1. Discovering your Strengths
“Individuals gain more when they build on their talents, than when they make comparable efforts to improve their areas of weakness.”
--Clifton & Harter

2. What Are Strengths?
Talent
Knowledge +
Skills
= Strength

3. Evidence of your Strengths
Intense
satisfaction
Achievements
yearnings
Rapid
Learnings
Flow

4. Building Strengths Identify the natural talent themes
Ways of processing information
Ways of interacting with people
Ways of seeing the world
Habits, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that can be productively applied

5. What are strengths?
Attitudes that sustain efforts toward achievement and excellence
Behavior patterns that make a person effective
Beliefs that empower a person to succeed
Motivations that propel a person to take action and maintain the energy needed to achieve
Thought patterns that make a person efficient

6. Why Strengths?
Aim for:
consistent, near-perfect performance in a given activity.
Best of the best
Spend most of their time in their areas of strength
Use their strengths to overcome obstacles
Invent ways of capitalizing on their strengths in new situations
Partner with complimentary types

7. Our plan Complete StrengthsFinder Share results with
Counselor
2 friends
Your parents
Answer two reflection questions and send to your counselor

8. StrengthsFinder Online Create user name
Set aside 40 uninterrupted minutes
180 questions, forced choice
20 seconds per question
Report: Top five signature Strengths

11. Next steps Study halls Beginning of January End of January
Week of November 20th
Developing Strengths
Beginning of January
Career building
End of January
Academic planning

12. Due Date
Friday,
November 17th

13. Key to Productivity

15. Using Strengthsfinder
Identifies top 5 themes
Six-month test-retest reliability across all populations ranges from .60 to .80
Three-month test-retest reliability among college students ranges from .70 to .76
Study from Harvard: Students preferred Strengths over MBTI or the Values Information Assessment

16. Strengths Connect with 4 Key Motivational Drives
THINKING
RELATING
IMPACTING
STRIVING

17. StrengthsFinder® Achiever Activator Adaptability Analytical Arrange
Belief
Command
Communication
Competition
Connectedness
Consistency
Context
Deliberative
Developer
Discipline
Empathy
Focus
Futuristic
Harmony
Ideation
Includer
Individuation
Input
Intellection
Learner
Maximizer
Positivity
Relator
Responsibility
Restorative
Self-Assurance
Significance
Strategic
Woo

18. More info?

19. Shaun’s themes
Positivity
Includer
Adaptability
Woo
Strategic