meal? Is anyone not satisfied? And who here couldn't stand to save a few calories. Let's get started on the cards. This just gives us a few extra minutes to play.”
The person who invested wisely and has great resources, says nothing and slips out the door quietly to purchase another pie.
Imagine a variety of crisis’ or “worse case scenarios” if you will. You might start with some you’ve already faced and move on to a few you can imagine. They might be serious issues or something as simple as receiving the wrong order in a restaurant. Think about your past or likely top of mind responses. What do they suggest about your talents or strengths?
Really, the simplest things can give you insight into your talents. In Now, Discover Your Strengths Buckingham and Clifton use the following everyday vanilla example:
“Recall the last time one of your employees told you he could not come to work because his child is sick. What was your first thought? If you immediately focused on the ill child, asking what was wrong and who was going to take care of her, this may be a clue that Empathy is one of your strongest themes of talent. But if you instinctively jumped to the question of who would fill in for the missing employee, the theme Arranger—the ability to juggle many variables at once—is probably a dominant talent.”
Every reaction and response to anything and everything is a potential clue.
I will talk about The Gallop Organizations Strengthfinder indicator later on in this section. It is excellent, very reasonably priced (it generally comes with the purchase of one of there books) and it is based on the “top of mind” response principle.
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