Adam White

I am just finishing a book called "Now, Discover Your Strengths". It is the follow up to "First Break All the Rules" Both books have been interesting and helped me figure out more about myself.

The theory of the books is that you can’t change who you are at you core. Everybody has certain talents that come naturally. You should spend your time trying to figure out these talents and focus on them. Note that this is completely contradictory to "old school" thinking where you are supposed to spend all your time working on your weaknesses. If you spend your time trying to fix everything you will wind up extremely frustrated for a long long time.

Case in point – I don’t posses a strong theme for Empathy. No matter how hard I’ve tried this just doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve taken steps to mitigate the effect of this but if I were in a role that required this as a signature theme I would probably become very frustrated very quickly.

I can say from personal experience that focusing on your weakness causes frustration because I’ve done it. We’ve all done it. It wasn’t until I changed my my thought process that I started to see things differently and was able to feel better about what I am doing and where I am going.

The book has an online profile to help you figure out your signature themes. Completing the profile gives five "Signature Themes". They have 34 in total. If you are like me – I read the themes before doing the profile and tried figure out what themes fit me the best.

Here are my Signature Themes

- Individualization
- Focus
- Arranger
- Activator
- Significance

My guesses were pretty accurate although the last theme surprised me at first. For those that know me they might think this list if pretty accurate or completely off. In the end – it doesn’t matter. The interesting part for me was the thought process. It made me think about what I do and why I do it. It helped me understand better:

- Why do I react the way I do at work? At home? 
- Why do certain people or situations frustrate me while others don’t?  What characteristics do these situations/people have in common?
- Why am I naturally drawn to some people and to other people I am repelled away? 
- Why can some people calm me down while others are oblivious that something is wrong.

Knowing my themes helped me explain to myself my reluctance to participating in certain efforts at my company or why I have made certain personal relationship decisions. More importantly I hope I will be more conscious of these things in the future causing me to be able to explain my thoughts better.

If you find yourself wondering about or getting frustrated with these types of things in a professional or personal manner you may want to read these two books. You might discover some things about yourself that you didn’t know or were scared to admit. You will also be better prepared to assess what kind of situations/careers/people will help you bring out your natural talents and help you feel "fulfilled". It’s not an easy process but then again – nothing easy is ever worth doing!
 
If you have to deal with me on a professional/personal basis and want to understand more about my inner workings (behavior) then read on – otherwise you can consider this the end of my post :

Individualization

You individualization them leads you to be intrigued by the unique qualities of each person. You are impatient with generalizations or "types" because you don’t want to obscure what is special and distinct about each person. Instead, you focus on the differences between individuals. You instinctively observe each person’s style, each person’s motivation, how each thinks, and how each builds relationships. You hear the one-of-a-kind stories in each person’s life. This theme explains why you pick your friends just the right birthday gift why you know that one prefers praise in public and another detests it, and why you tailor your teaching style to accommodate one person’s need to be shown and another’s desire to "figure it out as I go." Because you are such a keen observer of other people’s strengths, you can draw out the best in each person. This Individualization theme also helps you build productive teams. While some search around for the perfect team "structure" or "process," you know instinctively that the secret to great teams is casting by individual strengths so that everyone can do a lot of what they do well.

Focus
"Where am I headed?" you ask yourself. You ask this question every day. Guided by this theme of Focus, you need a clear destination. Lacking one, your life and work can quickly become frustrating. And so each year, each month, and even each week you set goals. These goals then serve as your compass, helping you determine priorities and make the necessary corrections to get back on course. Your Focus is powerful because it forces you to filter; you instinctively evaluate whether or not a particular action will help you move towards your goal. Thos that don’t are ignored. In the end, then, your Focus forces you to be efficient. Naturally, the flip side of this is that it causes you to become impatient with delays, obstacles, and even tangents, no mater how intriguing they appear to be. This makes you an extremely valuable team member. When others start to wander down other avenues, you bring them back to the main road. Your focus reminds everyone that if something is not helping you move toward your destination, then it is not important. And if it is not important, then it is not worth your time. You keep everyone on point.

Arranger
You are a conductor. When faced with a complex situation involving many factors you enjoy managing all of the variables, aligning and re-aligning them until you are sure you arranged them in the most productive configuration possible. In your mind there is nothing special about you are doing. You are simply trying to figure out the best way to get things done. But others, lacking this theme, will be in awe of your ability. "How can you keep so many things in your head at once?" they will ask. "How can you stay so flexible, so willing to shelve well-laid plans in favor of some brand-new configuration that has just occurred to you?" But you cannot imagine behaving in any other way. You are a shining example of effective flexibility, whether you are changing travel schedules at the last minute because a better fare has popped up or mulling over just the right combination of people and resources to accomplish a new project. From the mundane to the complex, you are always looking for the perfect configuration. Of course, you are at your best in dynamic situations. Confronted with the unexpected, some complain that plans devised with such car cannot be changed, while others take refuge in the existing rules or procedures. You don’t do either. Instead, you just into the confusion, devising new option, hunting for new paths of least resistance, and figuring out new partnerships – because after all, there might just be a better way.

