First Find Your Strengths...

One of the joys of business school is the amount of time you are encouraged to spend thinking about yourself. Your strengths, your weaknesses, your future plans, your past experiences. It takes a strong person not to become completely self absorbed (perhaps hence the title of this blog?). Under any other circumstances you would feel self indulgent spending all this time thinking about nothing more than you, but in this universe, such thought is encouraged, rewarded, required.

Georgetown has a series of residencies that occur throughout the program. They culminate in the Global Residency where we spend a couple of months working in a small group on a consulting project for a real-life company. Then we spend a week or so overseas presenting our findings to the company and wrapping up. I will be spending my global residency in Shanghai, but more about that later. At the end of this summer, before classes start again, we have Leadership Residency. Georgetown, like most MBA programs, spends a lot of time focusing on leadership -- we have core classes and electives in addition to this residency. One of the pieces of homework for this residency was to complete the StrengthQuest Assessment created by Gallup.

This simple 170 or so question assessment then spits out a snapshot of your particular strengths and how best to maximize them. This is one of several assessments we have been fed through since arriving on the Hilltop. I know that according to Myers Briggs I am an ESTP (for the 7th time), that I should be working in either entrepreneurship or management consulting (I agree) and now thanks to Gallup, I know that I am a Strategic, Futuristic, Intellection, Relator, Ideation. I'm also pretty sure that half of those words aren't even words.

There are tons of tools, exercises and workbooks on the website to help you to determine what to do with yourself now you have this insight. So you know what that means... more time thinking about myself.

In case you are interested, I have copied the brief theme report for these five indicators below. Feel free to let me know whether you think Gallup got it right or not.

STRATEGIC

People who are especially talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

FUTURISTIC

People who are especially talented in the Futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.

INTELLECTION

People who are especially talented in the Intellection theme are characterized by their intellectual activity. They are introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions.

RELATOR

People who are especially talented in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.

IDEATION

People who are especially talented in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.

You can find the StrengthsQuest Assessment here.