This is part five in a six-part series on my StrengthsFinder 2.0 results. In part one, I introduced the whole strengths and talents idea from Tom Rath’s book. He asserts that we develop strengths by investing study and practice into areas where we are already naturally talented. The book and online assessment help you identify your talents and some actions you can take to build on top of those talents.
The StrengthsFinder online assessment reports my Top 5 Talent Themes as:
- Intellection
- Adaptability
- Learner
- Analytical
- Connectedness
All right, now we’re getting to the one I keep hearing the most about. I’ve been described as analytical, and I’ve been accused of being analytical, and they’re not the same thing. Something that’s irked me in my professional life is how people will caution me not to make assumptions and then turn right around and urge me to accept their own assumptions. Here’s the first line from the Analytical full description and I like it: Your Analytical theme challenges other people: “Prove it. Show me why what you are claiming is true.” That’s a way of putting it that I hadn’t considered before, but it’s a good one. I don’t think it means not trusting people. In my own life, it’s more “trust, but verify” (to quote Ronald Reagan).
I like to ask questions, because I like to understand. I enjoy logic, I like arguments that build from point to point to point. The full description puts it this way: You do not necessarily want to destroy other people’s ideas, but you do insist that their theories be sound. Right! It’s not maliciousness, it’s just seeking first to understand.
What really got me as I read the full description the first time, and then especially after grappling with the next talent theme, Connectedness, were the references to searching for patterns and connections. It’s right there: Armed with these data, you search for patterns and connections. You want to understand how certain patterns affect one another. I think all my talent themes are unified by Connectedness, and Analytical plays into it beautifully. I really enjoy looking for patterns, searching for meaning in data, finding out how things affect each other long before they affect us.
Finally, the full description actually uses language that was very relevant to where I was professionally at the time I first took the test and got my results. You peel the layers back until, gradually, the root cause or causes are revealed. I think I even laughed aloud when I first read that. The term “root cause” in the context of Analytical is a term central to Problem Management – the analysis of incidents to find out what caused them and how to prevent them from causing more incidents in the future. I couldn’t believe how dead-on parts of my results were, like this one. I am very interested in methods of root cause analysis, trend analysis, and I’m considering a new career direction into Problem Management. So this passage really reached out and grabbed my attention.
Switching to the personalized description of the Analytical theme proved even more illuminating and inspiring, as usual. I found it was good on this theme to take both the full description and the personalized description together because they’re both so true. The very first two lines of the shared theme description, in fact, really struck home again. People who are especially talented in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They have the ability to think about all the factors that might affect a situation. I mean, seriously, that’s what I do.
What I read in these paragraphs struck me as a kind of defense of my natural analytical streak. As I mentioned, I’ve been accused of being analytical, maybe too analytical. I’ve had to be mindful most of my professional career not to get stuck in ‘analysis paralysis’. I’m not naturally action-biased, but never leaving the analysis of something is ultimately frustrating because nothing ever happens without action, and thinking about something never does anybody any good if no actions are ever taken after the thinking gets done.
The next specific statement that caused me to stop and think was this one: Because of your strengths, you may be aware of some of the elements impacting a group of people, a project, a process, a deal, or a proposal. It’s not just I’m “aware of some of the elements” but that I like to make myself aware of elements in the work before me, and of their meaning. That is analysis, and I’ve been warned by some coworkers not to “over-think” something (which is easy for them to say). I decided after reading all of this stuff that from now on, so long as I make sure to turn analysis into action, I’m not going to allow anyone to treat my analytical tendencies as a liability. So long as my boss and others believe in this whole StrengthsFinder business, then they have to take my results seriously. And that means if being analytical can be a strength, then get off my back when I analyze something.
If you’ve taken the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment and want to share your results or discuss anything I’ve written here, leave a comment or contact me via email. If you’ve just got questions about any of this, feel free to contact me, too—I love to hear from readers and I love to share thoughts about this topic.
photo credits:
“the worlds greatest detective” by practicalowl
“chart” by paul worthington
