Most prevalent themes

[Kathleen]

Our incoming freshman all took the Strengths Finder. We have a list in desending order of the the most prevalent theme. We are wondering what, if anything, we can do with this list. Has anyone used this information on campus? Any insite would be greatly appreciated.
Kathleen Canfield

[Fursey Gotuaco]

I would be interested in seeing how the themes played out. Was Adaptability the most frequent? I know that it is usually the most common amongst high school and college aged students.

When we do this with our students we tend to see patterns from class period to class period. I have never studied it from one year to the next. I have used this information to change my style of teaching and sometimes the lesson all together based on the theme emphasis. As teachers we tend to treat each class as a whole and cast a personality onto it. The SF themes give us a more specific way to diagnose what they need from a teacher. Hope this is of some use to you.

[Kathleen]

Yes, Adaptability was #1 followed by Includer, Restorative Strategic and Empathy. From yuor comment it sounds like high school and college students follow a pattern, I thought that your themes do not change? I am reluctant to share the list of most frequent because I do not want people to get the idea that some themes are better than others.

[Fursey Gotuaco]

Well, I'm not sure the high number of adaptability is a sign of change... we've batted that one around. We've wondered if it was a sign of the times or a sign of their age. When you look at how people have to be adaptable to the evolving technology and the changing of careers it is not too surprising to see that Adaptability might be a necessary step in character evolution. just a thought.

I did not mean to imply that we assessed the same student from year to year but rather different graduating classes.

[Tami Kaiser]

Adaptability was one of the top five strengths in the 5 students I gave the Strengths Finder to. These students are freshmen in high school. A lot of the vocab and phrasing was difficult for them, so I wasn't sure how their results would come out. Looking at them, I think that at least 3 - 4 out of the 5 themes are pretty true to them.

It will be interesting to see if this pattern continues when we give the test to the rest of our freshmen class at LHS.
I will let you know....

[Curt Liesveld]

I have been working with the strengthsfinder for the past 10 years and recently I recently I noticed something about adaptabilty. While most of my experience is in coaching and teaching adults, there may be some relevance with younger students as well. What if have noticed is that high adaptability poeple are more willing and able to release control. Instead of going against the flow of something they are willing to go with the flow which gets at that release of control. What I have also noticed is that people with high adaptabilty are often people who are willing to follow. That doesn't mean that if you can't be a leader if you have adaptabilty, but it may mean that you don't have to lead all of the time. I know there are a number of themes that both need and bring control (command, discipline, Harmony, arranger, Self-assurance) but there don't seem to be many themes that are strong at releasing control. It maybe explain why high adaptability people are so highly-qualified in highly changing environments. They are some things you can't change, so it may be best to simply go along for the ride.

[Scott Geddis]

I have one piece of interesting input. We adminsiter strenghts finder for all Student Athletes at our two-year college. 16 sports including football. Out of 480 students since we began, 192 (40%) have competition as one of their themes.
45 1st, 54 2nd, 35 3rd, 18, 4th and 20 as their 5th theme.

Just began working with the data and should have more to follow.

[Greg Mittelsteadt]

HI Scott,

I would be interested in learning what other traits you found common among your athletes...

[Mike Wallace]

Kathleen,

Strengths are not formed in a vacuum, but represent how your brain becomes wired as you grow and develop from the moment you leave the womb and enter the world. I argue for a both-and model of development where genetics (nature) establishes some aspects of who you are along with parameters or limits on skills, abilities, mental acumen, etc. Environment (nurture) is the other component, which includes how you interact with the world including family as well as objects, the friends that you have, the activities that you enjoy, and the societal culture within you grow and develop.

Thus, an interesting study would be to contact other institutions that are offering StrengthsFinder to all freshmen and collect the numbers for their top 5 strengths. You could see whether there are trends for this current Millennial college group. Other researchers have been researching the unique strengths and challenges of this particular group (Millennials Go to College {or something close to that title}). If there are trends can it be contributed to the cultural changes (parental and societal influences) in which they grew and developed?

From Scott's view, it makes sense that competition is in the top 5 for athletes (it would be really interesting to get their top 10 talents and see how many of the 60% had competition 6-10). Further, it would intriguing to see whether the best performing athletes (high scorers, dominant players, Michael Jordan type) have Competition or Achiever in their top 10 whereas the solid team players that are required for great team results possess other strengths that enable them to fill critical roles that do not necessarily show up in the stats.

Given all of this does Adaptability being the most common strength in today's culture? What might you expect the most common strength to be among those within the "Greatest Generation" who struggled through the Great Depression and fought a World War?

Great question! Hope this spurs more discussion... have you querried Mark Pogue or Shane Lopez Laurie Scheiner about this?

Mike

[Kathleen]

Thanks for your response. I have not gotten a response from Mark or Shane, but hope to.
Katheen

[Darlene A. Armstrong]

A few years ago I worked with 13 of 42 students beginning their junior year in a health professions program. At the same time three faculty and a staff person in the same field also completed the strengths assessment.
In the top 10 of the UG the were: Relator (8), Harmony (8), Belief (8), Focus (7), and Empathy (7).
In the signature themes top 5 of these UG, were: Harmony (6), Developer (5), Restorative (4), Empathy (4), Belief (4), Relator (4). Empathy was first for 3 of the UG, with Developer or Includer first for 2 each.
Of the four professionals (all educators) the signature themes of 2 each had Input, Learner, and Adaptability. In the top 10 of these professionals, 4 had Relator, 3 each with Learner, Input, and Arranger;2 each Responsibility, Harmony, Command. Intellection
I would be interested in tracking whether health professionals who enter the education side of the field tend to have different strengths then those who stay soley in the clinical side.

[Irene Burklund]

Adaptablity is the overall theme in students in the last coupld of year. We have pulled individual campuses as well as overall group and while there is variation in some schools Adaptablity seems to always be in the top 3. This has been the case for the last 3 years at least. We are trying to do more research on this. This compares with the overall StrengthsFinder database, which is now at 3.5 million people of the top five of:
Achiever
Relator
Learner
Responsibility
Strategic

[Michelle Louis]

Hi Kathleen,
You mentioned in your initial post that you have asked all of your first-year students to take the StrengthsFinder, and that based on their results you have generated the list of theme prevalence. Part of what you might choose to do with this information might be related to the kinds of goals you have for your students/institution overall... why, specifically, did you ask all students to engage in a strengths-based program? Your unique goals for this program might determine how you could best use this information or whether it is simply an interesting piece of information.