Is StrengthsFinder A Personality Test?
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Strengths Focus For This Episode
In this episode Lisa answers the question, "Is StrengthsFinder a personality test?" She uses proof from both research data and real-life examples. She shows that StrengthsFinder is actually not a personality test, but instead a performance-based tool.
Resources of the Episode
You\'ll find lots of StrengthsFinder, leadership, and team tools on our Strengths Resources page.
To find proof points and stats that can help you make the case for focusing on Strengths at your organization, check out LeadThroughStrengths.com/stats.
Strengths Tools
One of the best ways leaders can build a strengths based culture is to offer appreciation of strengths in action. If you\'ll notice what works, you\'ll get more of what works because people can replicate what they\'ve already done well. On our home page, you can download this awesome tool that offers you 127 easy ideas for recognizing your team. Scroll down and look for the box that says "Great Managers Notice What Works".
Here\'s a Full Transcript of The Show
You\\u2019re listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you\\u2019ll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I\\u2019m your host, Lisa Cummings, and I\\u2019ve gotta tell ya: using your strengths at work is one of the most energizing things you can do for your workplace.
Today, the question is whether StrengthsFinder is a personality test. I get this question often. It comes in many forms. Usually, it comes from managers or strengths champions who are asking me a question because they were trying to get strengths to be implemented in a bigger way in their organization, and they got stymied.
It sounds something like this, \\u201cOh, no, not another personality test,\\u201d or they take it to get approved and they hear, \\u201cOh, we already had a personality test last year.\\u201d Or, somebody says something like, \\u201cI\\u2019m not sure I\\u2019m into these personality tests.\\u201d
What Is StrengthsFinder?
It surprises many people to learn that StrengthsFinder is actually not a personality test at all. So, if you\\u2019re making a case for rolling out StrengthsFinder or Strengths-focused culture tools, it is nice to know that it is something totally different. It\\u2019s actually a performance-based tool.
I\\u2019ll give you an explanation of how it\\u2019s different from the typical personality test. Then I\\u2019ll give you a proof point or two you can use in your workplace. I\'ll also offer you a way of thinking about this topic to explain the difference between what people do on the job, and how they get it done on the job.
I think this is an important thing to explore when you\\u2019re rolling out StrengthsFinder because some workplaces are really focused on the knowledge and skills someone needs to do the job \\u2013 that\\u2019s the what part \\u2013 but they don\\u2019t spend very much time focusing on how people can show up at their very best.
Focusing On Strengths Every Day Increases Productivity
Let\\u2019s start with a proof point. If you\\u2019re going to do an initiative like StrengthsFinder in your organization, you want proof points like Gallup\\u2019s research that shows teams that focus on Strengths every day have 12.5% greater productivity than those who don\\u2019t. And, at the end of the show, I\\u2019ll give you a bunch more of those, a place where you can find the proof points that are most relevant to your organization and to your situation.
Personality Tests (Assessments) Are Usually Based On The 5-Factor Model
On the personality test question, the thing I think is most important for you to understand is that most of these personality assessments that exist are actually based on the five-factor model that you can learn about when you study psychology. If you have industrial organizational psychologists in your organization, they\\u2019ll know all about the five-factor model.\\xa0Even if you\\u2019re not an I/O psychologist, you probably know about these because you\\u2019ve heard of DiSC, or Myers Briggs (MBTI), Insights, or Hogan. These are different assessments that are based on the five-factor model. Those 5 factors are things like Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. Most of those, although not all, throw out the Neuroticism category.
Your CliftonStrengths Are Your Areas Of Greatest Potential
How is this different from StrengthsFinder? The answer is in the study of performance excellence. StrengthsFinder researchers at Gallup studied performance for decades. They discovered Themes that people use to deliver their best performance.
In Gallup\\u2019s words, Talent Themes \\u201care the areas in which an individual has the greatest potential for building strength.\\u201d
There are 34 of these Talent Themes. When you get your Clifton StrengthsFinder results, you\\u2019ll actually see that they\\u2019re actually called Talent Themes. To put it in layman\\u2019s terms, think of them like easy buttons...easy buttons that people use to approach their goals.
The "What" Part: Knowledge, Skills, Experience
For example, say you lead a marketing department. There\\u2019s what you do and then there\\u2019s how you do it. In the \\u201cwhat\\u201d category, you have things like knowledge and skills and past experiences. Inside of a greater marketing department you have high-level knowledge and skill areas: things like marketing communication, product marketing, demand generation, pricing, etc. Of course, each area can go really deep into sub-level skills.
