Week 1, Tianzi Xie

Top 5 strength:

learner

focus

achiever

significance

analytical

Interaction between my themes

I was not surprised when I got the results back and I think this test is pretty accurate.

There is no a set of words can cover up all the aspects of a person. but these four words is pretty much represent who I am or at least my current mentality. They explain and complement each other.

One of the key point for being focus is that destination is the standard to evaluate each action. having a clear goal is an necessary part of my life. although I m not quite sure about the final goal of my life but at least I have goals for each specific stage. I m currently a college student and I think to prepare yourself for a successful career is absolutely an important goal but it s more or less too narrow minded. What a college student should aim for is to expand your verizon and learning from every experience. a successful career or anything you may want will be a natural outcome after you make yourself overall a "better person".

What I ve talked above leads to my second strength of being a learner. I use whether or not i learn from something to evaluate each of my action and experience. when i am success at doing something i will learn what i did right and when i fail i will reflect on my action to learn what i did wrong or could have done better. through evaluating each of my experience there won t be a true failure and over time i would find i am growing and become wiser, therefore a overall better person.

by reading through the definition I believe that i am a outright achiever. i have to be productive for every second even though sometimes at the price of burning myself out. it s like a internal fire burning in my mind to keep me moving forward. at the end of the day I would always ask myself what did I achieve today? if I find there is nothing I can say I would feel really bad even guilty.

Why I have to be so productive and even being so hard on myself. Here comes the other two of my strengths. Focus and significance. Because I have goals so I have to move closer to them each day. why do I have to achieve those goals. because I believe in that is what can validate me significance and make me feel fulfilled.

However I think the definition of significance given in the reading is not broad enough. It mostly focus on how other people look at you and it seems that I do what I do is only for my public image or using a chinese term"my face". I need others to think of me as credible, successful and professional. but the problem is you can not make everyone likes. each individual has his own values. Your achievement being admired by some but seems to be unimportant or unworthy for others. Significance is more of a answer to myself rather than to others. as long as i live up to my own values i would feel good and satisfied.

How do you see your strengths contributing to your experience with Board Immersion? Which strengths do you think you'll use the most this year? Why?

learner:

Being a learner I enjoy the process of learning no matter what the specific subject is. What I care about is the joy i gained from knowing very few to become professional and mastering a skill. this class provides me with a wonderful opportunity to learn more about non profit. Even though I have been involved in a couple community service actitives before but I am still pretty ignorant about the inner work of non profit organizations. Learning from scratch about how to play a role in a board and overtime I will find myself be able to accomplish a project with the professionals. How wonderful the process is and the confidence I will gain from it will be tremendous. Such mentally inspires curiosity and i will learn with enthusiasm and take initiative during this process.

Focus: one of the responsitbities for a board member is to keep the whole team on track and make sure the fulfillment of its mission. My strength will enable me to examine each of my action to make sure what I ve done is contributing to the goal of the organization.

Also in a broader perspective. The goal I have for this program is to learn about non profit organization and try to make it better through my effort. Keep this in mind it will guide me through every hard moment I might have during this process.

Achiever: This strength will definitely keep me being productive and effective.

Significance: Civic engagement is my passion. I consider community service and social responsibly not only as a duty or an obligation but rather as self realization. I applied for board immersion program so that I can learn about non profit and try to make them work more effectively so that help more people and make the world a better place. it is not a slogan but something that I truly believe in and am willing to put effort in. by doing this program I feel satisfied and happy. Therefore keep me being enthusiastic and motived.

I don t think there is a strength that I will use the most. I believe that all four of them work together to make this program a better experience for me.

What questions do you still have about StrengthsQuest and your talent themes in particular?

The reason why I did not mention my fifth strength is that I really can not agree with it. I am not analytical, actually on the opposite sometimes I am a little credulous. Probably some of my answer send misleading signal or I am analytical inside but i just do not realize it yet.

Maegan's Post 1

Based on the Strengthquest assessment, my top five strengths are input, intellection, learner, strategic, and achiever. When I found out that four out of my five top strengths fell under the category of strategic-thinking, I was not surprised because I consider myself to be a very critical thinker. I think that having the majority of my strengths in a single category presents both strengths and weaknesses. For example, I think that I will be able to bring many new and innovative thought processes to the table, both in my board experience and in other aspects of life. In addition, my strength as an achiever signifies that the ideas that I present will likely be pushed for implementation. At the same time, having all of my strengths centered around idea formation leaves the potential to become dissociated from the people for which my ideas are targeted toward and can possibly lead to over analysis. For example, I wonder if my strengths would actually be strengthened if they were more spread out and incorporated things like empathy or connectedness.

