Discovering my strengths

Monday, November 08, 2010

Discovering my strengths

I absolutely love personality quizzes. In college, I did the What Color is your Parachute quiz. It told me that a large percentage of people like myself become members of the clergy. Now, I happen to be agnostic (bordering on atheist), but if you think about it, this is actually pretty accurate. If you subtract the whole religion part of the equation, I'd be an AWESOME clergy-person. I love speaking in public. I love giving advice and listening to problems. It's a great fit.

Two years ago at work, I took the Myers Briggs test, and discovered I was an ENFP:

I am energizing, loud, easily excited, enthusiastic, casual, social, emotional, passionate, prone to overextending and procrastination. My team should know that I might overlook details and I'm most effective in the start-up of a project (vs. the implementation).

Myers Briggs is fun and the above is certainly accurate, but two years later, I don't know that I actually have benefitted from the insights. So, when they announced at work that we'd all be doing the Gallup Strengths Finder 2.0, I was excited for the quiz element, but a bit skeptical as to whether it would affect my day to day.

I have to say, this quiz was incredibly accurate, and the half-day training we did at work to accompany it was really enlightening as well. We also did a crazy Amazing Race competition, and I am pleased to report that my team won (by a LOT).We had all sorts of nutty assignments for the race, including one that led to this stunning photograph: