In The Talent Code, David Coyle explores how talents are created and nurtured throughout life.
He first demonstrates that talent is a consequence of deep practice, is ignited and occurs in mysterious places and at different moment.
The Deep Practice Process
People with talent take time to practice, have a great deal of concentration and focus.
They counterintuitively practice failure to make themselves successful later on. This is what David Coyle calls deep practice.
Deep practice is to talent what a whetstone is to a knife. It sharpens a natural ability and converts failed situations into learning experiences.
That is why, gifted people are found in hot beds where events seem accelerated and fluid.
On the outside looking in, gifted people look strange.
To go further into the deep practice process, break a skill into small components, learn them, learn their variants, search for their potential errors, gradually correct these components.
In addition, studies have shown that making mistakes, correcting them, deep practicing and working through failure force us to function at the edge of our abilities and talents, allow us to improve our resilience and our ability to learn.
Talents develop a strategy to building up a skill so that they can accurately measure their progress, sense mistakes before they occur, adapt their strategy in case of failure, customize it to different situations, avoid blaming their success on luck.
Afterwards, in a unchallenging situation, a small effort will produce big results and will guide you towards your talent sweet spot.
The Importance Of Myelin
According to Daniel Coyle and to early reasearch, the learning process in talented people starts in our brain with myelin.
Myelin is a microscopic substance in the brain, insulating neural circuits, strengthening and regulating neurological signals, that decreases with age, that drives our perception of the world, that increases our ability to learn, to talk to read and to communicate.
Furthermore, myelin creates habits that they can only be removed by creating another one. It follows the same rules universally and doesn’t grow without a conscience action on our behalf.
Needless to say, by deep practicing, we build higher and automatic skills, we train our neurological signals to borrow a specific path and to increase the quantity of myelin in our brain.
How to rewire our brain while being cognizant of myelin
Theses studies are still in the early ages. However, deep practicing, repeating an action, watching talented, skilled people allows us to imitate them, to rewire our brain.
According to Ericsson’s research, to optimize the level of myelin in your brain, it is detrimental to practise daily between 3 to 5 hours.
The Ignition Process
According to Daniel Coyle, talents come from more than genes and environment. Deep practice, not enjoyable at first, is the first step to developing talent and requires time, commitment, energy and passion.
The second step is understanding and implementing the ignition process which allows us to create and sustain motivation.
Ignition operates through emotion and visualization of the future, sparks intense unconscious response and accelerates progress.
Moreover, this process does not follow basic and regular rules. The ignition process is triggered by certain signals or primal cues, by a lack of safety, by education, by exposure to a different environment and to aspirational figures.
It is also triggered by words, motivational and inspirational language, by high value messages, by praises and affirmations.
To get people motivated, it is important to “speak to the ground-level effort, affirming the struggle”, to congratulate them on their hard work.
To sustain the ignition process, one must have self-discipline, understand their priorities and be accountable for their errors.
Identifying and Igniting talent in others
Talent coaches are viewed as great leaders and teachers because ignite our talent and using our talents can change our lives and those of others around us. Talent coaches:
Are people who were talented but unsuccessful but who have taken the time out to identify the reasons why.
Are generally quite and reserved.
Are warm and empathetic.
Listen more than they speak.
Offer short targeted advice instead of motivational and inspirational speeches.
Are committed to and are sensitive to their students, to the people that they coach. For example, they customize their messages to their students.
Are sharp and capture every information regarding their student.
Pay attention to details, rehearse the words that they will potentially use.
Measure their voice, control their body language.
Live by their values and principles.
Breaks down their message in “chunks” and understand the importance of deep practice.
Have an ability to locate the strengths, the sweet spots of an individual and to pull them out their shell and out of their comfort zone.
It is clear to say that the spotlight is rarely shun upon the coach, that teaching and leading is a skill on its own and the best coaches spend decades nurturing their coaching skills.
To help young talented people to build their skills, it is important to seek out someone talented but who doesn’t seem like it, someone who is wise, who doesn’t engage in small talk, who doesn’t necessarily have diplomas or graduated from summa cum laude from a top-notch school.
