Ralph Rickenbach

Leveraging Strengths – Understanding Culture

Category: CliftonStrengths

  • Autism and CliftonStrengths

    Autistic people are often honest to the point it hurts. Thus, I will begin this post with a disclaimer. I am not a psychologist or an expert on neurodiversity in any way, apart from being autistic myself. Which probably makes me more of an expert than those trained experts.

    I am a certified CliftonStrengths coach, though. So, no problem on that side.

    This combination results in a lack of motivation to change people and “help” them reintegrate into society, following social norms, while not challenging neurotypical individuals. I leave this urge to the experts and professionals mentioned above.

    Describing Neurodivergence 

    Neurodiversity is the rather unspectacular insight that all our brains are different. We know today that no two brains are equal.

    Neurodivergence is a subset of neurodiversity. Neurodivergent brains are those that substantially differ from the norm, where the norm refers to the majority of brains.

    The term “neurodivergence” is not rooted in science. It was created by activists in the neurodiversity movement in the late 1980s. They aimed to challenge the idea that differences in brain structures are disorders.

    We know too little about the brain, and our imaging methods lack the necessary resolution, so we typically base our classification on behavioral observations.

    We define neurodivergence as a set of disorders that display two categories of symptoms. A neurodivergent person 

    • is no longer classified or perceived as being in the “normal range” and thus is disruptive to society. 
    • experiences inner suffering and pressure, both in varying degrees.

    Sadly, we have come to use even the term “neurodivergent” and not only the conditions it encompasses in diagnostic terms. We call people neurodivergent when 

    • Their behavior presents a challenge to their environment.
    • They need exceptional support.
    • They suffer as a result of their differences. 

    The goal of a diagnosis is to provide the necessary support, typically through the healthcare system.

    Many neurodivergent individuals are overlooked due to this. Consider someone who has the energy to hide their condition most of the time. They don’t meet the diagnostic criteria. However, when they struggle, they may no longer be able to maintain their mask. As a result, they can’t get a diagnosis because the criteria require symptoms and behaviors to be visible from a young age, when they masked their differences.

    Neurodivergence encompasses variations in sensory processing, motor skills, social comfort, cognition, and focus, recognizing them as natural differences in brain function.

    Let me add some examples—in alphabetical order—but remember that these traits show up in different forms and combinations to the degree that when you have met one neurodivergent person, you have met … one neurodivergent person.

    (The above is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Neurodivergent Genius: What if your difference is exactly what the future needs? If you are interested in knowing more, let me know. I can then provide you with a link to the Kickstarter campaign where you can express your interest in concrete action. Or we can just talk back and forth in the comments.)

    Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

    Autism is less a single condition and more a different way the brain interacts with the world. It influences how we communicate, connect, and develop patterns in daily life, often through unique sensory experiences and intense, focused interests. Since autism exists on a spectrum, no two people experience it exactly the same; support needs can range from subtle adjustments to extensive assistance with communication and self-care. Understanding autism involves recognizing both the challenges it can present in a world designed for neurotypical norms and the special strengths it often offers: noticing details others miss, maintaining deep focus, and providing creative, outside-the-box approaches to thinking.

    My CliftonStrengths Profile 

    My dominant strengths are Ideation, Learner, Deliberative, Intellection, Futuristic, Connectedness, Strategic, Analytical. Input, and Self-Assurance.

    If you know the model, this list contains seven of the eight Strategic Thinking themes. In an older system of classification, all my strengths but one were lumped into the seeing category:

    Striving: Motivational strengths that generate and focus energy to accomplish a lot. Achiever, Activator, Adaptability, Belief, Discipline, Focus, Restorative, Self-Assurance, Significance

    Impacting: Interpersonal strengths that enable a person to impact or influence others in a powerful way. Command, Competition, Developer, Maximizer, Positivity, Woo

    Relating: Interpersonal bonding, forming deeply meaningful, close and strong personal relationships. Communication, Empathy, Harmony, Includer, Individualization, Relator, Responsibility

    Seeing: Strengths of perception, organization, and information processing that produce lifelong learning. Analytical, Arranger, Connectedness, Consistency, Context, Deliberative, Futuristic, Ideation, Intellection, Input, Learner, Strategic

    Only self-assurance was in Striving, and that made sense to me. More on that soon.

