Energizing Themes – What are energizing Themes?

Strengthsfinder 2.0 often puts themes into one of four categories. These include executing, influencing, strategic and relationship themes. Instead of using executing themes we will look at combining Strengthsfinder with a DISC idea and call them energizing themes.

What if you could describe some themes as internal focused and some external focused? And then some themes might be interacting focused and some more motivational focused. Do you see how much more this would add to your Strengthsfinder understanding and how they interact with others and yourself?

Take for example Maximizer which is outward focused because a Maximizer is looking for things to Maximize. Since a Maximizer likes to grow things from good or great to superb it might be possible to describe Maximizer as motivational as well.

Achiever – the poster child of Energizing Themes.

A great example of an energizing theme is Achiever. Achievers are all about internal thinking and accomplishing more each day. It is like starting each day at zero. Yesterdays accomplishments don’t count anymore. Achievers are great list makers, and they want to accomplish everything on their list. Because of that they can be very good at motivating people to accomplish what the achiever needs to get done that day.

Now we see that achievers can be internal focused and motivating. This adds a lot to our understanding of how achievers actually perform with other people and how they interact with themselves. This also helps us understand the needs of a person with achiever and how we can help them fulfill their need to achieve.

We have all seen someone that seems to be driven to accomplish more and more everyday and is never satisfied. What we don’t understand is the way they think and how that affects their attitude and how they feel about themselves because they will rarely share it with other people. Hence that is internal focused. The interesting thing is all 34 themes have the same capacity to be internal or external, but some themes are more likely to affect other people.

Self-Assurance – the confidence driven Energizing Themes.

Self-assurance is another energizing theme and is definitely internal focused. People with self-assurance, often live by their own set of guidelines or rules. These rules can be so well-defined that a person with self-assurance can seem arrogant or extremely confident depending on their DISC color. For example, a person who is Red-Direct will often tell others and not even think about how their words sound or feel to other people. When that happens they often come across sounding arrogant when their intent may not even be close to that reality.

Often self-assured people love to motivate other people to accomplish more than they think is possible. Since they have the capacity to believe in accomplishing whatever they determine is the right action to take. They will encourage or motivate others to also believe in their own ability to accomplish that task.

Energizing Themes are often internal and motivating focused.

When we look at energizing themes as being internal focused and motivational focused it will help us understand our needs if we have those themes or the needs of others that do have those themes. It will be important to ask questions and give good answers when people ask you questions about your energizing theme and how it works in your life. Remember, we all have preferences that may not be the same as other people , but that doesn’t mean we are right or they are wrong. It is just our preference and we should treat it that way.

Things to remember about all Strengthsfinder Themes.

It is our responsibility to interact well with others and not use our particular Strengthsfinder themes to take advantage of other people. A strength can have a positive or a negative side to it if we choose to use it that way. For example, a person with self-assurance is much more effective when encouraging other people to do their best than a person with self-assurance that is demanding and who wants to always get their way.