Activator

"When can we start?" This a recurring question in your life. You are impatient for action. You may concede that analysis has it uses or that debate and discussion can occasionally yield some valuable insights, but deep down you know that only action is real. Only action can make things happen. Only action leads to performance. Once a decision is made, you CANNOT NOT act. Others may worry that "there are still some things we don’t know," but this doesn’t seem to slow you. If the decision has been made to go across town, you know that the fastest way to get there is to go stoplight to stoplight. You are not going to sit around waiting until all the lights have turned green. Besides, in your view, action and thinking are not opposites. In fact, guided b
y your Activator them, you believe action is the best device for learning. You make a decision, you take action, you look at the result, and you learn. This learning informs you next action and your next. How can you grow if you nothing to react to? Well, you believe you can’t. You must put yourself out there. You must take the next stem. It is the only way to keep your thinking fresh and informed. The bottom line is this: You know you will be judged not by what you say, not by what you think, but by what you get done. This does not frighten you. It pleases you.

Significance

You want to be very significant in the eyes of other people. In the truest sense of the word you want to be recognized. You want to be heard. You want to stand out. You want to be known. In particular, you want to be known and appreciated for the unique strengths you bring. Likewise, you want to associate with others you are credible, professional, and successful. And if they aren’t, you will push them to achieve until they are. Or you will move on.  An independent spirit, you want your work to be a way of life rather than a job, and in that work you want to be given the free rein, the leeway to do things your way. You yearnings feel intense to you, and you honor those yearnings. And so your life is filled with goals, achievements, or qualification that you crave. Whatever your focus – and each person is distinct – your Significance them will keep pulling you upward, away from the mediocre toward the exceptional. It is the theme that keeps you reaching.

All the typed out singature themes above are copyright The Gallup Organization.

This weekend I spent Saturday and Sunday with my girlfriend driving through the country side of small town Ontario. For those that know me personally this seems very strange. The fact that I rented a car, which happened to be the exact make, model and color of my fathers car, to drive through the countryside, is also an extremely ironic point.

Why is it strange that I spent the weekend driving through the country and enjoying it? Well… you see… I’m from a small town in another province (Nova Scotia). When I’m at home I hate driving through the country side. My Dad on the other hand loves it. In fact, since I’ve moved to Toronto I’ve tried to shun everything "country like" from my life. I’ve tried to convince myself that the country side is for the older generation and people who don’t like change. Over the weekend I started changing my view a little bit. So why the change in heart? What’s the difference now?

The past few weeks have been particularly stressful for me – Work, personal life, etc – the things people usually bitch about. I decided on the spur of the moment on Friday afternoon to surprise my girlfriend and ask her if she wanted to get away. We had an incredible time driving down to Niagara on the Lake and had an even better time driving back.

What’s the difference between the countryside in Nova Scotia vs. Ontario. I came to the conclusion that there is none. Well – almost. Nova Scotia has the ocean – which I love – where Ontario has vineyards and orchards.

On the way home we stopped at our favorite winery so we could enjoy their outside cafe/patio. Unfortunately their patio wasn’t open. The lady recommended we go back to a town called Jordan to have lunch – so we did. After lunch we toured around main st Jordan (about 4 shops and 2 restaurants). We found a B&B at the end of the street. We went in to see what it was like. Inside we met a really nice guy who was telling us all about the area and what is around. He must have talked to us for at least 1/2 an hour about the surrounding area. He mentioned an area called Balls Falls.

Being in no particularly rush we decided to find Balls Falls. When we got there it was pretty neat. The guy from the B&B said it was better than Niagara Falls. While I would disagree with him slightly it was still pretty nice. They had a park area, charcoal BBQ that the public can use. Best of all – there weren’t that many people there! Maybe 20 so this leads me to believe that it’s a good place to relax in the summer

Overall the weekend was a great experience. We relaxed and had a good time. It reassured me that it is possible to have a conversation with complete strangers and not have either party feel threatened – something that doesn’t happen that often in Toronto. It made me change my perspective. An observation I’ve had is that big cities can, but not always, make people jaded causing them to take on a very narrow view of the world. This thought seemed counter-intuitive to me at first because after all big cities have so much to offer. With that I agree but for me the great things about the big city have a tendency to come at the expense of relaxation and cause me to have a narrowed perspective of how the real world works.

I’ve spoken to people from the city that don’t know that there are places in the world where people don’t speed up on a yellow traffic light – they actually slow down or where people will hold a door open for you – even if it means going out of their way, or they will wave to you when the meet you on the highway (although I must admit this is a bit strange) or that they will start a conversation with you out of the blue if you are standing at bus stop. When I talk about this to people – they seem shocked, almost confused as if these are unspeakable crimes and that I should be shot for talking such blasphemy 

I guess in the end that is why I like to travel.  It allows me to experience something besides murders/scandals/rude people etc. and all the bad things that come with living in a big city. It allows me to broaden my horizons.

In the end I believe you get what you think about and to paraphrase something that a work colleague said to me – You get in your life what you put up with. I’ve decided not to put up with the stress and jaded view of the world – traveling is my new outlet!

I must admit – I didn’t want to start blogging. I was hestitant to start for the same reason I don’t own a cell phone.It’s just one more thing to take up my time. But after realizing how much i read other peoples blogs I decided that I would give it a shot.