    I call my strengths my seedbed for and expression of autism. Autism is about seeing, often with difficulties relating, impacting, and striving. My strengths are closely tied to my unique brain structure. If you think of it, strengths are expressions of brain structures as well.

    I define the brain as the gateway through which the mind enters and interacts with this world. The brain permits the mind, and different brain structures allow for different expressions of the mind.

    The observing role of the strategic thinking themes, aided by the tainted expressions of deliberative (focusing on the “thinking of all the possible risks”) and connectedness (building the Net of Indra, a complete Weltanschauung from what the other strengths provide, seeing the connections between concepts more than people), find their perfect gateway in an autistic brain.

    What is the special role of Self-Assurance in my case? Being autistic and neurodivergent in other aspects, my Self-Assurance did not develop and mature because I had the firm conviction of being a misfit. I valued external expectations and externally motivated ideals more than my own needs and capabilities. 

    It took a personal crisis (cancer and near-death by lung embolism) and the loss of all my relationships but three friends to revisit my self-definition. I invested in Self-Assurance by focusing my other strengths on myself. I even studied topics I would never have allowed myself to come near in my previous environment, such as personal development and developmental psychology.

    Your strengths are a reason for your challenges, but they are also a solution. We might need help to see that. This help can come in the form of a crisis, but we do not have to wait for that. There are people who can help you. Maybe not the crowd I described at the outset of this post, as you do not need to fit the mold because you are unique.

    All the best and much courage on your path. And if I can help, you know where to find me.

  • Create your Unique Selling Proposition

    In this exercise, we create a sentence together that describes us based on our top five strengths. To accomplish this, we’ll take the personalized Top 5 section or the full 34 Strengths report.

    Our primary goal is a sentence with this structure: Adjective Noun and Adjective Adjective Noun.

    This sounds complicated at first, but it’s simple. Here is an example:

    Imaginative thinker and soberly observant visionary.

    This sentence is mine and includes the strengths of ideation, learner, deliberative, intellection, and futuristic.

    How did I proceed?

    I read through my personal strength descriptions and first looked for two nouns. Then, I add the adjectives. Basically, I want one word from each strength.

    You might not find the right words in your strength description. If you don’t, ask yourself: What words would I use to describe this strength in me? What comes to mind when I read this text?

    After you find the five words, compose your sentence from them. Et voilà, your unique selling proposition is ready. If you’re not satisfied, tweak the sentence until you like it.

    Alternatively, you can build other sentence constructs if you like:

    As a visionary, I think imaginatively and observe soberly.

    I think and observe constantly, and develop sober ideas and visions.

    You might extend this to your dominant strengths. An example using intellection, connectedness, learner, ideation, and futuristic:

    Networked thinker and lifelong learner, imaginative futurist.

    I think through the big picture, learn as I go, develop new ideas for the future.

    Now it’s up to you.

  • Spiral Dynamics and CliftonStrengths

    In our time, all the right conditions and contradictions for the Integral value meme of Spiral Dynamics have finally emerged — a cascade of “wicked problems” that can only be fully recognized and solved from an Integral perspective.

    Some have been around for a while, like racism, abortion, and power, and some have risen to general awareness lately, like free speech, disinformation, and artificial intelligence. Add to this list the pandemic, war, and climate change, and we have ourselves a systemic, complex situation that overwhelms previous value memes. And I have yet to mention the education crisis, and even then, the list is not exhaustive.

    Integral was ahead of its time. It emerged decades before the world really needed it. This gave us some time to lay some theoretical and social groundwork.

    On the other hand, new work has its own set of challenges. Silent quitting, flexibility around remote work, managers becoming coaches, and all new management forms like self-managing teams come to mind. And we can add the shift in the workplace caused by artificial intelligence and automation, which results in new professions and a loss of work for many.

    CliftonStrengths gives us tools to navigate this new work situation. It provides insight into ourselves and co-workers for more efficient teams. But not only that, it allows for whole new, individualized management practices and ways of working together.

    Spiral Dynamics and CliftonStrengths together are powerful in generating company and community cultures, a whole new set of solutions, and an integrative way of living together past mere acceptance of diversity.

    I will provide training for Spiral Dynamics coaches starting this year.

  • Taking the CliftonStrengths Assessment again

    First, a few reasons why I advise against it.

