Exploring the StrengthsFinder Theme of Input®
If you had to pull together a team to win a trivia contest, who would you choose to be on your winning team? Do you know someone who seems to know a little about a lot of different topics and isn’t afraid to share what they know? Have you ever wondered why someone has so many books? So many magazines? So many contacts in their address book?
Each of these people might have the StrengthsFinder Theme of Input®.
Definition of Input®
A person with the StrengthsFinder Theme of Input® is inquisitive and curious, always on the lookout for new and interesting information. People with Input® seem to want to know about everything, and they ask questions to propel them to learn even more. Input® indicates one’s ability to not just collect information but to store it, and then to retrieve it when needed.
Think of the Strength of Input® as a well-organized hard drive or a complicated filing system. All information that has been received or consumed is organized and filed away, because the person with Input believes they may need that information someday. Whether they actually use this information or not is another matter.
However, people with the Strength of Input® place high value on all elements of data and information because they know that information is a way to build understanding and focus.
People with the Strength of Input® are;
- Inquisitive
- Curious
- Open
- Absorb information.
For people with Input®, Information is interesting and useful, and their aim is to discover new information and store it for just the right time. This information can be general and cover a vast amount of topics, or it can be narrow and limited to one or two fields of information. Either way, people with Input have a lot of information tucked away somewhere.
So what do people with the StrengthsFinder Theme of Input® do with information?
- Store it
- Retain it
- Recall it
- Remember it
- Find it
- Apply it
- Use It
How Input® is Generative
The Strength of Input® is generative when it uses the information to inform, teach and support other people. Often, most people do not remember or recall the information that is necessary or important, here is where Input® is valuable. When armed with just the right piece of information, anecdote, illustration or data point, someone with Input® can be a key change agent.
Many times we see generative Input® when people are the “subject matter expert” in a particular field, they specialize in one specific field that is needed. We have also experienced generative Input® with people who have general information that serves others as a springboard to more meaning conversations and direct problem solving.
Examples of Input®
A leader we know has an office filled with shelves and shelves of books. Books about anthropology, psychology, modern architecture, leadership, neuroscience, historical fiction, and in fact – there is even a whole row of cookbooks. She has read all the books, made notes in most of them, uses them when she is preparing for a public address, prepping for a lecture, or writing an article on leadership.
A man we know has a “storage unit” filled with rows of old school 4-drawer, metal filing cabinets. Each drawer is jam-packed with files and files of papers from classes he took, notes he’s taken, and interesting clippings. What’s scary… he even knows where everything is. All the information is neatly labeled and color-coded, in his own system. At any point — he can find it… his storage unit is very organized. The modern day version is perhaps someone with a computer with a gigantic hard drive and hundreds of folders. In each case, this is a unique example of a person with Input®.
Your StrengthsFinder Theme of Input®
If you have the StrengthsFinder Theme of Input®, how does it work for you?
