Strength & Stability

If you’re like most people, you have grown up with the weakness prevention model. You’ve been told that to become strong, successful, or truly serve  the world, you must fix your weaknesses. This thinking is just plain wrong. Your talents should be your primary focus. To many individuals talents and strengths are going unrecognized and unappreciated. And this adds up to an enormous loss of human potential that could be tapped for the transformation of society. In research over the last 30 years in more than 2 million people, you are most successful in whatever you do by building your life around your greatest natural abilities rather than your weaknesses.  When you discover your talents, you begin to discover your calling.

The problem is that most people don’t even know what their greatest talents are or how to go about discovering them. TheGallup’s Clifton StrengthsFinder is one of the tests that can help people to identify their strengths.  Every student at KeNako is assessed in this way.

Strength is the ability to provide consistent, near-perfect performance in a given activity.

The key to building a strength is to first identify your dominant themes of talent, then delve into those themes to identify a specific talent, and finally to produce a strength by refining that talent with knowledge and skill.

Talents are naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behaviour that can be productively applied. Unlike skills and knowledge, talents naturally exist within you and cannot be acquired. They are the things that you do instinctively and that naturally give you satisfaction.

Skills are the abilities to perform the steps of an activity. Your skills show your competence when proceeding through the how to’s of a task; they reflect your rational and predictable areas of expertise. Skills can be learned.

Through professional resources, training, consulting, coaching, and social networks on the world wide web, Keirsey innovation is also helping people make a difference throughout the world.

According to Keirsey Temperament Theory, there are four basic temperament groups which describe human behavior. Keirsey’s four temperaments are referred to as Artisans, Guardians, Rationals and Idealists. These four temperaments can be further subdivided, often referred to as Character Types.

Artisan Guardian Rational Idealist
Promoter Supervisor Fieldmarshal Teacher
Crafter Inspector Mastermind Counselor
Performer Provider Inventor Champion
Composer Protector Architect Healer

These Above tests are a way to identify and affirm your talents. The second step is to use your talents for growth and service. Your greatest talents don’t come into play only during life’s big events – you use them every day. Focus on the outcomes. The mistake is assuming that if two people follow the same steps, pattern or procedures, they will produce the same outcomes in their lives. This goes against everything that Gallup’s talent research reveals. You may want to achieve the outcome of success , but the steps you take to successfully achieve that goal will depend greatly on your unique talents.

When you understand the strengths approach and put it into practice, you realize that capitalizing on what you and those around you naturally do best is so much more productive that trying to fix yourself.

Truly successful and fulfilled people know the deep truth of this maxim: You will be successful because of who you are, not because of who you are not. Whenever possible, avoid using your areas of lesser talent. Rather use support systems, Establish complementary partnerships and leverage your own talents and strengths.

In conclusion: Discovering and living your strengths will help you to reach your goals and will lead to a more stable life.

Mariette le Roux
Educational Psychologist