Review
In The Talent Code, David Coyle is an easy to read book that ambitiously identifies the origin of talent in individuals. He gives an interesting spin on how talent is created—not born— and nurtured.
To prepare for his book, David Coyle had to travel for research, had to interview scientists, coaches and teachers and to visit talent hotbeds. The Talent Code is extremely useful to people who are shy, introverted, who lack motivation and the fire necessary to pursue their gift, who seek to coach and lead and who seek a strategy to build strong skills.
It is also detrimental in the music industry, in business, in corporate , in the education and sport fields. Furthermore, after reading this book, I have a greater respect for people with talent but also for people who are able to nurture talent in others.
Favorite quote(s)
The conventional way to explain this kind of concentrated talent is to attribute it to a combination of genes and environment, a.k.a. nature and nurture.
Organizations often face challenges that cannot be handle the traditional way.
Leaders quickly realize that creativity is the skill that will remove challenges, increase the success rate and will optimistically carry their organization into the future.
Wondering how to boost your creativity?
What is creativity?
Creativity doesn’t belong to the select few.
Creativity is the process of producing something out of nothing, of combining older ideas, of bringing imagination and ideas into reality.
Creativity is harder than we think but plays an important role in job satisfaction. There are a few ways that you can boost your creativity.
1. Take time off to restore yourself
Restoring yourself means that you know who you are and that you understand that society can erode your authentic self. Taking time off will help you to:
Get out of your boring routine.
Let your imagination run wild.
Practice meditation, sleep and rest your mind.
Prepare yourself for your next move.
Exercise. Exercising will help you clear your mind and energize you.
Put some distance between your personal project and your thoughts.
Organize your day and work at hours where your creativity is the highest.
Enjoy solitude. Solitude allows introspection and introspection triggers creativity.
2. Change your habits
It is good to change your way of doing things from time to time. In order to renew your though pattern:
Go somewhere or try something new.
Try things without fear or shame.
Say yes to different opportunities more often.
Expose yourself to things that inspire you and gain more experience.
Build up new good habits. Building new habits will allow your body to go on autopilot while your mind is free to wander.
For leaders to become original, they would have to know what has already been created.
Read books, listen to music, watch shows that will inspire you and that do not necessarily pertain to your are of interest.
Learn new skills. Learning new skills will give you the opportunity to explore.
Remove fear or other negative emotions that may block your thinking process.
7. Write down whatever comes to your mind
Ideas come to you at impromptu moments. It becomes handy to keep a notebook with you at all times so you can write them down as soon as possible.
To jumpstart your imagination, you can try brainstorming techniques or stare at a blank canvas as long as you need it. Blank canvas can be intimidating because there is an unlimited amount of outcomes.
When you are writing down your ideas, remember that there are no good or bad idea, just an unlimited number of ideas.
8. Monitor your surroundings
To get inspiration, you must surround yourself with creative people or with people from different backgrounds who hold different opinions.
You can also sit in public and observe the movement of people.
Last Words Of Advice!
It is one thing to be creative and another to maintain the creative process. You must learn yourself well and stay confident in your ability to create.
To maintain your creativity, first share your vision and ideas across your organization. Then, encourage others to come to you with ideas.
Is your organization doing enough to increase the creativity within the company?
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
In The Talent Code, David Coyle explores how talents are created and nurtured throughout life. He first demonstrates that talent is a consequence of deep practice, is ignited and occurs in mysterious places and at different moment.
The Deep Practice Process
People with talent take time to practice, have a great deal of concentration and focus. They counterintuitively practice failure to make themselves successful later on. This is what David Coyle calls deep practice.
Deep practice is to talent what a whetstone is to a knife. It sharpens a natural ability and converts failed situations into learning experiences. That is why, gifted people are found in hot beds where events seem accelerated and fluid. On the outside looking in, gifted people look strange.
To go further into the deep practice process, break a skill into small components, learn them, learn their variants, search for their potential errors, gradually correct these components.
In addition, studies have shown that making mistakes, correcting them, deep practicing and working through failure force us to function at the edge of our abilities and talents, allow us to improve our resilience and our ability to learn.