    Hopefully, by the time I take the CliftonStrengths Assessment a second time, I’m already a bit biased and believe that investing in my strengths is better than trying to solve my weaknesses.

    Or better yet, I no longer necessarily understand my weaknesses as the things I can’t do, but as what prevents me from being efficient, productive, and helpful.

    After all, it can be my strengths hindering me if they demand too much space and attention.

    This knowledge alone makes me respond differently to certain of the 177 questions in the assessment.

    Moreover, a few terms mean something different for us now. Empathy in colloquial terms is different from Gallup’s definition of empathy. But if I have Gallup’s term in mind, I will also respond differently to certain questions.

    Third, it is almost impossible for us to answer 177 questions exactly the same way over and over again. This leads to shifts in the results, which I then focus on. This leads to me trusting the assessment less and therefore benefiting less.

    Smaller shifts are normal, even certain jumps can be well explained, but the energy is now invested in the wrong thing.

    Various studies conducted by Gallup showed an average stability of about 70% of Top 5 and 95% of Top 10.

    That is, on average, one strength slips out of the top 10 and is replaced by another. The results of the studies can be read on the Gallup website in the Technical Report.

    But back to me. I have so many strengths in Strategic Thinking that I, of course, had to do my own “research”. But again, I didn’t.

    I took the assessment in February 2017, and retook it as part of my certification in October 2017. I did this before the course because I was sent a code for the course and didn’t know any better yet.

    I repeated the assessment in 2018 when Gallup changed platforms to the current Access. I wanted to know what the new process looked like for my clients.

    In 2019, I took the assessment again. I had just gotten over cancer (or rather, I thought I had). Gallup recommends retaking the assessment after a major trauma, if necessary.

    And a few days ago, I was asked by Gallup to test the new version for coaches, the Personal Subscription, for them. I did the assessment again in that frame to check the features.

    I am amazed at how robust the results are for me.

    My top 10 each differ in one talent theme: Maximizer, Self-Assurance, and Relator alternate.

    For me, Maximizer is a typical example of the effect described above: I’m now on a path of steady growth and know there’s always more to come.

    Relator, on the other hand, has always danced around the top 10. Maybe an indication that I have eleven dominant strengths? Or possibly, there are only 9, namely the ones that consistently show up in the top 10? Or perhaps Relator just jumped the gun because a small group of people became more important to me in my fight against cancer, pulmonary embolism, and more.

    As I said, I think Maximizer snuck in. I am most comfortable with the original result, and I am currently wavering between 9, 10, and 11 dominant strengths.

    Finally, the reasons for doing the assessment a second time:

    • Trauma in the interim.
    • The first time you were under 25, and that was 5 years ago or more.
    • You took the assessment once, but you were thinking about pleasing someone else (e.g. your boss).

    If you are surprised by the result, get a coach to help you track down the result. I’m happy to do that, of course.

  • First Exercises

    So now the CliftonStrengths 34 report is in your hands. (If your reaction now is: OK, Boomer, then may I tell you that all this is of course also possible electronically. And no, I’m not a boomer, albeit only narrowly.)

    But what are you doing with it now? Of course, read it first.

    Highlighting

    Top 5

    You can see that after a few introductory words, two pages of information on each of your first five talent topics are available. These five texts are based on the order of all your talent topics, so they are individually tailored to you as much as possible.

    Nevertheless, Donald Clifton had to summarize talents in so-called themes. Otherwise, the level of detail would simply be too large and unmanagable.

    Therefore, some sentences will feel closer to you than others. Take a marker and highlight what really suits you.

    Top 6-10

    The next 5 talent topics each include one page of text. They are no longer individualized, but have the general text as a description. Nevertheless, it also helps here to highlight the really apt sentences.

    Dominant, supportive and “what, that’s also a strength?”

    We will do the next exercise on pages 23 and 24 of the report.

    The talent themes can be divided into three sections. The dominant themes are those that can be developed into strengths with comparatively little investment and a lot of joy. We have between 8 and 12 dominant themes somewhere, in exceptional cases even up to 15, but this is extremely rare. The dominant themes are at the top of the list.

    Read the descriptions and start at the first strength. Read until you have this feeling on a theme: “I can do that if I have to, but it’s not as easy for me as all previous ones.”

    Stop on this theme and draw a line just before it. For me, this line is between theme 10 and 11, as you can see from the picture.

