the most common mistake that people make when it comes to their clifton strengths or strengthsfinder results is that they think that the assessment gives them their strengths they look at their results and they see words like achiever or strategic restorative and woo and they think well those must be my strengths and it totally makes sense with words like clifton strengths and strengthsfinder it makes sense that you would think well this tool has found my strengths but that's not quite right so what i want to do is i want to talk about four things number one where does this come from number two a different way to think about it which is why i'm in my kitchen number three some examples of talents and strengths and four why it should matter to you in developing the clifton strengths assessment gallup went through decades of interviews and research and they identified thousands of individual talents but that was way too much so what they did was they categorized these talents into 34 groupings of talent themes so when you look at your results what it's telling you is what are your predominant talent themes and what gallup says is to end with a strength you start with a talent so those talent themes are going to be clues that lead you to your strengths in layman's terms a strength is something that you do well consistently and energizes you in the process notice i didn't say something you do well consistently it's possible there are things that you're doing well that don't necessarily energize you or fuel you while you're doing it that could just be performance what gallup is looking for is your strength those things you do well consistently and energize you so you're going to want to keep growing in that direction if you're only looking at things that you do well but don't necessarily fuel you you'll eventually lose steam or be discouraged over time gallup defines talent as a naturally recurring pattern of thoughts feelings and behaviors that can be productively applied and because they're your naturally recurring patterns they're easy for you they're you feel energized when you do it and you want to do more of it you want to learn more you want to grow more in that direction i'm sure you can easily see why gallup says that to end with a strength you start with a talent think of a talent as raw material for a strength so in this case let's take an egg right an egg we'll look at it as an ingredient raw material to do something a strength would be what you do well with this egg it could be a recipe right so when we think of eggs what can we do with eggs well we could do fried eggs boiled eggs poached eggs scrambled eggs right so we think of it and we're like how do we use this right but what if we take it a step further and we start combining this raw ingredient with other ingredients right you take a talent theme take it further mix it with other talent themes which by the way is called theme dynamics right so when you're combining a talent theme with other ones what if you mix that egg that ingredient with other ingredients what else can you do well you can make an omelet you can make fried rice uh what if we think like a chef or a baker right so now we're starting to make other things right can can we start making cookies or cakes custard meringue some sort of pastries desserts what about other things such as mayonnaise or even dough for pastas right you know when we think about things like that we're not necessarily seeing the egg in its whole right we don't even recognize that it's in there but it's an ingredient that's being used to create these recipes and these examples that i'm using of using raw material to make something else right now we've only been talking about recipes right so if those recipes were strengths what if we go beyond using the yolk or the egg white what if we're using the egg shell or the whole egg what if we use that egg for decorative purposes right whether we decorate it paint it using it for non-food related items at all other uses for the shell or other parts of the egg that i've heard of is either fertilizer or maybe a face mask or even leave-in conditioner what about other possibilities that i haven't even heard of that you're probably thinking about as you watch this video the idea that i want to convey to you is that talent and thus talent themes and what you're seeing in your reports is only the beginning it's describing something the question is how do you express it how do you use it in your life and how do you turn that and use them as strengths let's look at some examples of talents and strengths so if we look at the talent theme empathy people that are especially talented at the empathy talent theme can sense other people's feelings whether by imagining their lives or scenarios in their lives so what are some strengths that somebody with the empathy talent theme could have right maybe they are attentive listeners or they're good at consoling people who are going through a difficult situation maybe they're conscientious caregivers right so on the surface kind of like the obvious what can i do with the egg what can i do with empathy the examples we're giving are pretty obviously empathetic but what if we go to a little deeper to examples that aren't so obvious what if somebody uses empathy to make themselves a relentless investigator right so what i'm thinking is somebody who's using empathy to drive their focus and their determination in trying to either solve a problem or coming up with a solution so i'm thinking like a detective maybe they're empathizing with somebody that they consider a victim and they're trying to get to the bottom of a case or a doctor or a nurse right that they are empathizing with their patient and that's what drives them to be so focused as to coming up for the right remedy for their patient so sometimes that talent again could be raw material as to the motivation behind something what about a completely different talent theme like ideation people that are especially talented in the ideation talent theme are fascinated by ideas they're especially adept at finding connections in things that seem like disparate phenomena so again just looking at the surface maybe somebody with ideation is great at brainstorming or maybe they're really adept at identifying untapped resources maybe they're considered to be very innovative or risk takers right they're willing to take chances on ideas that other people never even considered again those are looking at examples of how somebody can use ideation on the surface but what if we dig a little deeper something that's not as obvious what if somebody uses ideation to be an inspiring speaker what if they're able to inspire others by talking about ideas that others never even considered right introducing new possibilities and giving other people inspiration for hope so there are three major points that i want to stress when it comes to your talents and your strengths the first is that when you look at your results and you find out your predominant talent themes those talent themes are your raw materials your raw ingredients that flavor how you do things right so sometimes you might look at a talent and you're looking for examples of strengths that are using that talent front and center sometimes it could be that you're mixing that talent in with others and maybe how you're using that talent isn't as obvious to you so you have to dig a little deeper but one of the things you would find is that talent is coloring how you do something number two your talent theme combination is rare and it could be that how you use them is so natural to who you are you either don't see it or you undervalue it but nobody else can see or do things the same way that you can it could be that you're doing the same activities as someone else but fundamentally you're approaching those activities in very different ways your power comes from your individuality and it may be that your different way of do doing something is what drives you to go further take something in a different direction and it's what's gonna lead you to your success different than anyone else and number three explore your talent themes to identify your strengths as i've mentioned several times before your results aren't your strengths they're your talent themes that are going to point you to your strengths and how you express those strengths is individual to you so it's possible that as you get your results there's somebody else that has the same talent themes as you but how you express them into strengths is completely individual to you two of you may be using empathy differently you may be using restorative differently so just because i have the same talent theme doesn't mean we're gonna have the same strengths and how we're using it is going to be expressed differently so you might wonder why does this matter well imagine your next big interview or a really significant discussion that's coming up and you need to differentiate yourself from others around you there's a big difference between saying i'm a problem solver versus i'm a problem solver because i really focus on the details and and you're able to describe the how or i'm good at problem solving because i'm able to bring people together from opposite groups and get them to come together and work constructively right so you're describing your problem solving in more of a relating way or maybe i'm a good problem solver because ideas are easy for me there's a big difference between saying i'm a problem solver or i'm a valuable problem solver because this is my approach this is how i do it differently maybe this is the thing you need i hope this video helped you identify the difference between your talents and your strengths if it did and you liked it do me a favor and go ahead and hit the like button and if you have any discoveries you want to share or maybe some questions about clifton strengths go ahead and leave me a comment below and if you want to learn more about what to do with your results maybe how it's relevant to you or how you can put them in action go ahead and sign up for my free talents and action class i'll put the link in the description below but it's a free class that you can sign up i look forward to seeing you there and in the next video thank you so much