Have you thought about how important it is to spotlight your strengths in your LinkedIn summary?

Yet, you may have hesitated about doing this, as you wonder which strengths to include. If you’re a job seeker, you might choose to vary the strengths depending on the types of jobs you are pursuing.

As a business owner, you may want to expand upon the strengths you list if the services or products you provide change.

 

Discover Your Top Strengths Through the Clifton StrengthsFinder

I have found the Clifton StrengthsFinder a helpful tool for discovering and/or validating personal strengths. Psychologist Donald Clifton based this tool on information from his research on people in leadership roles. Partnering with colleagues from Gallup over several decades, he conducted interviews with over 20,000 leaders.

In 2001, he and co-author Marcus Buckingham published Now, Discover Your Strengths. In it, they emphasize the value of focusing more time and energy on your strengths than on your weaknesses. What I especially found fascinating was the description they provide of each of the 34 strengths included in the book.

According to Wikipedia:

“…by identifying the individual strength of the members of the organization, its members can be utilized in more suiting positions, hence developing the required skills easily, helping to reduce turnover, improve employee morale and the organization’s overall performance.”

Learn more about this book, see the list of all 34 strengths with a short explanation of each one at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now,_Discover_Your_Strengths

 

 

My Own Experience with the StrengthsFinder

I first learned about this powerful assessment tool after hearing Marcus Buckingham speak at the Toastmasters International convention in August 2005 where he was honored with the Golden Gavel award. Every year, Toastmasters bestows this award on someone outside of the organization who epitomizes excellence in communication and leadership.

Since I first took the StrengthsFinder assessment in 2005, I have taken it two more times. The second time I took the assessment, I purchased the code from Tom Rath’s book StrengthsFinder 2.0, published in 2007. Most recently, I got it from his 2008 book Strengths Based Leadership.

I especially like how this book describes each of the 34 strengths in the context of the four basic needs of followers. According to the research cited by Rath, these needs are trust, compassion, stability, and hope. Reading this book has been a true eye-opener for me, and I highly recommended it.

Here are my top five strengths from all three assessments.

  • August 2005: Winning Others Over, Positivity, Communication, Input, and Ideation
  • November 2015: Winning Others Over, Positivity, Communication, Maximizer, Connectedness
  • February 2018: Maximizer, Positivity, Winning Others Over, Communication, Arranger

In next week’s blog post, I will give examples of ways in which you can reference your top strengths in your LinkedIn summary.

 

How About You?

Are you familiar with the StrengthsFinder tool? If so, have you included your top five strengths in your LinkedIn summary? What other assessments have you taken to reveal your strengths to you?

 

About Joyce

Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those age 45 and up, to become more comfortable using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.

She works with business owners, business development professionals, leaders of nonprofit organizations, job seekers, retired people, consultants, and many others. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com