WholeU

http://www.wholeu.info/ Shannon O'Brien

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Personality type results

EI: 10 out of 17
Extrovert |-------------------------------------------------| Introvert
                                      |
                                     58%
SN: 10 out of 17
Sensation |-------------------------------------------------| iNtuition
                                      |
                                     58%
TF: 10 out of 17
Thinking  |-------------------------------------------------| Feeling
                                      |
                                     58%
JP: 8 out of 17
Judging   |-------------------------------------------------| Perceiving
                                |
                               47%

Your Personality type is INFJ "author"

Definitions: The four pairs of preference alternatives above (Extrovert, iNtuitive etc.)

Description: Find out what your type means, which job is suitable for you, which type you are most compatible with and more!

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1. Learner
2. Ideation
3. Developer Individualization
4. Connectedness Belief
5. Arranger strategic

Strengths Finder: the Myth of Greatness

I find I have a little trouble with Strengths Finder and thought I should bring them up rather than pretend that I'm enthusiastic about this aspect of the program upon which we are embarked.

To support his thesis, Tom Rath goes back to his childhood and how he 'tried in every possible way to be great' at basketball, 'trying to be the next Michael Jordan'. He scoffs at Rudy living his dream to play for Notre Dame saying 'he played a few seconds of football and made a single tackle ...after thousands of hours of practicing'. Perhaps his own trauma at not being a great basketball player is clouding his thinking. You don't learn to play basketball to be Michael Jordan, you play it because it is fun, it makes you strong and quick and teaches you to be part of a team. You don't learn math to be 'be a great accountant or statistician', you study it to develop your ability to think abstractly and to reason clearly. Rudy got a college education and made some friends. He may have 'found great examples of heroes who are soaring with their strengths' but so what.

Tom Rath then calls in the scientist for support of his claim. I would agree with the New Zealand study. I look at my boys now as adults and see the same personality that I saw at 3 months. That is amazing. But to claim it as scientific evidence in support of his StrengthsFinder trademark is ludicrous.

On he goes on claiming without evidence that 'your lesser talents can lead to weakness' and gives us the anecdote about the laborer who would have been the world's greatest general. All to make the case why need StrengthsFinder to 'find the areas where we have the greatest potential to develop strengths'.

The world of Tom Rath is a step beyond the Minnesota of Garrison Keiller 'where all the children are above average'. It is a new mythical land where you too can be the Greatest (if you buy the book then the Strengths Coaching Starter Kit, for $495). To me is smacks of elitism. I see this darling of Wall Street with strengths as a communicator of a myth that props up the generals and CEO's, a guy with a well planned sales strategy, a maximizer who points to a future where we might as well skip education, at least public education since the real return on investment will be found by giving little kids the StrengthsExplorer so we can cull out the greatest right away. He writes a new American Myth on greatness as innate in the great, a new social Darwinism. It's the same myth he was a sucker for as a boy.