    This is where your supporting talent themes begin. Now it’s still a matter of finding out where they end.

    An important finding is to know what you are not or can’t do. Some would call this weaknesses found, but weaknesses are weaknesses only if you needed these themes for your job or relationships and cannot compensate for the behavior with other strengths. So they are called lesser themes.

    And that’s an important keyword: many say of their lowest talent themes (from 34 upwards) that they could do that. But they probably compensate for the behavior. How this happens is very individual and can be found out in a coaching.

    For the moment, you can simply believe me that the lowest 5-10 talent themes are probably difficult for you to reach and result in an enormous amount of energy usage. If we often need these topics in everyday life, this can lead to burn-out.

    But let’s continue with the exercise.

    Read the descriptions from the bottom, starting with the 34th. Cheer on any topic you don’t have. At some point between 30 and 25, you will usually say to yourself: “Yes, I can do that even if it has to be.” You have found the lower limit of your supporting themes. Also put a line below this theme.

    The goal is to be able to use one’s own dominant strengths as often as possible. If necessary, consult the supporting topics. For the other topics, you will find compensation strategies, complement yourself with a person who can do it easily, or make sure that the assignment does not take too long or happens too often.

    Coaching

    This is where coaching begins. We learn to discover how we used our own strengths in the past and everyday life. We learn compensation and cooperation by learning to love all themes. And we develop strategies to invest specifically in the strengths.

    If you decide to coach with me, please take this version of the CliftonStrengths 34 report with you. The two limits are important in our cooperation, as are the painted sentences in the first strengths. I would be happy to show you more treasures that CliftonStrengths has discovered in you.

  • Modes of Progression

    René Girard developed a theory called mimetic desire. I want to address part of this theory here and set it in a bigger arena.

    People are masters of imitation. As much as we often have the desire to be self-governed and independent, we learn most by imitating others. That is part of mimetic desire.

    Everyone will agree with this when it comes to the basic functions such as walking and talking, but of course it goes much further. Our convictions are shaped by our environment, as is our behavior.

    So many of our abilities are mimetic in nature, imitation of role models.

    In addition, we apply learned strategies to new problems. That way an individual learns a new trick, a new skill: by adapting and evolving the familiar. With higher abstraction ability, this happens on increasingly abstract levels and increases in speed and power.

    Once a skill has been developed, it can spread mimetically. Here we see the link to the almost identically written expression meme: on the Internet we speak of a meme when something goes viral. In Spiral Dynamics, we call worldviews memes, because within a meme, the same values are mimetically passed on and learned.

    Since we have integrated much of what we have learned mimetically in previous memes, our children learn the earlier mimetic values from us, as well as from their peers.

    Hardly anyone will develop further than to the meme of their surroundings, because mimetic learning stops, or slows down, because there are hardly any role models left that we can imitate.

    Only under the pressure of the environment do we learn new values, views, abilities, which then spread slowly, but soon exponentially. Or better, as an S-curve, because at some point the spread slows down again because of the resistance of the old memes or the saturation of the market.

    Hegel saw another way to learn new skills and views: the dialectical leap. When two or more memes meet, hypothesis and antithesis meet and trigger a tension. This brings about the possibility of synthesis. A synthesis can be a solution at a higher level of complexity and abstraction, but also a simple combination of previous solutions. So we come to new approaches or realize that thinking both-and is better than either-or.

    So how does a person grow through the value memes of Spiral Dynamics? As long as his environment lives in a later value meme than himself, through mimetic learning. In addition, the pressure of the environment is needed in the form of new challenges or dialectical jumps due to the clash of different values.

    So how can I grow? By consciously choosing my environment. I can deliberately surround myself with people who have a more complex worldview than me and imitate their way of thinking. And I surround myself with people who have a different worldview than me and try to develop common solutions from the tension that arises. Thirdly, I face the new demands that my environment places on me and thus develop new approaches through abstraction and adaptation.

    We are in an interesting place in history. Three value memes with a similar share in the population currently dominate the West: blue, orange and green, or tradition, modernity, and post-modernity as their implementations. An absolutely ingenious prerequisite for dialectical learning, especially for the realization that we need both-and thinking. This realization is at the core of yellow. A coincidence? I don’t think so.

    Your thoughts?

