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#1021081 08/09/02 09:45 AM
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I've always found any tests or books or insights that can help me to figure out who I am and why, extremely interesting.

I took the Kiersey personality test and that was pretty right on. My counselor had recommended this book to me, "Now, discover your strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. She said it was a business tool, but also really good at showing you inside yourself. The purpose is to give you your 5 greatest strengths. I finally got around to reading the book and taking the test (it's an online test at strengthsfinder.com and you have to use a code that's stamped in each book to take it). I read the results to hubby last night...he said, YUP, that's YOU!!

There are 34 "themes" of strengths. These are my top 5:

COMMUNICATION

You like to explain, to describe, to host, to speak in public, and to write. This is your Communication theme at work. Ideas are a dry beginning. Events are static. You feel a need to bring them to life, to energize them, to make them exciting and vivid. And so you turn events into stories and practice telling them. You take the dry idea and enliven it with images and examples and metaphors. You believe that most people have a very short attention span. They are bombarded by information, but very little of it survives. You want your information-whether an idea, an event, a product's features and benefits, a discovery, or a lesson-to survive. You want to divert their attention toward you and then capture it, lock it in. This is what drives your hunt for the perfect phrase. This is what draws you toward dramatic words and powerful word combinations. This is why people like to listen to you. Your word pictures pique their interest, sharpen their world, and inspire them to act.

INDIVIDUALIZATION

Your Individualization theme leads you to be intrigued by the unique qualities of each person. You are impatient with generalizations or "types" because you don't want to obscure what is special and distinct about each person. Instead, you focus on the differences between individuals. You instinctively observe each person's style, each person's motivation, how each thinks, and how each builds relationships. You hear the one-of-a-kind stories in each person's life. This theme explains why you pick your friends just the right birthday gift, why you know that one person prefers praise in public and another detests it, and why you tailor your teaching style to accommodate one person's need to be shown and another's desire to "figure it out as I go." Because you are such a keen observer of other people's strengths, you can draw out the best in each person. This Individualization theme also helps you build productive teams. While some search around for the perfect team "structure" or "process," you know instinctively that the secret to great teams is casting by individual strengths so that everyone can do a lot of what they do well.

WOO

Woo stands for winning others over. You enjoy the challenge of meeting new people and getting them to like you. Strangers are rarely intimidating to you. On the contrary, strangers can be energizing. You are drawn to them. You want to learn their names, ask them questions, and find some area of common interest so that you can strike up a conversation and build rapport. Some people shy away from starting up conversations because they worry about running out of things to say. You don't. Not only are you rarely at a loss for words; you actually enjoy initiating with strangers because you derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection. Once that connection is made, you are quite happy to wrap it up and move on. There are new people to meet, new rooms to work, new crowds to mingle in. In your world there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet-lots of them.

POSITIVITY

You are generous with praise, quick to smile, and always on the lookout for the positive in the situation. Some call you lighthearted. Others just wish that their glass were as full as yours seems to be. But either way, people want to be around you. Their world looks better around you because your enthusiasm is contagious. Lacking your energy and optimism, some find their world drab with repetition or, worse, heavy with pressure. You seem to find a way to lighten their spirit. You inject drama into every project. You celebrate every achievement. You find ways to make everything more exciting and more vital. Some cynics may reject your energy, but you are rarely dragged down. Your Positivity won't allow it. Somehow you can't quite escape your conviction that it is good to be alive, that work can be fun, and that no matter what the setbacks, one must never lose one's sense of humor.

INPUT

You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information-words, facts, books, and quotations-or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity. If you read a great deal, it is not necessarily to refine your theories but, rather, to add more information to your archives. If you like to travel, it is because each new location offers novel artifacts and facts. These can be acquired and then stored away. Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to say exactly when or why you might need them, but who knows when they might become useful? With all those possible uses in mind, you really don't feel comfortable throwing anything away. So you keep acquiring and compiling and filing stuff away. It's interesting. It keeps your mind fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will prove valuable.

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I'm curious, also, if anyone has any ideas what type of work would utilize these themes? The book suggest simply using your strengths in ANY job to better enjoy and excel at what you do...but I'm not enjoying what I do much since it doesn't use many of the things listed.

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Have you ever though of high-level sales of intangibles/services?

Sounds like you'd be great at that!

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What are intangibles?

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I think intangibles, from what I'm finding, deals mostly with information. I do like that, but I enjoy working with people far more. That's part of the problem with my current job as a technician. I don't always get the one on one interaction I enjoy because I'm always under the desk working on the hardware! (At the local hospital they liked my idea of putting my company name on the back of my pants, instead of a t-shirt...because that's the side they say they always see of me!!!)

How about Job Placement services? Or journalism? Or counseling services? Chamber of commerce "meet, greet and inform" type thing?

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Sounds like you would do great in SALES. Find a product you like or would enjoy learning about and look for a job trying to sell that product. Every industry needs someone to sell them, so it really does not even have to be a product, but a product is much easier to define and sell. That way you could concentrate more on the interpersonal relationships instead of trying to define what it is you are selling.


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