The Little Engine That Could

The Clifton Strength assessment I took listed my top five talent themes as Responsibility, Achiever, Learner, Focus, and Connectedness. Three of these top five fit into the executing domain; Responsibility, Achiever, and Focus. They deal with working hard and getting the job done. My strategic domain is as a Learner; this skill allows me to think outside of the box and tailor the approach to the specific situation. The fifth theme, Connectedness falls into the relationship-building domain. This is the strength that I feel is most important in my life and would like to continue to develop it throughout my entire life. It is the summation of all aspects and who I strive to be.

Based on the Clifton Strengths Assessment my top five strengths are strategic, deliberative, learner, maximize and individualization. As an individual, I rarely look into my weakness. I believe that when your too focused on your weakness, you forget about your strengths. Everything the book said is true, and we need to take the time to look at our strengths and make it perfect. It is true that in this world or the school system, we are taught to look at our weakness and correct it so that we can become stronger in our life. This book brings out the truth that I longed to hear for a long time. Invariably, I hear my professor tell their students that for them success in life, they must practice and look at our weakness. This book proves it wrong because for us to become successful, we must stay to our strengths’ path.

Strengths Finder 2.0 uses an online assessment to evaluate the individuals unique talents by having the taker rate how they view a particular question in 20 seconds or less (Rath, 2007). After taking the assessment, my five strengths were determined to be achiever, maximizer, input, arranger, and

Tom Rath’s “Strengths Finder 2.0” on-line assessment identified that my top five strengths are: Strategic, Focus, Futuristic, Significance, and Learner. I see the Strength Finder Assessment as a great opportunity to get to know my personal strengths and it motivates me to work and practice my talents rather than trying to fix my weaknesses. Looking only at my strengths is a new type of skills-building which allows me to stay focus on my talents.

My top strength identified was the Achiever theme. Achiever describes the need for constant achievement. Achievers have the capacity and the drive to keep taking on new challenges and strive toward new goals (Rath, 2007). This description is accurate in that I enjoy a new challenge and like to keep busy working towards anything with some sort of successful outcome. I welcome the opportunity to do something better, more perfectly, or more complete which motivates me to a higher level (Rath, 2007).

How many times in life do we become overwhelmed by difficult tasks and are we bullied by difficult tasks? How many times in life do we face obstacles that are disheartening and rigorous to accomplish? What if I told you that there was a secret that every human beholds and can use to accomplish difficult tasks?

It took me sixteen years to realize that I had misinterpreted my favorite childhood story, The Little Engine that Could. In it, the book tells of a little engine that was able to travel a difficult terrain that the bigger engines had been unable to, because he believed in himself. It's a great story, but I failed to grasp that the engine had done more than just thinking he could do it for the book also describes the engine moving efficiently by moving faster and faster then more slowly as it neared the top of the grade. Last year I discovered the importance of not just thinking I could do it, but also the importance of working efficiently.

Helps to recognise what methods or ways are best suited to help that person. And where further help is needed to help teach or to use their strengths and abilities in which will help benefit them. Helping recognise strengths and abilities also helps build confidence in that person and may encourage to build on their strengths and to try to gain or strengthen new abilities. Strengths also help compensate for a person’s weaknesses, this helps show where development may be needed and how they can use existing strengths to help improve where they are weakest.

Don Clifton, creator CliftonStrengths, has developed a program to help people better understand their talents. People who know their CliftonStrengths are more likely to succeed in their job and more likely to accomplish their goals. Knowing your strengths also makes it easier to improve your life every single day.

I have developed mental, physical, and emotional strengths not only from my personal experiences, but also from observing Russ work through his. I feel my positive attitude is easily maintained because I constantly appreciate every ability I possess, both physical and mental. Russ reminds me to be thankful of my natural gifts as he struggles to develop. Remaining a humble, not boastful person is very important to me. I measure my success through the results of meeting

After reading these results of the VIA Survey of Character Strengths I believe it reflected what I also thought of myself. It is not only important to be assessed to have these traits, it is also necessary to let them be incumbent in my personality so as to really captivate the people I have to lead to success.

As humans, and particularly individuals, we all have personal strengths that we bring to our interactions with others as well as areas that perhaps need some more time and attention in order to improve upon them. In this journal, I’ll be focusing on four areas of strength I believe I have, as well as four areas the require further growth and personal change.

My top five strengths were identified as Learner, Achiever, Discipline, Strategic, and Responsibility according to the StrengthsFinder 2.0 Assessment test (Gallup, 2016). All five strengths can be an asset in my professional role as a research assistant. As a research assistant, I constantly need to learn about new clinical trial protocols used in the hospital. If I do not research or read information on the new protocols, then I will not be educated on what the problem is, and the patient’s safety will be at risk. An example of this happens on a regular basis where I work. For example, new protocols are created everyday. Also, old protocols are updated constantly. One day we received more blood than was once required for a specific protocol, so I had to investigate if this was a new addition to the protocol and if not, I would have had to report the protocol violation since more

Based on the results of the several self-assessment tests I completed, I confirmed things that I knew about myself, and I was surprised to have learned other things I didn’t know about myself. This course has taught me a lot about many different aspects of life, especially about my life, ranging from my personality to my skills and abilities. The Myers-Briggs type indicator defined my personality as ESTJ. ESTJ stands for extraverted, sensing, thinking, and judging. ESTJ describes a person who is practical, decisive, logical and quick to dig in. I have also taken the Gallup Strengths finder test, which identified my top five strengths as Learner, Achiever, Restorative, Competitiveness and Focus. My weaknesses, on the other hand, were more surprising. Some of the things I thought I had mastered and others that I was not sure about turned out to be weak skills. These weak skills included, time management, handling facts and inferences, intuitive ability and tolerance for ambiguity. My weaknesses, as well as my strengths, will contribute to my success or failure; although, don’t believe in failures, this is the reason why I love Nelson Mandela’s quote “I never lose, I either win or learn.”

Intuitively, I believe that my greatest strengths lie in the fact that I am intelligent and ambitious. I also work very hard to achieve my goals. However, with that being said, Drucker believes that the best way to get a sense about your own personal strengths is through feedback. When I think of all the feedback I have gotten over the years, I think this validates the intelligence intuition. I have also been quick to find answers and many people have come to me for advice. However, it is harder to find feedback evidence for my other intuitions.