Nicos Paschali
Many years of research conducted by The Gallup Organization suggest that the most influential people are those who understand their strengths and behaviours. These people can best develop strategies to meet and exceed the demands of their daily lives, careers, and families.
A review of the knowledge and skills you have acquired can provide a basic sense of your abilities. Still, an awareness and understanding of your natural talents will provide insight into the core reasons behind your consistent successes.
Your Signature Themes report presents your five most dominant talent themes in the rank order revealed by your responses to StrengthsFinder. Of the 34 themes measured, these are your “top five.”
Your Signature Themes are significant in maximising the talents that lead to your success. By focusing on your Signature Themes, separately and in combination, you can identify your skills, build them into strengths, and enjoy personal and career success through consistent, near-perfect performance.
Maximiser
greatExcellence, not average, is your measure. Taking something from below average to slightly above average takes a great deal of effort and, in your opinion, could be more rewarding. Transforming something vital into something superb takes just as much effort but is much more thrilling. Strengths, whether yours or someone else’s, fascinate you. You search them out like a diver after pearls, watching for the telltale signs of strength. A glimpse of untutored excellence, rapid learning, a skill mastered without recourse to steps—all these are clues that a strength may be in play. And having found a strength, you feel compelled to nurture, refine, and stretch it toward excellence. You polish the pearl until it shines. This natural sorting of strengths means that others see you as discriminating. You choose to spend time with people who appreciate your particular strengths. Likewise, you are attracted to others who have found and cultivated their strengths. You avoid those who want to fix you and make you well-rounded. You don’t want to spend your life bemoaning what you lack. Instead, you want to capitalise on the gifts you are blessed with. It’s more fun. It’s more productive. And, counterintuitively, it is more demanding.
Achiever
Your Achiever theme helps explain your drive. Achiever describes a constant need for achievement. You feel as if every day starts at zero. By the end of the day, you must achieve something tangible to feel good about yourself. And “every day” means workdays, weekends, and vacations. No matter how much you think you deserve a day of rest, you will feel dissatisfied if the day passes without some form of achievement, no matter how small. You have an internal fire burning inside you. It pushes you to do more, to achieve more. After each accomplishment is reached, the fire dwindles for a moment, but very soon, it rekindles itself, forcing you toward the next accomplishment. Your relentless need for achievement might not be logical. It might not even be focused. But it will always be with you. It would be best if you learned to live with this whisper of discontent as an Achiever. It does have its benefits. It brings you the energy to work long hours without burning out. It is the jolt you can always count on to get you started on new tasks and new challenges. The power supply causes you to set the pace and define the productivity levels for your workgroup. It is the theme that keeps you moving.
Learner
You love to learn. Your other themes and experiences will determine the subject matter that interests you most, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the learning process. More than the content or the result, the process fascinates you. You are energised by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. The thrill of the first few facts, the early efforts to recite or practice what you have learned, the growing confidence of a skill mastered—this process entices you. Your excitement leads you to engage in adult learning experiences—yoga, piano lessons, or graduate classes. It enables you to thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short project assignments and are expected to learn a lot about the new subject matter quickly and then move on to the next one. This Learner theme does not necessarily mean that you seek to become the subject matter expert or that you are striving for the respect that accompanies a professional or academic credential. The learning outcome is less significant than the “getting there.”
Ideation
You are fascinated by ideas. What is an idea? An idea is a concept, the best explanation of the most events. You are delighted when you discover beneath the complex surface an elegantly simple concept to explain why things are the way they are. An idea is a connection. Yours is the mind always looking for connections, so you are intrigued when seemingly disparate phenomena can be linked by an obscure connection. An idea is a new perspective on familiar challenges. You revel in taking the world we all know and turning it around so we can view it from a strange but strangely enlightening angle. You love all these ideas because they are profound. After all, they are novel because they are clarifying, because they are contrary, and because they are bizarre. For all these reasons, you derive a jolt of energy whenever a new idea occurs. Others may label you creative, original, conceptual, or even innovative. Perhaps you are all of these. Who can be sure? What you are sure of is that ideas are thrilling. And on most days, this is enough.
Command
Command leads you to take charge. Unlike some people, you feel no discomfort imposing your views on others. On the contrary, once your opinion is formed, you must share it. Once your goal is set, you feel restless until you have aligned others with you. You are not frightened by confrontation; instead, you know that confrontation is the first step toward resolution. Whereas others may avoid facing up to life’s unpleasantness, you feel compelled to present the facts or the truth, no matter how unpleasant. It would be best if you had things to be clear between people and challenge them to be clear-eyed and honest. You push them to take risks. You may even intimidate them. And while some may resent this, labelling you opinionated, they often willingly hand you the reins. People are drawn toward those who take a stance and ask them to move in a specific direction. Therefore, people will be drawn to you. You have a presence. You have Command.
Nicos Paschali, International Author, Designer & Facilitator of Learning Workshops. Mental Discipline Coach. 
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