  • Vertical and horizontal Assessments

    There are many psychometric assessments on the market today. Let’s name a few of the more famous ones:

    Myers Briggs Type Indicator MBTI, based on Carl Gustav Jung’s typology, with 16 types along the dichotomies of

    • introversion vs. extraversion
    • intuition vs. sensory
    • thinking vs. feeling
    • perceiving vs. judging

    The Enneagram, based of the work of Georges I. Gurdjieff, with 9 types along base motivations or survival strategies in three centres of thinking

    • heart: 2 helper, 3 achiever, 4 individualist
    • head: 5 observer, 6 loyal sceptic, 7 enthusiast
    • gut: 8 challenger, 9 peacemaker, 1 reformer

    CliftonStrengths, based on the work of Donald Clifton and Gallup, with 34 innate talent themes in 4 domains

    • strategic thinking
    • relationship building
    • influencing
    • execution

    DISC, based on the work of Moulton Marston, with 4 behavioural styles

    • Dominant
    • Inspiring
    • Supportive
    • Cautious

    Spiral Dynamics, based on the work of Clare W. Graves and Don Beck, with at the time 9 value memes of the evolution of human consciousness

    • beige: survival
    • purple: safety, magic
    • red: power, dominance
    • blue: order, right & wrong
    • orange: autonomy, achievement
    • green: approval, equality, community
    • yellow: adaptability, integration
    • turquoise: compassion, oneness
    • coral: yet to come

    But there is a crucial difference between the first four assessments and the last.

    Let’s start with the last one.

    Spiral Dynamics describes a path of development both humanity as well as a single individual undertake in their evolutionary growth.

    Each stage, level, or as they are called in the theory, vMeme for value memes knows how to deal with life’s circumstances it is faced with.

    If those circumstances change, people must adjust and become more conscious of new problems and capable of solving them, while not losing, but integrating the old values and solutions.

    • People with a purple tribal value system, looking for safety in the group, need some more tools when getting into conflict with other such groups. The red warrior consciousness evolves.
    • The same is true for individuals: small children in the purple safety of their family start to develop an adventurous, red egotistical consciousness, necessary to make decisions, not losing the bond with the family that allows for this in the first place.

    Each of the vMeme changes can be explained by such changes in life circumstances and the responds brought forth.

    Rarely a person will outgrow the most complex vMeme in their surrounding society. Let’s name a few, and since I am a pastor in real life, I will depend on the biblical narrative for most of them:

    • Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened and they saw that they were naked. This describes humanity going from beige proto-consciousness to purple tribal consciousness.
    • Abraham was told to leave his town and family. This describes the change from purple tribal to red adventure and power consciousness.
    • Pharao and Moses: first Moses defeated Pharao in a power struggle (if there ever was one), and then God gave Moses the ten commandments. This describes the shift from red power to blue order and hierarchy consciousness.
    • Luther along with others like Zwingli, Calvin, Erasmus of Rotterdam created the notion of the individual. This describes the shift from blue hierarchy and one truth to orange autonomy, achievement and personal success consciousness.

    Such a developmental model is called vertical. It describes the growth of humanity and individuals towards more complexity of thinking, with each stage causing problems that cannot be solved with the kind of thinking that they were produced.

    Again, let me give you some examples:

    • The red warrior and power vMeme produced tyrants that could only be tamed by a law given by a higher instance such that even the tyrant had to obey. Power gods were replaced by a monotheistic God.
    • Climate change and the destruction of our environment cannot be solved using the methods of orange technology created for personal success, seeking autonomy and achievement. Climate change was brought to our attention by green, but climate change is a problem so complex that it needs the yellow integral solutions of every vMeme in sync to be solved.

    Now that we have a grip of such a vertical assessment, what are horizontal assessments then?

    Horizontal assessments measure and compare the individuals within one vMeme. Since those assessments were born from psychology, and psychology is a child of the green vMeme, they usually were formed around the values of approval, equality in diversity, self-awareness and self-actualisation, and community.

    Some of them, like CliftonStrengths and MBTI, work into the layer of orange, linking green self-knowledge and growth to efficiency in teamwork and personal success.

    Some of them have even been adapted for blue environments like churches, giving people an idea about where to fit into the hierarchy of the system.

    MBTI focusses mostly on orange, CliftonStrengths on blue, orange, and green, while DISC is often seen in blue and orange, and the Enneagram in blue and green, since it is to spiritual or esoteric for orange to value it.

