About a year ago, my team had the opportunity to take the Clifton StrengthsFinder survey to determine our personal strengths. Here are my top 5 strengths, followed by a brief description of each.

1. Empathy. People who are especially talented in the Empathy theme can sense the feelings of other people by imagining themselves in others’ lives or others’ situations.
2. Relator. People who are especially talented in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.
3. Adaptability. People who are especially talented in the Adaptability theme prefer to “go with the flow.” They tend to be "now" people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.
4. Intellection. People who are especially talented in the Intellection theme are characterized by their intellectual activity. They are introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions.
5. Strategic. People who are especially talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

Practical Application

As a team we held a working meeting creating a massive grid which mapped our collective top strengths, according to the StrengthsFinder results. This was then referenced to determine the most optimal pair partners and solo investigation persons regarding our current backlog stories. We would match people based on different strengths to be sure we had the most well-rounded point of view approaching a problem as possible. For example, if we needed to investigate possible features to incorporate in our software, we'd maybe assign a futurist & strategic strength persons to the story, to determine where a feature could take us in the coming months.

My Thoughts

Overall I tend to agree that the results of the survey aligned with my personality traits. I was most surprised to see empathy as my number one strength. After reading further into it, I do agree that I possess these traits, but had difficulty seeing it as a strength within the workplace.

I was most pleased to see adaptability and intellection traits so high, as they align more with my self perception and personal goals.

Who else has taken the survey? What were your results? Let's chat below.