FAQ

The Gallup Organization defines “talent” as "a naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behaviour that can be productively applied”. They define “strength” as "the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance in a specific activity”. A talent only becomes a strength when one acquires the knowledge and skills necessary to apply and use the talent to deliver consistently productive outcomes. The assessment results reveal the top 5 talents an individual possesses.

The chance of having the exact same top 5 talent themes in the exact order as another person is 1 in 33.39 million. The chance of having the same top 5 talent themes as someone else, but in a different order, is approximately 1 in 340,000.

Psychologists at Gallup have been investigating the nature of human strengths for over 30 years. During that time, Gallup interviewed over 2 million people — the best teachers, doctors, lawyers, managers, salespeople, leaders, software programmers and other professionals — to discover what made them successful. From these interviews, 34 recurring patterns of thought, feeling, and behaviour emerged. These patterns, or “talent themes" as Gallup calls them, are the raw materials for building a strong and productive life. These 34 talent themes do not capture every single human idiosyncrasy — individuals are too infinitely varied for that kind of claim. Think of these 34 as akin to the 88 keys on a piano. The 88 keys cannot play every single note that can possibly be played but in their combinations they can capture everything from classic Mozart to classic Madonna.

Your top 5 talents reveal natural, recurring patterns of thoughts, feelings, or behaviours that you have. You already innately have these raw talents, even though environments you are in, can make these talents even more pronounced and sharper. For example, a person who possesses ‘strategic’ as one of his top 5 talents will be drawn to solving puzzles or like the idea of having different options from a young age. That will likely be the same strategic talent he will have when he is 60. Your top 5 talents are natural while your strengths are nurtured by investing into your top 5 talents. The Strengthsfinder assessment tool focuses on discovering the natural raw talents of an individual. You are given only 5 talent themes so that you can zoom in and focus on your most dominant talents and turning these talents into strengths given the limited time, energy and resources you have.

Technically, the answer is yes. In practical terms, no. The Strengthsfinder profile evaluates each of your responses, calculates your strongest talent themes, and presents your top 5 in descending order. Thus technically, the first talent theme listed is your strongest and the fifth talent theme listed is your fifth strongest. However, the actual difference between your number 1 talent and your number 5 talent and those in between could be very small. The main idea is to focus on applying all of the top 5 dominant talents. The order is also given to separate between the dominant talents and the responsive or functional talents. The dominant talents (the top 5) are those that filter your world, regardless of any given situation, causing you to behave in certain recurring ways. By contrast, your responsive talents are only active occasionally when a particular situation presents itself.

There is overwhelming evidence from Gallup that the structure of talent measured by Clifton Strengthsfinder does not vary much across culture and nationalities. Some slight differences do exist, but on an individual level these differences are negligible. The most interesting and the most significant talent differences can be found between people, not peoples.

We do see slight changes take place occasionally. Some will have 1 or 2 new talents show up after they redo the assessment several years later. From our investigation and analysis, these 1-2 newly emerged talents were usually previously ranked within 6-10. Because of reasons like change in life stage, change in job etc, some talents become more pronounced than others and hence these talents show up in the top 5 in the new assessment results. Having said that, even with these changes, the shift in talent themes tends to be minor. Data analysis reveal that the top 10 talent themes continue to be the top 10 of an individual regardless of time frame in which the assessment is done. The simple idea is that our strengths will very unlikely become our weaker areas and vice versa.

The strengths-based approach is not about ignoring weaker areas or striving to be well-rounded. It is important to be aware of weaker areas. However, instead of spending a lot of time and energy trying to turn those weaker areas into strengths, the philosophy of Strengthsfinder is that you should focus on turning your dominant talents into strengths while concurrently figuring out ways to manage those weaker areas so that they do not prevent you from being successful.