I toured in bands for many years and performed in numerous bands over the years. Even now I play in a local rock band, though my musical past includes, jazz, ragtime, marching, concert, orchestra, Army, country, rock, oldies, classic rock and even Chinese pop. As a result, I perceive life through the lyrics and melodies of music. It is not surprising that as someone who loves to help people discover their identity and has studied the communication of identity one of my favorite songs is The Real Me, from The Who’s rock opera, Quadrophenia.
Getting to the essence of identity is what I love about CliftonStrengths®. As I often tell my clients, “figure out what you are designed to do and do it! If you are a Ferrari, go fast, not off-road.” It is also the reason I find CoreClarity® to be more powerful than the assessment alone. I think you will agree after you read this.
The CliftonStrengths assessments is excellent at identifying your top talents, or as I like to call them, design factors. In the Gallup world, those top talents are categorized through the lens of how people perceive you. That is very significant. How you are perceived can be quite different from how you actually are and how you are motivated.
CoreClarity looks at your talents and categorizes them through the lens of how you experience those talents. The implication is that others don’t see the “real you” until they see through your lens; until they see your motivations.
One of the best examples of this is the Responsibility® talent when compared to the Achiever® talent. Both are “get it done” talents and in that sense they are correctly placed in the Executing domain of CliftonStrengths. From the outside, they look the same, but from the inside they are very different.
Achievers get things done primarily because they love the feeling of accomplishment and completing a task.
People with Responsibility, however, have a deep sense that their word is their bond. They love to get things done to complete the promises they made to other people, whether these promises were explicitly or implicitly made. In doing so, these acts of commitment enhance their relationships with other people. So, from the inside, “Responsibility” is all about personal integrity and the bonds they forge in service to others. With this perspective, Responsibility belongs in the Relationship Building domain. The folks at Gallup aren’t wrong, they just have a different perspective. They are looking at it from the outside in – how your talent is perceived by others, not by how you experience it personally.
Why does this matter?
In part because being seen and known are among our greatest relational needs.
Knowing the real you and others’ real identity raises your Emotional Intelligence more than knowing how other’s perceive you because self-awareness is the cornerstone of EQ.
There are other eleven talents that look different from the outside than they do from the inside. There’s a good chance you have some of them. Maybe you haven’t taken the CliftonStrengths assessment. In either case, let’s talk about the real you of your CliftonStrengths through the lens of CoreClarity so you and others can get to know the real you.
“CliftonStrengths” and the 34 CliftonStrengths theme names are registered trademarks of Gallup, Inc. The graphic elements copyright © CoreClarity, Inc.