Transformation Framework Part II: Sources & Methods in 'Now, Discover Your Strengths'

As we will see later, Gallup’s Q12 questions center around managers, their behavior, and how they interact with their employees. More specifically, great managers use a strengths-based approach to placing and getting the best performance from their employees. Knowing this, Gallup conducted further analysis using the same underlying data set, to determine a scientific means of locating and describing “talents” and “strengths.” The result is a survey and lexicon that serves as a verifiable, reliable, and repeatable method for hiring, selecting, placing, progressing, and promoting employees such that they achieve conspicuous performance.

The analytical methods used to discover these strengths are similar to those used for the Q12 model. As such, we will not discuss StrengthsFinder’s underlying research methodology in any detail. Instead we will explain the general superiority of the StrengthsFinder survey compared to other personality tests, describe the StrengthsFinder survey itself, and the validity of consistency of the survey. Gallup’s Strengths research is generally superior to other personality test because of the type of scale it uses in determining personal type and characteristics. Many personality tests assume a person is subject to binary, mutually exclusive type descriptors. For example, a person might score as an extrovert or introvert but cannot be both. The statistical term for this is ipsativity.[1] StrengthsFinder is not an ipsative instrument.

In reality one has strengths of both similar magnitude and relative magnitude. StrengthsFinder measures these similarities and differences and yields more descriptive and precise profiles. Strengths Finder indicates relative an individual’s strengths based on their test score, in an absolute sense, while also forming a person’s profile, in relative terms, based on behavioral overlap corresponding to other strengths.

Strengths Finder uses 150 to 400 question pairs (180 on average) which are posed to a respondent in order to isolate feelings and preferences related to emotion, optimism, spirituality, happiness, satisfaction, development, and well being among other factors.[2] Every question or combination of questions has shown statistical linkage to conspicuous performance in a particular area.[3] Questions occurring later in the question battery increasingly isolate, specify, and clarify a person’s strengths based on the respondent’s choices relative to each pair posed in their survey. StrengthsFinder also provides a language for succinctly describing the set of traits or talents indicated by the survey.[4]

Like the 88 keys on a piano the 34 possible strengths are the tones and chords that fit particular positions, jobs, and roles better than others. Respondents taking the cost-free test receive their top five strengths. More detailed paid services normally contracted by an employee, are also available which prioritize the relative magnitude of all 34 strengths for an individual.

The method of collecting respondent answers bolsters StrengthsFinder’s validity as well. In short, the manner in which the survey is administered ensures honest responses and consistent results. Descriptive pairs compel a respondent to choose between two options on a five point scale making it difficult to consistently conceal, intentionally or unintentionally, an individual’s preferences or patterns. Respondents are allowed only twenty seconds to respond to each question, forcing top-of-the-mind responses, which other studies have shown to yield better predictions regarding habitual and future individual actions.[5] StrengthsFinder also shows high internal consistency – .8 (on a one point scale) where .785 is normally considered sufficient for such a test-retest case.[6] This essentially means an individual respondent will not score appreciably different if they take the StrengthsFinder survey more than once. More specifically, StrengthsFinder shows consistent results across culture, language, gender, race, sex, and age, and shows differences of less than four percent between demographic averages.[7] Furthermore, there are only a few examples of statistically significant variation. For example, men score .031 higher than women in Achiever, women score .248 higher than men in Empathy, and minority groups score .048 higher than whites for Achiever.[8]

Finally, Gallup also found strengths do not change. In test and retest research where they asked candidates to take the test twice. The correlation between the two tests was .89, where 1 is a perfect correlation. This indicates StrengthsFinder is a sufficiently consistent test mechanism. In short, the survey is a more specific means of locating, specifying, and describing talent. However, one assumption does apply. StrengthsFinder is based on normal personality and positive psychology, assuming respondents are healthy functioning individuals.[9] The focus is on modeling psychological distinctions not for the purpose of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy which, in comparison, focuses on resolving dysfunction vice maximizing function. This makes StrengthsFinder suitable for application in a typical commercial or government work environment.

So What? Why Should We Care?

Like GTG and BTL relate based on compelling vice describing a transformed enterprise, respectively, Gallup’s Q12 and StrengthsFinder model relate a similar way.

Q12 explains how the best managers operate. StrengthsFinder provides the means of finding and describing the talents and strengths that underpin their best employee’s performance. That is, Q12 describes the traits of managers and that establishes that a strengths-based approach is a distinguishing factor in their ability to deliver exceptional organizational performance.

Similarly, StrengthsFinder provides an instrument by which an employee can be place in a situation where their performance is likely to be continuously high. More specifically, StrengthsFinder research revealed thirty four specific strengths that provide a lexicon for determining the strengths particularly strong in an employee. When these models are repeated and results aggregated across an entire organization and an entire enterprise, performance follows at those levels as well.

[1] Strengths, 139.

[2] Strengths, 250.

[3] Strengths, 250.

[4] Strengths, 11.

[5] Strengths, 78.

[6] Strengths, 252.

[7] Strengths, 248.

[8] Strengths, 254.

[9] Buckingham, Markus, Now, Discover Your Strengths. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 248. Cited hereafter as Strengths, 248. StrengthsFinder is a registered trademark of The Gallup Organization.