If you take something like a creative team inside of marketing, they\\u2019re going to have really specific knowledge and skill areas: graphic design, color, Adobe InDesign, buyer psychology, all sorts of layers like that.
In those \\u201cwhat\\u201d categories (like the ones mentioned above), people are pretty good at understanding what they need to know. Those are easy enough to identify. You can tell when they are present or when they\\u2019re not. And you can figure out how to go get those knowledge and skill areas.
The "How" Part: Your Talents - How You Naturally Think, Feel, And Act
The trickier part is \\u201chow\\u201d every unique human being approaches that job at their very best. This is why, of course, we\\u2019re humans and not robots, so we\\u2019re a little more complicated. Each person can\\u2019t just approach the job in the exact same way and get the same results. As a manager, StrengthsFinder can help you tap into each person\\u2019s best performance because it tells you what their easy buttons are, or \\u201chow\\u201d they can uniquely get that job done at their best.
If you manage that same team of creative pros, you\\u2019ll see they\\u2019re reaching their best output when you can get it done through their talents. For example, someone who leads through the Futuristic Talent Theme will want to know where that specific marketing campaign is going to take the company and the customer so that they can align to that.
If you contrast that with somebody who has the Maximizer Talent, they\\u2019re on the same creative team and they have to get the same job done, but you may find that they\\u2019re totally focused on something else. They\\u2019re over there trying to reuse some video footage so that you can get more out of something that already exists. Or they\\u2019re off creating actions in your Adobe InDesign software to save time on repetitive tasks - to free them up to get more time in their creative headspace.
You can see that within this same job, you can have two people who are off in their own worlds doing very different things, but those very different things are the things that put them at their best. This is how your StrengthsFinder Talent Themes, once you know them, can really help you unleash their easy buttons to perform at your best. Of course, as a people manager, this is like magic once you learn each of these things about your team members, because you can understand how to put them in that environment to get them at their very best.
StrengthsFinder Is An Assessment Built On Performance and Potential
To bring this episode all together, StrengthsFinder, in fact, is not a personality test. It is an assessment that was built on the study of performance and potential. If you want to look up, specifically for you and your organization, proof points that will be most supportive of the objectives you have in your organization, check out LeadThroughStrengths.com/stats.\\xa0You\\u2019ll see a page that has dozens of proof points and stats that can help you make the case for this in your organization.
A final note, if you\\u2019re listening as a people manager or a strengths champion, one of the reasons I think it\\u2019s important to answer this question about personality test is that I also see, when people take personality tests or surveys or assessments, (whatever you choose to call them), on the receiving end of them, your employees are often guarded about the conversations that follow.
They are nervous that you\\u2019re going to come up with labels for them. They might have had some experiences in the past where they\\u2019ve been put into a box about how they are, or who they are as people.
Depending on who you have on your team, you might have to do some work in explaining how StrengthsFinder is framed: that it is focused on those areas of their greatest potential. Usually they see it very quickly and they\\u2019re super psyched because you\\u2019re talking about what makes them great.
When I do StrengthsFinder training programs, I don\\u2019t find many resistors to the process (like I did when I facilitated programs based on personality assessments). It\\u2019s one reason why I love StrengthsFinder so much. But coming into it, many people don\\u2019t know this, and they don\\u2019t know how it is all going to be framed up or applied on the job.
Depending on how they\\u2019ve been used in your organization in the past, or if you sense that somebody is a little hesitant about all of this kind of stuff, it\\u2019s helpful to share how the point of going through the process with StrengthsFinder is to find their greatest area of potential so that you can unleash their strengths at work.
If you do this in a way that shows you, as a leader, are being supportive of them, and putting them at their best and that, in fact, when you\\u2019re using your strengths at work you feel more ease and energy and enjoyment on the job, most people pretty quickly go, \\u201cOkay. I\\u2019ll give this thing a chance.\\u201d
Luckily, in my experience, the hesitant people have been a very small slice of the population. I would say, anecdotally, more than 95% of people in any given room or organization come in pretty excited about the future when we do StrengthsFinder or Strengths-based process.
In fact, one guy recently said,
\\u201cOh, my gosh, that StrengthsFinder report was full of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me.\\u201d
I thought he summed up really well - people\\u2019s reaction to it when they first get exposed to StrengthsFinder, and how it can explain what puts you at your very best.
With that, I hope this helps you as you make the case to bring a Strengths-focused culture to your organization. From here, I hope you\\u2019ll take this information and use it to help people in your company claim their talents and share them with the world.
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