Talents develop a strategy to building up a skill so that they can accurately measure their progress, sense mistakes before they occur, adapt their strategy in case of failure, customize it to different situations, avoid blaming their success on luck.
Afterwards, in a unchallenging situation, a small effort will produce big results and will guide you towards your talent sweet spot.
The Importance Of Myelin
According to Daniel Coyle and to early reasearch, the learning process in talented people starts in our brain with myelin. Myelin is a microscopic substance in the brain, insulating neural circuits, strengthening and regulating neurological signals, that decreases with age, that drives our perception of the world, that increases our ability to learn, to talk to read and to communicate.
Furthermore, myelin creates habits that they can only be removed by creating another one. It follows the same rules universally and doesn’t grow without a conscience action on our behalf.
Needless to say, by deep practicing, we build higher and automatic skills, we train our neurological signals to borrow a specific path and to increase the quantity of myelin in our brain.
How to rewire our brain while being cognizant of myelin
Theses studies are still in the early ages. However, deep practicing, repeating an action, watching talented, skilled people allows us to imitate them, to rewire our brain.
According to Ericsson’s research, to optimize the level of myelin in your brain, it is detrimental to practise daily between 3 to 5 hours.
The Ignition Process
According to Daniel Coyle, talents come from more than genes and environment. Deep practice, not enjoyable at first, is the first step to developing talent and requires time, commitment, energy and passion.
The second step is understanding and implementing the ignition process which allows us to create and sustain motivation. Ignition operates through emotion and visualization of the future, sparks intense unconscious response and accelerates progress.
Moreover, this process does not follow basic and regular rules. The ignition process is triggered by certain signals or primal cues, by a lack of safety, by education, by exposure to a different environment and to aspirational figures. It is also triggered by words, motivational and inspirational language, by high value messages, by praises and affirmations.
To get people motivated, it is important to “speak to the ground-level effort, affirming the struggle”, to congratulate them on their hard work. To sustain the ignition process, one must have self-discipline, understand their priorities and be accountable for their errors.
Identifying and Igniting talent in others
Talent coaches are viewed as great leaders and teachers because ignite our talent and using our talents can change our lives and those of others around us. Talent coaches:
Are people who were talented but unsuccessful but who have taken the time out to identify the reasons why.
Are generally quite and reserved.
Are warm and empathetic.
Listen more than they speak.
Offer short targeted advice instead of motivational and inspirational speeches.
Are committed to and are sensitive to their students, to the people that they coach. For example, they customize their messages to their students.
Are sharp and capture every information regarding their student.
Pay attention to details, rehearse the words that they will potentially use.
Measure their voice, control their body language.
Live by their values and principles.
Breaks down their message in “chunks” and understand the importance of deep practice.
Have an ability to locate the strengths, the sweet spots of an individual and to pull them out their shell and out of their comfort zone.
It is clear to say that the spotlight is rarely shun upon the coach, that teaching and leading is a skill on its own and the best coaches spend decades nurturing their coaching skills.
To help young talented people to build their skills, it is important to seek out someone talented but who doesn’t seem like it, someone who is wise, who doesn’t engage in small talk, who doesn’t necessarily have diplomas or graduated from summa cum laude from a top-notch school.
Review
In The Talent Code, David Coyle is an easy to read book that ambitiously identifies the origin of talent in individuals. He gives an interesting spin on how talent is created—not born— and nurtured. To prepare for his book, David Coyle had to travel for research, had to interview scientists, coaches and teachers and to visit talent hotbeds.
The Talent Code is extremely useful to people who are shy, introverted, who lack motivation and the fire necessary to pursue their gift, who seek to coach and lead and who seek a strategy to build strong skills.
It is also detrimental in the music industry, in business, in corporate , in the education and sport fields. Furthermore, after reading this book, I have a greater respect for people with talent but also for people who are able to nurture talent in others.
Favorite quote(s)
The conventional way to explain this kind of concentrated talent is to attribute it to a combination of genes and environment, a.k.a. nature and nurture.
Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. (1924-2003) was a chairman of Gallup, was named the Father of Strengths-Based Psychology by the American Psychological Association. Donald O. Clifton is also the author of How Full is Your Bucket?.
In StandOut 2.0: assess your strengths, find your edge, win at work, Marcus Buckingham stresses the fact that everybody has a “genius” — a particular combination of strengths — that is innate but that is difficult to find out, to control and to employ. Our genius comes so naturally to us that it becomes the norm, the standard of behavior for everyone.
Furthermore, it is difficult to acknowledge our abilities and how unique we are. Society will not tell you your strengths but will deter you from being confident or different and will encourage you to fit the mould.
In that event, Gallup Inc’s StrengthsFinder has defined 34 “themes of talents” to help an individual evaluate their strengths and styles. Though there is an infinite amount of strengths and personality traits, Marcus Buckingham noticed recurring patterns within Gallup Inc’s 34 themes of talents. He then combined those 34 themes of talents and hundreds of other measurable themes into 9 powerful “Strength Roles” that will help you distinguish your strengths and take advantage of your edge. Each Strength Role can be assimilated to a “certain “personality,” a way of engaging with the world.”.
Below, are the 9 StandOut Strength Roles identified by Marcus Buckingham:
Advisor. You are a practical, concrete thinker who is at your most powerful when reacting to and solving other people’s problems.
Connector. You are a catalyst. Your power lies in your craving to bring two people together to make something bigger and better than it is now.
Creator. You make sense of the world, pulling it apart, seeing a better configuration, and creating it.
Equalizer. You are a level-headed person whose power comes from keeping the world in balance, ethically and practically.
Influencer. You engage people directly and convince them to act. Your power is your persuasion.
Pioneer. You see the world as a friendly place where, around every corner, good things will happen. Your power comes from your optimism in the face of uncertainty.
Provider. You sense other people’s feelings, and you feel compelled to recognize these feelings, give them a voice, and act on them.
Stimulator. You are the host of other people’s emotions. You feel responsible for them, for turning them around, for elevating them.
Teacher. You are thrilled by the potential you see in each person. Your power comes from learning how to unleash it.
The StandOut assessment test, taken online and associated to this book, is designed to measure your propensity to a Strength Role, by posing a series of questions and analyzing your impulsive or instinctive responses. The test poses thirty-four questions that are mostly built around hypothetical stressful situations in the workplace, that are clocked and that require top of the mind responses among a set of possible good and defendable responses. Additionally, the questions are embedded with trigger words that will unknowingly stimulate you, captivate you and incite you towards a specific answer.
The analysis of your responses, ranking your 9 strengths roles in order of importance, is delivered in a report. Through the StandOut assessment test, you can discover and study which two top Strength Roles that you are naturally leaning towards.
Knowing your strengths, how to use them, where to use them, how to describe yourself, the impacts of your strengths on your career, your team and your leadership styles, how to look out for your pitfalls, will definitely give you an edge over everyone else in the workplace.
After identifying and understanding your strengths, it is necessary to improve them, to best translate them in order to properly employ them. It is necessary to build them. Marcus Buckingham lays down three lessons to do so:
“Your genius is precise”. Stay in your strength zone and take advantage of it.
“Remember who you are”. Remember your Strength Roles, apply them daily and hold on tight to them when people tell you otherwise or things don’t go your way.
“Always sharpen your edge”. Better yourself within your strength zone.
Review
StandOut 2.0: assess your strengths, find your edge, win at work is a very instructive book. I vehemently suggest it to people who are looking to identify or fortify their strengths, to people who feel like they have taken the wrong career path and to people who are not yet blossoming in the career path they appreciate.
While reading StandOut 2.0, on account of me possessing a career advice blog, I believed that I related the most to the Strength Roles of Advisor and Creator. However, according to the Standout assessment test, I fit the two top Strength Roles of Pioneer and Equalizer. In disbelief, I committed myself to read the entire report, including the piece about the ideal career advice that I should follow.
