StrengthsFinder™: What Do Your Strengths Need?

One of my clients has the strengths of Input, Intellection and Ideation in her top 5 StrengthsFinder™ strengths.  If she doesn’t have an hour or two of alone time every day to think, reflect and mediate, she gets super cranky.  Another has Empathy as her top strength.  If she doesn’t have alone time every day without naturally feeling what others feel, then she gets cranky.  Different strengths.  Same need.  For different reasons.

My Empathy/Connectedness/Relator needs to have an authentic, deep, one-on-one connection with one or two people every day or I become disconnected.  My Competition/Achiever/Command niece needs to be challenged, provoked and have clear rules of engagement or she’s not interested.  While my Harmony/Empathy assistant needs us all to play nice or she’ll find nicer playmates.  Different strengths.  Different needs.  For different reasons.

All of us have strengths.  All of our strengths have needs.  Yet we rarely talk about the needs, lest we seem needy.

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All of our strengths have needs.  And, it’s individual for each of us.  Same strength, different need.  Different strength, same need.  Different day, same strength different need.  Two of our own strengths, competing needs.  The trick: allowing all the needs, attending to all of the needs to receive the greatest value of the strengths.

To complicate matters, while each of our strengths have needs, the needs of one strength may conflict with the needs of another. Yikes, a bit of an internal battle.

If we acknowledge that we all have needs, does it make it a bit easier to talk about them?  If we acknowledge we sometimes have conflicting needs – both with those around us and within ourselves, does it help us work together and within ourselves to meet all of those needs?

Feel free to post your comments, insights and experiences below.