Step Five: YOUR TALENT DNA

Stop struggling with your limitations and soar with your strengths.

People are happiest when they are able to use their Talent DNA in the workplace each day. Your strengths and your social currency makeup your Talent DNA.

When you know your strengths and your social currency, you have a different level of understanding about your gifts.

That knowing allows you to see bigger and better ways to use your talents at work and at home each day, making you a happier employee and a happier person.

 
 

There are 3 sections to this Guide:

  • The power of knowing your strengths

  • How to discover your strengths 

  • Soaring with your Talent DNA

The tool to use with this step is the Talent DNA Worksheet. 

Additional guidance for completing the worksheet is available in the accompanying video.  

Let’s get started!

Table of Contents

1. The power of knowing your strengths

The way your strengths rank from best strength to lowest strength reveals part of your talent DNA:  what you naturally do best. If you are unhappy at or disgruntled with your job, it might be that you are in the wrong role for your strengths. When that occurs, your talent DNA can’t fully blossom. 

In his book Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance, author Marcus Buckingham shares that years of research and study findings are clear: 

“While there are many good levers for engaging people and driving performance—levers such as selecting talent, setting clear expectations, praising where praise is due, and defining the team’s mission—the master lever is getting each person to play to his strengths. Pull this lever, and an engaged and productive team will be the result. Fail to pull it, and no matter what else is done to motivate the team, it’ll never fully engage. It will never become a high-performance team.”

Knowing your top five strengths and knowing how to plug them in at work is a powerful, transformative process. Gallup research on strengths reveals that:

Employees feel more confident, self-aware and productive when focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. In turn, this leads to higher employee engagement, increased performance and significantly lower attrition rates. The research results make more sense when we analyze the outcomes of our relationship with strengths. 

Our strengths are great resources for increasing our energy and making us feel dynamic. 

Your top five strengths represent your dominant talents.

They are your best and most powerful skills.

While discovering your top five values is intensely personal, finding your top five strengths is not. It just may be the easiest part of 10 Steps to Happiness, and that doesn’t make it any less personal. 

2. How to discover your strengths

There are several tools that make it easy to discover your strengths. My two preferences are the Gallup Organization’s Clifton Strengthsfinder (CliftonStrengths 34) and the HIGH5’s HIGH 5 Test for discovering strengths.

I have no relationship with either of these organizations and no preference of one assessment over the other. 

Both organizations make it easy to complete the assessments and obtain your results. 

 

  • CliftonStrengths 34

    To use the CliftonStrengths 34, visit the Gallup Online Store to purchase the CliftonStrengths 34.

    The CliftonStrengths 34 provides a comprehensive overview of all 34 of your strengths, including ranking the strengths from one to 34. Upon completion of the assessment, a StrengthsFinder 2.0 Report is generated that debriefs your five strengths or “themes.” 

    I like this report for many reasons, including the ability to learn where I am strong and where it would be a good practice to partner with someone who has strengths that I do not have. 

    CliftonStrengths 34

  • HIGH 5 Test

    In the alternative, HIGH5 offers a free strengths assessment called the HIGH 5 Test. Upon completion of the 100-question assessment, HIGH 5 will provide immediate onscreen results of your top five strengths from a pool of 20 strengths. These onscreen results provide a definition of each of your top five strengths.

    You do not receive any type of interpretation of your strengths. However, you can purchase a report that offers your unique strengths profile called “Full Strengths Report.” If you don’t think you are a one-of-a-kind person who is here to walk a unique path, this report may just change that misconception. 

    My Full Strengths Report offered that my sequence of strengths “is as rare as 1 in 121.64 quadrillion. It is what makes you unique - it is what makes you stand out from the crowd.” Yes, I am unique and so are you. In amazing and wonderful ways.

    High 5 Test

If you are looking for clear guidance on how your top five strengths partner together and show up in the world, HIGH 5’s Full Strengths Report does a great job of offering that information.

The CliftonStrengths 34 Report is excellent at showing you how each of your top five strengths is unique to you. 

