Strengths Categories & Descriptions

The last few weeks I have had the chance to introduce Gallup’s StrengthsFinder to my new friends at Gateway Church here in Austin along with some of their friends. I’ve always enjoyed sharing the categories of the themes since they were part of my original training but no longer included in Gallup’s books on the subject – that is until now.

In Strengths-Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow, Tom Rath and Barry Conchie break down the 34 strengths in the following categories:

Executing Themes (also known as striving or motivating themes, “working harder”):

• Achiever: self-starter; competes with self
• Arranger: able to juggle many variables at once
• Belief: unchangeable core values which guide
• Consistency (Fairness): clear rules; consistent treatment of others
• Deliberative (Cautiousness): serious care in making decisions
• Discipline: creates structure, order, routine; breaks long term goals into small do-able goals
• Focus: able to block out anything not connected to their goal
• Responsibility: dependable, sense of duty, “yes” means “yes”
• Restorative: likes to fix relationships and situations, comes up with solutions to problems

Influencing Themes (impacting people):

• Activator: gets ideas done; bias for action in face of ambiguity
• Command: challenge and confront, persuasion and presence
• Communication: effective at putting thoughts into words
• Competition: driven to win; measures progress by others’ performance
• Maximizer (Varsity): capitalize on strengths & see how things should be orchestrated
• Self-Assurance (Self-Efficacy): confidence in abilities and judgments, bounce back
• Significance (Desire): seeks recognition, “I’ve got to make a difference”
• Woo: love challenge of “winning others over” and networking

Relationship Building (assisting people):

• Adaptability (Flow): spontaneous; flexible; focused on the present
• Connectedness (Spirituality): sees a reason and link between everything
• Developer: multiplier of human potential, sees even little progress
• Empathy: able to “get inside someone’s skin” and feel their emotion or pain
• Harmony (Agreeableness):  seeks common ground and consensus and work to resolve conflict
• Includer (Inclusiveness):  awareness of those on the outside and brings them in
• Individualization (Individualized Perception):  see people as individuals rather than stereotypes
• Positivity (Stimulator):  spots lowly and encourages; contagious enthusiasm
• Relator: gets to know people at a deeper level

Strategic Thinking Themes (“working smarter”):

• Analytical: able to see problems, delay action to gather more facts
• Context (Past): passion for understanding history and how to learn from the past
• Futuristic: passion for creating the future
• Ideation: brainstormers, able to come up with lots of ideas
• Input: collectors of ideas and information
• Intellection: processors and thinkers
• Learner: continuous improvement desired through new information
• Strategic: creates a step-by-step process from A to Z

Above I have included some of the original names for the strengths in parentheses plus a short description I’ve used in my introductions.

What are your strengths? How can you maximize your strengths and the strengths of others?