I see all of my strengths contributing greatly to my board immersion experience. I hope that my strength in input will allow me to combine ideas ands and factors to present new strategies to the board with confidence. I hope that my ability to learn as well as to intellectualize problems will enable me to absorb the information that other board members share with me and apply it to knowledge that I have obtained from the classroom and other services experiences.  I hope that these two strengths will work with my third strength, strategy, to develop ideas and projects. Finally, I hope that my strength as an achiever will enable me to actualize the proposed project in some meaningful and effective way as well as maximize my learning experience. The strengths that I expect to apply the most are probably learning and strategy, simply because those are the ones that I notice most regularly. However, I would like to bring out my strength as an achiever through the board immersion program.

I am still curious to know the order of the rest of my strengths, because I think that it is equally valuable, for the board immersion program as well as other areas, to understand where my weaknesses lie. 

Week 1: Katie's Experience Begins

What are your top 5 StrengthsQuest themes? How do you think your themes interact? How do you see your strengths contributing to your experience with Board Immersion? Which strengths do you think you'll use the most this year? Why? What questions do you still have about StrengthsQuest and your talent themes in particular?

Blogging: I cannot even begin to tell you how anxious, nervous and excited I am to begin this whole “blogging” thing. I have never blogged before, but I am so excited to start reflecting on my experiences with the Board Immersion Program. Get ready to read about the ups and downs, the trials and triumphs and the challenges and successes. (Note: I will try my best to be both entertaining and insightful!)

The Power of StrengthsQuest: Every time I reflect on my top five StrengthsQuest themes, I am amazed at the accuracy of the analysis and how well the themes depict my strongest personality traits. I don’t know how to put these thoughts into words except for the fact that this assessment just fascinates me.

My Top Five:

§ responsibility

§ individualization

§ achiever

§ arranger

§ belief

Interaction between the Themes: These five themes interact and complement each other to make me the person I am today and are the driving force for the actions and decisions I make in my daily life. An achiever is described as someone who takes great satisfaction from being busy and productive. While this is definitely something that describes me, it is important to me that I also have the strength of responsibility. While being busy and productive is great, it is extremely important to me to be committed and follow through with my word. These two strengths complement each other well and have a lot of interaction in my life. Being an arranger also interacts with the other themes because it is described as someone who can organize, but also be flexible. Having this theme along with achiever is extremely beneficial in order to prioritize and organize my schedule, but also have the flexibility to accept changes. Lastly, I also find there is a strong interaction between belief and individualization. Belief is having certain core values that are unchanging and a defined purpose for life. Someone who is talented in the individualization theme is intrigued with the unique qualities of each person. As I reflect on my future aspirations, these final two themes go hand in hand. I truly find joy in helping others. I have known for years that I want to work with pediatric cancer patients in some direct capacity. I think every child has something special to offer and each child I have interacted with gives me joy in some way. As I continue my pursuit to become a Physician Assistant, I understand the value of being a contributing member of a team means in terms of caring for a sick child. By figuring out how people who are different can work together productively, I will be able to use the strength of individualization to help children with cancer in the most effective manner.

Contributions: My strengths will be beneficial to the work I will be doing with the Board Immersion Program over the course of the year.

§ Responsibility: I will do whatever it takes to complete my strategic project to the best of my ability.

§ Individualization: I will seek to look for the good in each individual I work with and try to figure out how to best utilize each person to fully maximize the group’s potential.

§ Achiever: I will work hard to accomplish the goals I have set for myself and the organization.

§ Arranger: I will coordinate my schedule, ideas and resources to fully maximize the impact I can make on the nonprofit organization.

§ Belief: I will strive to make a difference in the organization by believing in its core values and showing my passion of helping others.

