“I did my Strength Finder last year and I am Empathy. I am soooo Empathy!”
“Everyone told me they knew what my strengths were and it was so obvious to them when I showed them my answers!”
Then my dad, bless that man, told me he is a Yellow Personality and that the people he meshes best with are Green. Or something like that. Then I was talking with a fellow coach who works with these super-high-up-there VPs and such and she was telling me how her clients are so excited for their DiSK Assessments and it helps them know how to manage people better. Then someone asked me if I am ENFJ on the Myers-Briggs’ Type Indicator (since I love to be all harmonious with people and stuff). Um, what?
Look, I love an online test as much as the next coach but YOU ARE NOT YOUR PROFILE! Yes, my strengths are precisely me and lead me to do what I do, but they do not define me. “Connector” is not one of my top 5 strengths so does that mean I’m not into connecting people and movin’ and groovin’? Absofreakinlutelynot!
Tests are tools to know where you stand. In grade school I took Alegbra tests and got Cs. That told me I needed to study Algebra more. Did it tell me that I suck at math and should never try to be good at it? Nope (though I had this big story that someone did say that to me, but that’s for another time). So you find out where you stand, decide what you want to take away from it, and get into action. I chose to take the Strength Finder test, find out my top strengths, and build a career around living into those. But the results don’t define me. A friend of mine is paying the extra bucks to see what her bottom strengths are so she can find out if those are something she continues to strive for and continues to be frustrated by (now she can have the “why” behind the struggle!)
You are a human being – one who is in existence in this world. So you can go all assessment on me or just get real. And, I’ll tell ya, real is the stuff the BEING is made of.
