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"Somehow, we'll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be. But for now, we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.”

"Life isn’t about finding yourself, Life is about creating you.”

I’ve always been fascinated with the workings of my own mind, and by human nature in general. How human brains work and operate in a team. To understand this, it’s important to self-diagnose yourself.

I’ve spent long hours contemplating individual motivations as well as group dynamics and the potential for collective intelligence.

If we want to determine what it takes to better function as groups, both in physical proximity and across distributed environments, I think it’s important to understand our own internal landscapes and how our strengths are best amplified in the presence of others with complimentary talents.

Below is a list of few useful online assessments that are useful in becoming more aware of one’s strengths, gifts and temperaments. I’ve pasted excerpts of my own results below, to give a sense of how the assessment are made.

1) Using the Book – Strengths Finder 2.0

Developed by Gallup, this book + online assessment combo helps people uncover their top talents and provides strategies for applying their strengths.

That’s me!! My top 5 results are:

ADAPTABILITY

You live in the moment. you don’t see the future as a fixed destination. instead, you see it as a place that you create out of the choices that you make right now. This theme of Adaptability does enable you to respond willingly to the demands of the moment even if they pull you away from your plans. You are, at heart, a very flexible person who can stay productive when the demands of work are pulling you in many different directions at once.

INTELLECTION

You like to think. You like mental activity. You like exercising the “muscles” of your brain, stretching them in multiple directions. You are the kind of person who enjoys your time alone because it is your time for musing and reflection. You are introspective. In a sense you are your own best companion, as you pose yourself questions and try out answers on yourself to see how they sound.

LEARNER

You love to learn. The subject matter that interests you most will be determined by your other themes and experiences, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the process of learning. The process, more than the content or the result, is especially exciting for you. You are energized 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 is the process that entices you.

IDEATION

You are fascinated by ideas. 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 kind of mind that is always looking for connections. 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, because they are novel, because they are clarifying, because they are contrary, because they are bizarre.

INPUT

You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information – words, facts, books, and quotations – or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity.

2) Role-Based Assessment

“Role-Based Assessment™ is a completely new online behavioural assessment for hiring, workforce planning, coaching, and team-building.

Individual strengths can lead to a personal triumph, but a team is greater than the sum of its parts. RBA identifies behaviours that impact quality of team interaction and ‘fit’ to job responsibilities: the ‘who fits where’ and the ‘why’ of winning teams.”

This Assessment tool helps to determine how a person will respond to being respected for the specific way that they seek to make team contributions.

Knowing how to show respect to a particular person is vital to motivating people, as well as increasing their engagement in the Organisation.

This increases the value of all Teamability-aware people (especially managers and executives) to the organization. It also gives HR the opportunity to develop its role as an in-house expert and advisor on matters of team structure and the application of Teamability methods.

Every Role can be broadly grouped under the following: -

1. The Founder
2. The Vision Mover
3. The Vision Former
4. The Action Mover
5. The Action Former
6. The Explorer
7. The Watchdog
8. The Communicator
9. The Conductor
10. The Curator

My Results are: -

1) The Action Former

Recognition:

The easiest way to recognize an Action Former is by the degree of effective organization that a person with this Role will exhibit. Where most of us have to struggle to stay organized, Action Formers have everything set up in lists and perfectly arranged. They don’t even think about it; they just treat it as a fact of life. If they encounter someone who doesn’t, they will try, more or less gently, to get that person to behave and cooperate.

Types of Work:

Good Action Formers make wonderful supervisors and lower-level managers. They are also fantastic as administrative professionals. They will generally try to learn to do all the different kinds of work they are involved in if they can. They not only keep themselves organized but they are usually happy to do it for others they work with as well. They are also very well suited to high-touch jobs including HR and training. Any time a job requires a high level of efficient organization and hands on management, an Action Former is the Role of choice.

Respect:

The Action Former wants cooperation, not in the sense of instant obedience but a willingness to work together in such a way as to get to the goal. Anything destructive that takes away from that kind of collective effort will be seen as disrespect. Therefore, showing disrespect to another co-worker or supervisor will often be taken as a sign of disrespect to this person also. Expressing appreciation for what this person contributes and how hard he or she works is another way of showing respect.

2) The Conductor

Recognition

Conductors can be recognized most easily by their zeal to do things the right way. They are fixers, almost irresistibly drawn into making things right; fixing them so that they are as they should be. If something is broken, they will be the ones that rush to try to fix it. Sometimes they tend to be a bit impulsive about doing this. They are also people who are very single-minded and devoted to the accomplishment of their goals, no matter what.

Types of Work:

Conductors make excellent trouble-shooters of every stripe. They can handle difficult customer service problems, especially of a technical nature, but they are better kept away from close work with people who are less zealous. They can be excellent teachers, however.

Respect

Respect for this Role is shown in particular by a willingness to cooperate with getting the end goal not just accomplished but accomplished properly. They want appreciation shown to them for what they do for you. They also want to be trusted although unless you are dealing with a good Conductor, you can be burned. Handle Conductors very carefully because they can get angry if they think they are being mistreated.