    Horizontal assessments often lose their value in other vMemes. Some can be adjusted through those vMemes with evolving definitions of their types.

    Let’s develop the Enneagram type 5 through the vMemes of Spiral Dynamics.

    • Purple 5: The Sage/The Ascetic
    • Red 5: The Sage/The Wizard
    • Blue 5: The Sage/The Teacher of the one Truth
    • Orange 5: The Sage/The Investigator
    • Green 5: The Sage/The Professor
    • Yellow 5: The Sage/The accompanying Mentor
    • Turquoise 5: The Sage/The Integrative Self

    As you can see, a 5 does have the same qualities of a sage, but develops them through the vMemes depending on life’s circumstances.

    The same is possible for the Enneagram and CliftonStrengths.

    • Tasks around ideal processes and systems (Angel Achiever)
    • Tasks that help others (Good Samaritan)
    • Tasks that are impossible (Super Stamina)
    • Tasks that express individuality (Prolific Creator)
    • Tasks that absorb, preserve, and (sometimes) use gained knowledge (Rare Find)
    • Tasks that secure trust and collaboration (Safety Officer)
    • Tasks of fun and adventure (Trailer Blazer)
    • Tasks that make an impact (Shock Waves)
    • Tasks that keep everyone happy (Eager Pacifier)

    And them again for CliftonStrengths and Spiral Dynamics, shown here with the learner talent theme.

    • Beige: in survival mode, there is no learning or teaching
    • Purple: seeks knowledge from wise and elders and accepts things at face value as well as sees magic connections.
    • Red: learns through teal and error, seeks instant reward and wants to avoid shame. Consequences are ignored.
    • Blue: likes to be “fed” abstract realities and needs absolute truth. Learns to contribute to the order of things and avoid upsetting rulers and God. Teachers are authorities in traditional school environment.
    • Orange: learns to be successful. Driven by market and demand, wants to have credentials to gain advantage. Teachers are experts and coaches in universities and business.
    • Green: learns to upset the system. Values non-hierarchical team-oriented learning environment with life coaches.
    • Yellow: desires to be a generalist with self-paced learning and individual curriculums. Teachers are mentors that accompany others, reflectors and learning facilitators. Yellow chooses a competent coach and accepts her guidance within the context of coaching, while remaining autonomous.

    In my coaching, I am using CliftonStrengths, the Enneagram, and Spiral Dynamics to develop a well rounded picture of the person I am coaching.

    You will get your strengths and how to apply them successfully as well as deal with your weaknesses from CliftonStrengths Full 34 Report.

    You will know your motivations, survival strategies, dark and golden shadows from the Enneagram.

    And you will get to know your individual chord of vMemes with your center of gravity, the worldview you are acting from.

  • CliftonStrengths Domain Statistics

    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?

  • CliftonStrengths Statistics

    First, let me tell you that this is just for fun. When coming up with the 34 talent themes, Donald Clifton chose them as they were emerging from the data and bundled the ones that were somewhat alike each other.

    Origin

    In short, the 34 were found by taking some 5000 items and narrowing them down to select the items with the strongest psychometric properties. That is, the ones that were best in distinguishing personality traits without being too limiting. Items excluded were either correlated to others, not adding to the results, or too selecting.

    1999 – The remaining items were bundled in 35 themes of similar items and data was collected for several months, revising it to 180 items bundled in 34 themes.

    2006 – another revision took place based on more than 1 million assessments to shape StrengthsFinder 2.0 with 34 themes and 177 items.

    The base question for primary collection of the 5000 items was: how can people work together more efficiently.

    While MBTI and Big 5 and such are theory based, CliftonStrengths is evidence based, that is constructed through data analysis: make tons of interviews and see what patterns emerge.

    Talent Theme Odds

    This, among other things, means that the different talent themes do not occur with the same odds, most probably.

    Even the theme frequency data Gallup provides for certified coaches points into that direction:

    All over the world, when 20’002’953 assessments were recorded, there were big differences.

    Achiever was in 31.22% of people’s top 5, while self-assurance only appeared in 4.52% of the cases.

    Yet, those assessments are, even in their great number, not a statistically valid sample as, among other reasons,

    • most have to take the assessment through their employer,
    • for the others, people with some talent themes might be less likely to take such an assessment in the first place.