Below are my strengths roles by order of importance:
It turns out that:
the StandOut assessment test is surprisingly accurate. The test report perfectly described my major personality traits. Throughout my education, training and career, I’ve been the one to jump on novelty and innovative projects.
the StandOut assessment test has provided me with a positive twist on what I thought where personality flaws.
the StandOut assessment test suggested career paths that I have already taken and am currently positioned at. It has equally confirmed to me that I am in the right career path but I stayed in the wrong workplace for the longest, which I figured out a few months before taking this test.
In conclusion, the StandOut assessment test will surprise you not only by challenging the ideas you have of your strengths but also by the accuracy of the results.
Favorite quote(s)
the StandOut assessment calculates your two leading strength roles, pinpoints what you can do to channel them, and describes your particular power when these top-two roles combine.
We each have specific areas where we consistently stand out, where we can do things, see things, understand things, and learn things better and faster than ten thousand other people can. When we find ourselves in these areas—our strengths “zone,” if you will—we are magnificent. Self-assured and flushed with success, we imagine we can do just about anything that we turn our minds to.
When you take a job that you never should have taken, when your boss doesn’t understand you, when your company downsizes you, or when you start to question whether you have anything of value to offer, the memory of your strengths will hold you in place, reorient you, and show you the way forward.
StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath aims to help people, in a various number of roles and of environments, identify their talent to build their strength, improve their confidence, their sense of purpose, their health and their relationships.
Furthermore, Tom Rath claims, according to scientific research, that personality traits, skill sets, passions and interests inherited at a young age are still present in adulthood and need to be jump started and regularly exercised and be improved with knowledge and skills. Without exercise your natural talents, the muscle stays under developed.
In the workplace, for example, when strengths are not identified and not used, workers tend to lose their engagement and the devotion to their work, to suffer from anxiety or depression.
This is why, in StrengthsFinder 2.0, Tom Rath has identified 34 “themes of talents” to categorize the different set of skills discovered in the workforce. Knowing your strengths allows you to distinguish blind spots, to be more conscious of them and to understand the impacts of such strength, to “be aware of your potential and your limitations”.
What about weaknesses?
StrenghtsFinder 2.0 helps identify weaknesses or “areas of lesser talents” in certain occupations. Surely, knowing your weaknesses will enable you to work around them or totally avoid them, to know who yo work with that can complement your skills set.
StrengthsFinder 2.0 is associated to an online tests from Gallup Inc. Using its database of interviewees, the test assesses and analyzes the top 5 themes of talent among the 34 themes of talents.
34 themes of talent?
Below, a brief summary of each theme of talent and in which job to apply the given talent.
Achiever
Constant need for achieving something tangible every day in order to define success.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for jobs that allow you to work as hard as you want and gives you autonomy to measure your productivity.
Set challenging goals, create deadlines, measure progress.
Acknowledge success, personal and professional achievements before moving on to the next challenge.
Pursue your education by obtaining certificates, attending classes, conferences, etc…
Do not compromise on the quality of your work.
Activator
An impatience to take action and a decisiveness over the steps taken. Ability to learn from every stages crossed, every steps taken and every results obtained.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job that allows you to make and implement your own decisions.
Ask not to be judged on your process but on the outcomes of the process.
Help others transform innovative ideas and concepts into concrete action.
Create plans of actions to move blocked situations forward.
Expose yourself to challenging situations.
Earn your bosses, managers and team members trust first and give the reasons for your desire to take action.
Energize plans and people. Motivate them to take action as well.
Adaptability
A high responsiveness and reactivity to current situations as well as a flexibility in challenging situations.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where situations are constantly moving, unpredictable and unstructured.
Because you enjoy unpredictability, rolling with the punches, you remain calm, reassuring and collected in stressful circumstances.
Foster a reputation of being calm and reassuring during upsetting events.
Adjust your responsiveness to unanticipated events. However, on the job, because you are flexible to events, don’t compromise too much and don’t let people take advantage of you.
Analytical
A need to test other people’s theory and to make sure that it is flawless, an enjoyment for analysing data, connecting data and searching for patterns in them.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job that lets you theorize, analyze data and find patterns.
Rely on trustworthy sources of information
Find the proper settings to beneficially communicate your thoughts.
