Thursday, April 19, 2018

My strengths

I've been doing an online Coursera class on Positive Psychology and Resilience, and we had to do a Values in Action (VIA) survey to figure out what our character strengths are. If you're interested, feel free to do the survey here, it took me around 10 minutes.
https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/testcenter

Make sure to look for VIA Survey of Character Strengths, and you'll need to create an account in order to do the survey. There are other surveys in there around optimism, authentic happiness, meaning in life, etc. All quite interesting!

Turns out my strengths are:

Your Top Strength

Forgiveness and mercy -

You forgive those who have done you wrong. You always give people a second chance. Your guiding principle is mercy and not revenge.

Your Second Strength

Leadership -

You excel at the tasks of leadership: encouraging a group to get things done and preserving harmony within the group by making everyone feel included. You do a good job organizing activities and seeing that they happen.

Strength #3

Love of learning -

You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Strength #4

Social intelligence -

You are aware of the motives and feelings of other people. You know what to do to fit in to different social situations, and you know what to do to put others at ease.

Strength #5

Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness -

Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.
I'm pretty amazed to find out my #1 strength is forgiveness and mercy! Learning, social intelligence and critical thinking I agree with, but #2 leadership is surprising for me. I see myself more as a good follower, or perhaps a key enabler in getting things done. I guess the description here sounds more like a compassionate/encouraging leader rather than the traditional macho/confident type of leader. Guess that's a strength of mine I should use more often and leverage at work!