    The probabilities I am going to calculate are based on equal distribution, that is, assuming that all talent themes appear with the same odds of 1/34.

    Why 1/34? When I randomly draw one strength of the 34 talent themes, I have 34 possible talent themes and therefore 34 possible results.

    Formulas

    When I want to draw 2 talent themes, what is the odds of that combination?

    For the first I draw I have 34 possible result, and for the second, the remaining 33, as I cannot have the same talent theme twice. There are 34 * 33 possible combinations of to talent themes then. So the odds of a combination of 2 is 1 : 34 * 33 = 1 : 1122.

    For top 5, that would be then 1 : (34 * 33 * 32 * 31 * 30) or 1 : 33’390’720. That is the famous 1 in 33 million often stated.

    There is a shorthand this can be written in – math has a shorthand for everything. Let’s develop what is called faculty and the binomial formula.

    Fixed order – Faculty

    Let’s calculate the number of combinations of all 34 talent themes. First place 34, second place 33, and so on until for the last place, there is only 1 talent theme left. That is 34 * 33 * 21 * … * 2 * 1. And that is the definition of 34! (faculty of 34), the product of all numbers from 1 to 34.

    There are 34! possible combinations of talent themes. That is 2.952327990396041e38 or roughly a 3 with 38 zeroes. The odds of another person having exactly your order of talent themes is 1 : 34!

    There are roughly 8 billion people on the planet. There are 3.69e28 times as many possible combinations of talent themes than people!

    Let’s get back to the top 5. How could this be written in shorthand?

    Ok, there are 34! combinations total. When I take away five strengths, there are 29 left. I can combine those 29 in 29! ways with the same math I have done for the 34.

    So for the 5 talent themes I have selected, there are 29! combinations on how the other talent themes can be combined. If I now divide the total of possible combinations with this number, I get the number of possible combinations of top5.

    Let’s illustrate this:

    34!/29! = 34!/(34-5)! = (34 * 33 * 32 * … * 1) / (29 * 28 * 27 * … * 1) = 34 * 33 * 32 * 31 * 30.

    Top 5 in fixed order: 34!/29! = 33’390’720

    So, again, but with a more usable formula, we have roughly one in 33 million sharing your top 5.

    This is the formula we used above.

    For top 10, use 34!/(34-10)!

    Random Order – Binomial Formula

    In all of these formulas, when we draw the first talent theme, it will stay in first rank.

    What now when we want to know how many combinations we can build if the talent themes just have to show up in any order?

    Well, when I have 5 talent themes, how many combinations are possible for those 5? Could it be 5! ? Most certainly it is, according to the theory above.

    We have 34!/29! possible combinations of top 5, and 5! possible combinations of those top 5 in any order. If I draw any top 5, 5! combinations will give me the same top 5.

    We have found the binomial formula:

    Top 5 in random order: 34!/(29! * 5!) = 278’256.

    So, one in 278’256 people share your top 5 in random order.

    Or, if going for top 10: 34!/ ((34-10)!(10!)).

    Four out of Five

    There are now 34!/(29!5!) possible combinations of top 5. What if we only care for 4 of them?

    There are 34!/(30!4!) possible combinations of top 4 in any order.

    If you look at that, there are 150 more possible combinations for top 5 that top 4.

    There are 5!/(4!1!) possible combinations of 4 talent themes within a set of 5. That is, surprisingly enough, 5 possibilities or 5 five spots where the talent theme can show up we do not care about.

    Thus, there are 34!/(30!4!) * 5!/(4!1!) possibilities of 4 out of 5 of a set of 34.

    That is 5’565’120.

    So, roughly one in 5.5 million people have 4 of your top 5 in common with you.

    Thus, there are 34!/(31!3!) * 5!/(3!2!) possibilities of 3 out of 5 of a set of 34.

    That is 59’840.

    So, one in 59’840 people have 3 of your top 5 in common with you.

    World Formula

    The world formula to calculate m out of n talent themes in common from a set of 34 talent themes therefore is (tada): (0! = 1)

    World formula in exact order: 34!/((34-m)!) * n!/((n-m)!m!)

    World formula in any order: 34!/((34-m)!m!) * n!/((n-m)!m!)

    I am sure I lost most of my readers on the way, so: congratulations, if you made it that far!

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