Explore ways to apply and implement your theory.
Arranger
A search for the most productive configuration possible and for the best way to do things. An impersonation of effective flexibility, an ease in dynamic situations and an excitement for complex multi-faceted projects.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where assignments are complex and events are concurrent.
Use your Arranger talents in team building and group organizing.
On your job, track your deadlines to reassure your boss or clients.
Avoid routines and static organizations.
Belief
A possession of core values that can be family oriented, altruistic or spiritual, ethics and a value for responsibility in yourself and others.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job that aligns with your values and that has both meaning and purpose.
Balance work demands and personal life.
Motivate others by sharing your values with them and learn to understand different systems of belief.
Command
A willingness to take charge, a comfort in imposing your view to others, in confrontation and directing.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where you can take the lead, persuade others, face intense and challenging situations and find a cause to defend in the face of resistance.
“Practise the words, the tone, and the techniques that will turn your ability to confront into real persuasiveness”.
Be candid to your colleagues on sensitive subjects.
As you are intimidating, ask for your colleagues’ opinion once in a while.
Communication
An incitement “to explain, to describe, to host, to speak in public, and to write”.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where you have to capture people attention, speak publicly and present a subject.
Practise your speeches, study your audience, refine the words you use and improve the message you convey.
Competition
A perpetual desire for competing and for winning.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where you can “measure your achievements”.
Select high achieving people in your organization to compete with.
Transform elementary tasks into competitive games.
Learn the reasons of your wins as much as the reasons of your loss.
Connectedness
A belief that you belong to something larger and an understanding that everyone is connected.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where you can “listen and counsel” and benefit from multicultural and multinational experiences.
Explain to your colleagues, their respective strengths and contribution to the team.
Consistency
A need for balance and impartially. A belief that everyone should be treated the same and should be held to the same rules, policies, procedures.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where you can uniformly be fair to all your colleagues, implement conscientious meritocracy and “enforce compliance to a set of standards”.
Define and apply the rules that you abide by.
Defend your beliefs even in the face of resistance.
Context
A need to look at the past to understand the present and the future, to make better decisions.
Tips for improvement
Apply for a job where you have to remember and remind people of what has happened before, where you can study cases from the past and map the future with them.
Help your coworkers to study and learn from past projects.
As you learn from the past, avoid living in it but seek out mentors to relate their history to you.
Deliberative
A need to assess risks and to weigh all implications before vigilantly going into the world that is a minefield.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where you can “advise and counsel” and take time to process a decision.
Observe your coworkers, help them consider the pros and the cons of their choices and temper their impulsive behavior.
Take heed of people pushing you to reveal too much of yourself. Conceal confidential information about yourself and detain your opinion until you get all the facts straight.
Developer
A need to jump-start a growth and learning process in promising individuals in order for them to experience success. An inner drive for mentorship.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job that allows you to further one’s advancement and to push one to success.
Avoid loosing causes and extreme cases where the individual “is consistently struggling in his or her role”.
Remind yourself of your own development. “Find a mentor or coach who can invest in you”.
Discipline
An urge for order, exactitude, perfectionism and predictability. A need for plans, timelines and deadlines.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job that demands structure and routine, with situations that need to be perfected, more effective and more time-saving.
“Accept that mistakes might depress you” and that “others may not be as disciplined as you are”.
Create well-organized spaces and deadlines in order to conveniently accomplish your task at hand.
Empathy
An ability to understand people’s emotions and acknowledge their point of view and perspectives.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where you serve others.
Help your colleagues understand their emotions, their reactions towards themselves and others, and help them prevent misconduct.
Recognize and support great achievements in the workplace.
Focus
A need for setting goals, priorities daily and an ability to filter out unwanted and unfitted information that doesn’t efficiently lead you toward your destination.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where you are autonomous, able to select projects that align with your mission.
Measure your progress toward your goal, set deadlines and follow through on schedule.
Help your team members set and recall goals.
Futuristic
A fascination for the future. A detailed, hopeful and inspiring vision of the future.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where you can share your futuristic ideas, your vision for an organization, for your career or someone else’s.