Both reports offer powerful reflections on where you might have blind spots.

Regardless of the tool you select, both the CliftonStrengths 34 Report and the HIGH 5 Full Strengths Report offer insightful and game changing information that is well worth the cost of the reports.

If you are able, I suggest completing both reports to get the fullest picture of your strengths. 

 
 

After you have completed the assessment of your choice and know your top five strengths, add them to the Talent DNA Worksheet in the appropriate spot. 

 

3. Soaring with your Talent DNA

The tool used with Step 5 is the Talent DNA worksheet.

This worksheet is a reflective tool that allows you to immerse yourself in the powerful facets of each strength to determine your social currency. 

Your social currency is what you bring to each interaction with others.

It’s what you offer of yourself and stand on in relationship to others. It typically rests at the intersection of your values and strengths so there are clues to be had in the descriptions of each.

 

To complete Part 1 of the worksheet, you will need your strengths assessment report.

  • First, list your top five strengths in the first column.

  • Read each strengths description closely.

    As you read the strengths description, if you come across something that makes you think to yourself, “That is so me!” then it is a facet of who you are.

    Capture that facet in the description column.

    Capture between one and three facets of each strength.

  • Once you have your facets of each strength, re-read what you captured for each strength to discern the three overarching ideas or themes appearing in those descriptions.

    Your goal is to organize those facets into themes to help you discover your social currency.

  • Write your three themes at the top of each column on Part 2 of the worksheet.

    Categorize the most pertinent descriptions captured in Part 1 by theme.

  • Once you have completed that activity, review how your values play into these themes, too, capturing any ideas you have in the space provided on the worksheet.

    Remember, the video can help you with the worksheet if you are feeling confused or stuck.

  • The last step is to bring those themes together in one sentence that represents the essence of how you use that theme and its facets in your daily interactions with others to be of service and to complete work and personal tasks.

    Write that sentence in the appropriate social currency box.

 

If you believe the activities completed thus far don’t offer you guidance on your social currency, ask friends, family members, and colleagues what they think you bring to each interaction with them.

Ask, “What do I bring to each interaction?”  or “What do you rely on me for?” 

Others usually see us far more accurately than we realize; as such, they can be a wealth of information. 

As you process where your values and strengths intersect, keep in mind that social currency has two faces. The two faces include what you offer and what others perceive they receive from you.

For instance, I believe I simplify the complex. Yet, others don’t perceive that to be what I am doing. They come to me because they need help.

Additionally, my CliftonStrengths 34 report states,

“Because of your strengths, you normally find just the right words at the right moment to express whatever you are thinking and feeling.”

Others might share,

“You say the right thing at the right moment.”

For me, I see that as bringing wit, wisdom, and humor to each interaction. 

 
 

When others answer either of your questions, “What do I bring to each interaction?” or “What do you rely on me for?” the response is their perception.

It is also usually an output of your social currency.

Thus, remember to shift others’ words to your own words so it feels true for you.

Reframe the words so they reflect the intersection of your values and strengths.

As a reminder, your social currency usually rests in this intersection. As with your values, give yourself some time to clarify and understand your social currency.

Research from Gallup found that:

“employees feel more confident, self-aware and productive when focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. In turn, this leads to higher employee engagement, increased performance and significantly lower attrition rates.”

If you want to be happier at work, play to those important aspects of your strengths that formulate your Talent DNA.

The power of this exercise lies in your reflection of the best aspects of your strengths and how they connect with your values.

Bringing how you use your talents into your awareness in this way allows you to rely on these aspects of your talent DNA even more deeply throughout the workday. 

Knowing these three things —

  • your top five strengths

  • how they show up in the world

  • and how you use them at home and at work as social currency

— offers a deep and powerful level of clarity about who you are. 

This information will also be important in Step 8 as you discover your purpose.

No one has your DNA talent and your unique abilities.

You are a magical, one-of-a-kind being.

When you understand that about yourself, you can appreciate all that you are with greater satisfaction and happiness!

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