Most Frequently Used: Throughout the year, each of these strengths will be utilized in different capacities depending on the specific experience. With that being said, I believe that while completing a strategic project for one of the local nonprofit organizations, the strengths I will use most frequently will be belief, arranger and responsibility. Each of these themes is crucial to the finding the success of a nonprofit organization’s mission. To work for a nonprofit organization, one must believe in the mission of the organization. Without belief, it is hard for an individual to be passionate about the cause. I also believe that when working with a nonprofit organization, one has a responsibility to uphold. Because I have committed myself to not only the Board Immersion Program, but also the nonprofit organization that I will be working with, it is important to me that I stay true to my word and perform the best work I can. Lastly, I believe arranger will be frequently used. Staying organized and changing plans when necessary will be a key to finding success with the strategic project.

Quote of the Week: Since this is my first blog, I decided that I wanted to incorporate something unique at the end of each entry. I am a huge fan of inspirational quotes, so I have decided to share one with you at the end of each entry…ENJOY :)

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt

Week 1: Strengths Reflections

What are your top 5 StrengthsQuest themes? How do you think your themes interact? How do you see your strengths contributing to your experience with Board Immersion? Which strengths do you think you'll use the most this year? Why? What questions do you still have about StrengthsQuest and your talent themes in particular?

My top 5 are: Relator, Command, Maximizer, Futuristic, Self-Assurance.

My top three themes relate especially strongly. I can see how my relator and maximizer work together when I'm working with people; I enjoy matching people and resources. Helping my roommates pick their classes is a good example of where this works in my life. Command and maximizer work well together, but this combination can be frustrating when the situation isn't maximized and I can't provide guidance either. Futuristic is blended with all of my strengths because I'm constantly using these strengths to plan for the future. Finally, self-assurance gives me the confidence to use those plans that I make with the futuristic.

These strengths will suit me for the Board Immersion experience because I'll be able to relate what the organization needs to what/who I know, have the confidence to ask questions (Command), see opportunities for improvement and growth (maximizer/futuristic), and have confidence in the decisions and questions that I make (self-assurance).

Of those strengths, I think I'll use maximizer and relator most this year on the project as I relate the things I'm learning in the classroom, people I know from my experience in non-profits in Columbus, and the things I learn from the Board to help the organization grow and develop through the project.

I'm interested to see how self-assurance plays a role in the year and am curious to see how my previous strengths (strategic, woo, and arranger) will appear throughout the year.

Blog Post # 1 Lauren Milazzo

After taking the StrengthsQuest, my top five strengths were harmony, achiever, discipline, consistency and responsibility. Last winter, I participated in the Strengths Coaching Program so I learned a lot about all 32 strengths and specifically focused on analyzing mine. Four of my strengths, achiever, consistency, discipline, and responsibility, all fall into the executing category. My fifth strength, harmony, falls into the relationship building category. Since four strengths are in the executing category, I think it’s easy to say they definitely interact! I also think achiever, consistency, discipline and responsibility all go hand in hand with being a determined person who wants to excel and succeed with whatever project they’re working on. Achiever means you have a drive to work hard to achieve something and in order to achieve something you need to be disciplined and responsible. Harmony seems like an odd ball out with my other four strengths but I think preferring agreement over conflict is beneficial when you’re trying to achieve something—especially in a group situation.

I see all five of my strengths contributing to my experience with the Board Immersion in several different ways. I hope my determination will allow me to become more knowledgeable about nonprofit boards. I also think my determination to do well will really show through with the project that I’ll be doing for the nonprofit. I also think my discipline and responsibility will keep me on top of all the class readings and assignments, as well as helping me stay on track with the project deadlines. I can also see my strength harmony playing a role with my involvement on the board for the non-profit. If there ever were disagreements or differences of opinions on the board, I could see myself stepping in to try and avoid conflict. Overall, I think I will be mostly using the strengths: achiever, discipline, harmony and responsibility.

Since I learned so much about strengths in the program I participated in, I really don’t have any questions. I will be curious at the end of the program to see how accurately I predicted my strengths usage.

Blog Post #1 - Andrew Wharton

Top Five Strengths:

Self-Assurance

Adaptability

Focus

Achiever

Arranger

Overall, I would say that my themes are very complimentary of one another. When reading over the synopsis for each one, it was very easy to see commonalities between all five. I have also noticed that a great majority (3/5) of my themes are can be considered to be related to execution under the class handout. This makes sense because I often base my performance on how much of something I can accomplish in a high quality manner. I am continuously (whether I want to admit it or not) tied to my i-Phone and live vicariously through my inbox. Given the tools, I love to orchestrate my vision of a project or task at hand. I think it is also worth noting that my two other themes are very supplementary to any type of detailed execution. Self-assurance gives me confidence in my abilities as a leader and a moral compass to follow. Adaptability allows me to stay flexible in my approach in order to accommodate for unforeseeable events. Minor things rarely upset me as much as they do most people. In summary, I believe that my traits are very supplementary of each other and can all be focused towards an execution attitude.

