CliftonStrengths Domain Statistics

Any combination of talent themes are possible and great! But what if I only have talent themes from one domain in my top 5?

There are four domains in CliftonStrengths. According to Gallup,

  • Strategic Thinking themes help you absorb and analyze information that informs better decisions.
  • Relationship Building themes help you build strong relationships that hold a team together.
  • Execution themes help you make things happen.
  • Influencing themes help you take charge, speak up and make sure others are heard.

Strategic Thinking contains eight talent themes:

  • Analytical
  • Context
  • Futuristic
  • Ideation
  • Input
  • Intellection
  • Learner
  • Strategic

Relationship Building contains nine talent themes:

  • Adaptability
  • Connectedness
  • Developer
  • Empathy
  • Harmony
  • Includer
  • Individualization
  • Positivity
  • Relator

Executing contains 9 talent themes:

  • Achiever
  • Arranger
  • Belief
  • Consistency
  • Deliberative
  • discipline
  • Focus
  • Responsibility
  • Restorative

Influencing contains 8 talent themes:

  • Activator
  • Command
  • Communication
  • Competition
  • Maximizer
  • Self-Assurance
  • Significance
  • WOO

Any combination of talent themes are possible and great! But what if I only have talent themes from one domain in my top 5?

That is wonderful and no problem at all, as much as missing one or two domains in your top 5 is not a problem. First, we usually have more strengths we work fluently with than our top 5. Most people have 8 to 12 such dominant talent themes, with an average of 10.

But even if you lack some domains within your dominant talent themes, it is not a problem. We can compensate and cooperate to fill those gaps.

To compensate means to have one or multiple of your strengths mimic one you lack.

If that does not work, cooperate with somebody that has that strength.

Both strategies work for single talent themes and domains.

But what are the odds of having only strengths of one domain in your top 5?

For Strategic Thinking and Influencing:

We want 5 of 8 strengths: 8!/(8-5)!. So there are 6720 combinations to do that. And there is 34!/(34-5!) = 33’390’720 of top 5 combinations all in all.

So, the odds of drawing one of the pure combinations for strategic thinking are 6720 : 33’390’720, roughly 1: 4969.

The same is true for influencing.

For Executing and Relationship Building, there are 9 talent themes.

Thus, we want 5 out of 9 strengths: 9!/(9-5)! = 15’120.

So, the odds of drawing one of the pure combinations for Executing are 15’120 : 33’390’720, roughly 1: 2209.

The same for Relationship Building.

To have a pure set of any of those domains, we have to add the combinations:

6720 Strategic Thinking + 6720 Influencing + 15’120 Executing + 15’120 Relationship Building.

(8!/(8-5)! * 2 + 9!/(9-5!)*2) / (34!/(34-5)!)

And that is roughly 1:765.

So, one in about every 765 people statistically has only talent themes from one single domain in his top 5.

Just as a reminder: this does not take into account that some strengths might be more frequent than others, but assigns all strengths the same probability.

Nobody though has only talent themes of one domain in their top 10. Do you know why?

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