Spend time thinking about the future, find ways to concretely implement your ideas, to articulate them to a specific audience and to support them.
“Gain knowledge that will fuel your imagination”.
Harmony
A will to minimize conflicts, confrontations. A continual search for consensus, common ground. An ability to keep your peace in conflict, your opinion to yourself and to adjust your goals to a situation.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job that requires networking skills, dealing with different perspectives and coming up with an agreement in a non competitive and non confrontational workplace.
Ideation
A fascination for ideas and a constant search for the connections between them.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job that accredits your ideas.
Stimulate yourself constantly to avoid boredom by making small changes in the routine.
“Finish your thoughts and ideas before communicating them”. In addition, “learn to edit your own ideas”.
Identify the places, the people, the context that produce the most ideas.
Includer
A resolve to include, accept, involve everyone in a group, and make them feel included and equally important.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job “in which you can take responsibility for representing voices that are not usually heard”, in which you can interact with people and “bring together people of divers cultures and backgrounds”.
Excluders and elitists are distasteful and irking to you but learn to include them as well.
Individualization
An acute ability to observe, consider and appreciate the unique qualities, styles, motivation, thinking pattern of an individual.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job that requires noticing people unique qualities, understand and working with diversity, and that helps people realize and capitalize on their strengths.
Input
A desire to collect and store interesting information and objects in the hopes that some day they will serve a purpose.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job “in which you are charged with acquiring new information each day” and are able to become an expert.
Implement a database to efficiently store the acquired information.
Identify occasions to share you knowledge. Find ways to articulate and output the acquired information.
Intellection
An enthusiasm for introspection, for the thinking process, mostly done in solitude.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job in which you can pursue studies, engage in intellectual debates, challenge and evaluate people’s thinking, in which “you get involved in the front end of projects and initiatives, rather than jumping in at the execution stage”.
Take time to think and “follow an intellectual trail”.
Learner
An enticement for the learning process without seeking to become an expert or acquiring academic schedules.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job as a consultant, that requires “some form of technical competence” in a “field with constantly changing technologies or regulations”.
Understand and improve your learning process, and celebrate every milestone.
Regularly schedule and subscribe to learning programs at work or in your community.
Maximizer
A thrill for cultivating an existing strength into excellence.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job to help people succeed by focusing on their strengths.
Identify your own talents, cultivate them and find out how theory can lead to success by rubbing shoulders with successful people.
Come up with ways to measure your performances and those of other people.
Find ways to make your weaknesses irrelevant.
Positivity
An ability to see the best in every situation and inject drama in every situation. A contagious enthusiasm, optimism, energy and an excitement for life.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job where you are able to “highlight the positive” and encourage people.
Steer clear from cynics, negative people. “Spend time in highly positive environment that will invigorate and feed your optimism”.
Acknowledge challenges and use your positivity to get through them.
Relator
A comfort in intimacy, in building relationships. A willingness to trust and share feelings, goals, dreams, fears in order to deepen an existing relationship.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job in an informal organization.
Schedule social events with your colleagues to forge genuine bonds with them.
Responsibility
A duty to take “psychological ownership” for performing or completing a task, to be accountable for the success or failure of projects.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job in which determination and autonomy are needed, where .
Volunteer for more responsibility at work, asess your talents before handling a particular project and review your performance at the end of the project.
Learn to refuse opportunities before committing to them, by selecting the areas of opportunities that come your way.
Restorative
An enticement for solving complex problems, finding solutions, analyzing challenges and restoring a situation back to normal.
Tips for improvement:
Apply for a job in which you “solve problems or in which your success depends on your ability to restore and resolve” and your ability to turn failing situations around.
Communicate to your team members that you enjoy solving problems but learn how to let them solve their own problems.
Learn how to “anticipate and prevent problems before they occur”, how to identify and prevent existing patterns and reoccurring causes of a problem.
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Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. (1924-2003) was a chairman of Gallup, was named the Father of Strengths-Based Psychology by the American Psychological Association. Donald O. Clifton is also the author of 
In StandOut 2.0: assess your strengths, find your edge, win at work, 
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