I think that these strengths will serve me well throughout the Board Immersion experience because people will find me very responsive to thoughts, requests, and suggestions. If I am given a project or a role in a meeting, I will be able to execute it very independently on a deadline. In engineering, we eat, sleep, and breath due dates so I trust I will be very reliable to a board in that regard. I think my strengths also put me in a position to contribute from the start of the onboarding experience. Given some background on any topic, I enjoy what some people would call “just running with it” (leveraging my adaptability trait).

I anticipate using adaptability the most throughout the experience because it has proven useful already throughout my experience with the cohort. I am the only male in the cohort and am venturing into something I know very little about. As an Industrial and Systems Engineer I am trained to think about bottom lines and profits for large corporations. Helping others is not my strong point but through this cohort I hope I can leverage my educational background in order to help others. If board meetings are anything like the other meetings I have experienced on campus there will undoubtedly be multiple people of different backgrounds that bring different perspectives to the table. I will have to adapt to their meeting times and styles (the entire world we know is not based on “college time”). If I had to pick a close second I would have to say Focus will be my next most utilized strength. I should have little difficulty fronting the degree of effort to stay focused to the task on hand and I do tend to thrive in goal setting environments. Since all organizations have goals, I anticipate fitting in just fine.

Overall, I think my strengths are a very accurate representation of my person and I don’t have very many questions regarding why I possess them. I would be more interested to listen to the characteristics of other’s strengths so I can better understand what they bring to the table and what direction they are coming from.

Strengths - Molly

With every time I have to analyze my themes, I realize exactly how accurate StrenthsQuest really is. My top five strengths, Arranger, Competition, Developer, Includer, and Achiever, are all things that describe me very well. The way that I see them intertwine makes sense in my mind. I see the Arranger strength as my ability to have many different factors involved in a situation and finding a way to make sure that these factors are being used in the most efficient way possible. To me, most likely there is a better way to get things done. I think this plays into my developer strength very well. Seeing the potential in a person or situation and helping them develop into a fully successful person just helps as I am making the decision as an arranger to have the most efficient work being done. Seeing this potential in the people around me, I believe, is what makes me an includer. I want everyone to be involved in the group, because everyone has something to give. I believe that the last three strengths are all three really important to me being an achiever. At the end of the day, something must be achieved for me to feel content. Finally, competition is rooted in all of my other themes. In everything I do I am constantly comparing my work to others to make sure that I am up to par. If it isn't, no matter how well I did, it was a loss in my mind.

I know that my strengths will play a huge role in my participation in the Board Immersion Program. Hopefully with my Including and Developing I can build strong relationships with the people I am working with on the volunteer level and help them realize their potential. I think the achieving and the arranging will come into play more on the board side of things. Since I am searching for a constant way to improve situations, I might be able to help make the non-profit run more efficiently even if it is in a very small way. I don't think my competition will play in the experience in the way that I want to win some sort of competition against the people around me, but more win against the social issue and how it affects me personally.

I don't necessarily have any questions about my top five strengths, but I would be very interested in finding out what order the rest of my strengths are in. I would love to see what my #34 strength is just out of curiosity. I think one of the most amazing things about this is that the more you understand your strengths, the more aware you are when using them. Although I don't have questions now, that doesn't mean I don't have a lot to learn about where my strengths will take me.

Post 1: Relationship Wizard?

Trying to keep a positive outlook about my strengths. Since, after all, they are my strengths, right? Also, I've never written a blog and have only read about two in my lifetime...so blog lingo? I'll try to get it down–but it's for a class...so do I need to be formal? I guess I'll find out on Friday. Anyway...my top five strengths from the StrengthsQuest are all in one category: relationship building. And although it's unusual for a person's strengths to all draw from one category, I am keeping in mind that it doesn't mean that the other three categories hold my weaknesses.

