Finding Your Strengths is Not Enough

There are a slew of tools for evaluating yourself or your business, but if you don’t take an extra step to look beyond the first set of answers, then your analysis could be incomplete.

Strengths: Yours and Theirs

For example, I took the StrengthsFinder 2.0 test and found a great deal of focus in my results. I immediately recognized myself in Intellection, Learner, and Input. I’m still thinking through how Consistency is a strength, although I see the tendencies in myself. I was inspired to revisit my career goals by the inclusion of Strategic. But I gained just as much by reading about the rest of the strengths as I did from determining my own.

One strength that I just don’t have is Developer. Developers are people who consistently see potential in others and deliberately seek to develop that potential into something more. I can do that when it is part of my responsibilities, but I don’t look at the world that way. It doesn’t influence my daily activities or my dreams.

By reading deeper into the other potential answers to the tool I gained insight on what strengths I might want in a partner or team for a variety of different projects. If I was in a management position, I might want to make sure I developed a connection with someone who has Developer, or a similar strength, such as Maximizer.

Problem Solving Next Steps

The idea of looking for additional context can also apply to tools such as SWOT, which is more often used in business situations than in personal ones. The tool itself builds in the necessity to look externally, at opportunities and threats, as well as internally, at strengths and weaknesses. But what can you learn if you take a step outside of the answers you come up with.

Is somthing that’s not a strength not necessarily a weakness? Is it something a competitor has that doesn’t seem to be a threat but is just different? How would someone else in a different type of profession, such as the finance gal vs. the sales guy, have assessed the situation? Are there “standard” answers in examples of others’s attempts that you didn’t come up with? Why didn’t they apply?

Look Outward From First Answers

Analysis tools are valuable because they focus and guide your thinking. They can also be taken a step further by using the answers you find with them as a launching point to take another look at the larger picture from a new perspective. Have you ever pushed a tool beyond it’s obvious use?