My top five strengths are Connectedness, Developer, Empathy, Harmony and Relator. I think it's an easy answer to say how they are all tied together. Clearly, my strengths lie in building relationships with others. I think it's safe to say that this can also include maintaining relationships, given that one of my strengths is Harmony. I relate to people easily and can empathize where they are coming from. Being an accepting person, I always attempt to anticipate how people might feel depending on what I say or don't say or how I act, gesture or imply something.

Seventy-five percent of communication is through non-verbal actions. The thing to keep in mind about building and maintaining a relationship is that it's not just about what I say to others, but it's also through my actions and gestures that show what the relationship means to me. Through the Board Immersion program, I know I will be able to connect to board members easily as well as my peers in the program. One of my strengths is Developer; part of that strength is being able to see the potential in others. My goal is to help them experience success. That will make me a great team member in BIP as we tackle these projects together.

My broad relationship building skill will add to my experience immensely because I will be able to create bonds with people throughout the year...and hopefully not just superficial bonds. Since I care about what others care about, I know I will make it my priority to get jobs done and to stay in communication with my board mentor and my peers. Yes, it could mean that I'm more stressed at times because I want others to see my work as excellent, but that's just another way that my strengths contribute to being apart of this program.

Since all of my strengths are so similar, it's hard to say which ones I will use the most. I can safely say I will have to use harmony; when working with others, things almost never go smoothly. Finding a common ground, holding my peace and modifying my own objectives are all things I anticipate having to do while working on getting a job done. Nothing can get done if everyone is butting heads. I will probably also have to whip out my Empathy strength throughout the year. People are going to have different situations going on in their lives that maybe cause them to be late on a deadline or whatnot. Being able to empathize with them can only help the project succeed, rather than creating tension through frustration. Since apparently I am a relationship wizard, I can advise that it's better not to guilt the person because of failure to meet a deadline. They probably already feel bad enough as is.

I don't have any questions regarding StrengthsQuest or my talent themes...only that I hope one day I can find out what my next top strengths are. Are the next four in the Relationship Building category, too? I'm kind of hoping for more diversity.

Post 1 -Nikki Carbonari

My top 5 StrengthsQuest themes are input, connectedness, harmony, positivity, and relator. The last four of those themes are all in the relationship building category so they definitely interact and correspond with one another. The theme that is not in relationship building is input, which is under strategic thinking. StrengthsQuest’s definition of input is a person who is inquisitive and likes to gather information from many different places and experiences. I think this theme goes hand in hand with both relator and connectedness. A vast knowledge of different things and a curiosity for the world allows me to connect with others and then be able to relate to them. Harmony is described as finding the common ground in an argument, which can go along with input and relator. The theme positivity also corresponds with connectedness, which StrengthsQuest describes as acknowledging that everything happens for a reason. All in all, I can see how my five themes interact and now I am more aware of their presence and how I use them in my everyday life.

I definitely think all of our group’s strengths will contribute to our experience with Board Immersion. For me, four of my top five strengths are in relationship building, so hopefully these will be helpful when getting to know the organization and my mentor. I think positivity and harmony will be two useful strengths when working on a board of made up of many different people. In the classroom, relator, input, and connectedness will hopefully be three themes that allow me to contribute to the class. It is hard to pin point one theme that will be the most useful but in general positivity is a good theme to always have in any situation. I think positivity relates to having an open mind and an optimistic outlook for the entire experience. Obviously there will be ups and down during the year, but for the most part I hope I will be able to maintain a positive mindset throughout the experience.

I have taken similar strengths/personality tests in the past, however this was my first time taking StrengthsQuest. I thought the test was very thorough and my results were actually pretty accurate to how I would describe myself. I would definitely say I possess all of my top five themes, although I’m not sure if I would put them in the exact order StrengthsQuest did. I was also a little confused by their definitions of certain talent themes. My initial understanding of a theme was usually quite different then how StrengthsQuest explained it. Overall though I thought StrengthsQuest was a great way to start off Board Immersion and introduce everyone to each other’s strengths and the ways in which we will be able to work together to put our strengths into use. Right now I do not have any questions about StrengthsQuest, but I know we will be going over it more throughout the quarter and if questions come up then I’ll be sure to ask.

Week 2 Prompt

What are your top 5 StrengthsQuest themes? How do you think your themes interact? How do you see your strengths contributing to your experience with Board Immersion? Which strengths do you think you'll use the most this year? Why? What questions do you still have about StrengthsQuest and your talent themes in particular?

Welcome to the Board Immersion Program

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