It was 2021. The identity work had been underway for nearly a decade by then.
The name realization, the INFJ mirror, the Kolbe, the DISC before and after, the Fascination Advantage loneliness, and the Enneagram exhaustion. I had accumulated a real picture of myself through the assessments.
But there was still a gap.
I could tell you how I was wired. How I worked. How others experienced me. What I valued. What drained me and what energized me.
What I still couldn’t fully articulate was: what are my actual strengths?
Not traits. Not instincts. Not personality descriptors. Strengths – the specific things I do well, the things that come so naturally they barely register as skill at all.
That’s what CliftonStrengths gave me. And the result changed something I didn’t know needed changing.
What CliftonStrengths Actually Measures
Developed by Gallup, CliftonStrengths is built on a foundational idea: rather than spending your life fixing your weaknesses, what if you spent it developing your strengths? The assessment identifies your top talent themes: the ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that come most naturally to you and that, when developed, produce your greatest contributions.
There are 34 themes in total. You can take the full assessment and see all 34 in ranked order, or you can take the top-5 version and receive your dominant themes.
My top 5 came back as:
- Positivity
- Restorative
- Learner
- Developer
- Connectedness
And my Leading Domain – the overarching category that four of those five themes fall into – was Relationship Building.
I looked at that result and felt something I hadn’t expected: recognition without the usual caveat. No, “but does that mean I’m too much?” No, “but isn’t that a problem?” Just: oh. These are strengths. These have always been strengths.
The Toxic Positivity Scare
Let me start with Positivity, because my first reaction to seeing it at number one was not relief.
It was: oh no. Am I a toxic positivity person?
That fear is real, and I think a lot of people have it. We live in a cultural moment that has rightly called out the harm of relentless forced optimism. The “good vibes only” crowd that dismisses real pain. The people who respond to grief with silver linings.
I didn’t want to be that, and more importantly, I wasn’t that, so what the heck?
Hurriedly, I dove into what Positivity’s description actually was, and relief settled in.
Gallup’s description of Positivity isn’t about ignoring the hard things at all.
It’s about a genuine, deep-seated conviction that it is good to be alive – that humor is available even in difficulty, that energy and enthusiasm are gifts worth sharing, that the people around you feel better in the world when you’re present. The Gallup description says it plainly: some cynics may reject your energy, but you are rarely dragged down. Your Positivity won’t allow it.
That landed differently. That wasn’t toxic. That was just – me. The way I’ve always been. The way I walked into rooms before I knew it was something worth naming.
I inject enthusiasm into projects – not in the chaotic sense, but in the sense of making them feel alive and worth doing. I celebrate achievements, even small ones. I find ways to make things more exciting and more vital. I have, apparently, always done this.
I didn’t know it was a strength. I thought it was just my personality.
More importantly, when coupled with my other strengths, my Positivity had been doing something all my life I never realized: it was the tool by which I became an extremely resilient person.
Gallup’s deeper research on Positivity confirms this: people with this strength actually feel the highs and lows more deeply than others.
They have to feel the low in order to know how to lift it. What Positivity does is channel that felt experience into resilience and perseverance. It’s not bypassing the difficulty. It’s acknowledging the storm and still walking outside afterward to find where the sun breaks through.
And when I learned that Positivity paired with Developer creates a compound strength specifically suited to celebrating growth and fueling cultures of development, I stopped. Because I have both.
That pairing explains something about how I naturally work with people that I hadn’t had language for before: I don’t just see potential in others. I feel genuinely energized watching it develop. And I bring a buoyancy to that process that isn’t performance. It’s just how I’m wired.
Restorative – The Fix-It Default, Named
Restorative at number two didn’t surprise me. By this point, I’d already seen it show up in the Kolbe as Restore.
But reading Gallup’s description gave it sharper language.
Restorative sits in the Executing domain – the only one of my top five that does. And what it describes is someone who is energized by problems, not dismayed by them. Someone who enjoys bringing things back to life – identifying the undermining factors, eradicating them, restoring something to its true glory.
What I didn’t expect was the compound effect of Restorative sitting alongside Positivity. Gallup’s theme dynamics research notes that Positivity lifts others’ spirits when a problem causes negative attitudes, allowing the Restorative to focus on actually solving the problem. In other words, they aren’t competing; they’re sequenced.
The Positivity handles the emotional weight of the problem space.
The Restorative handles the fix.
Together, they mean I can hold a difficult situation with warmth and still move directly toward what needs to change.
The shadow side is worth naming: Gallup notes that people with strong Restorative can be overly self-critical – their own harshest critic. And they can rush in to solve things for others when what those others actually need is to find the solution themselves.
Both of those have shown up in my life. The Enneagram Helper and the Restorative are a particular combination that requires watching.
Learner – The Process, Not the Prize
Learner at number three was clarifying in a specific way that the label alone doesn’t convey.
Gallup’s description makes an important distinction: Learner doesn’t necessarily mean you want to become the subject matter expert. It doesn’t mean you’re chasing credentials or the external validation of being the most knowledgeable person in the room.
What it means is that you are energized by the process of learning itself – the steady, deliberate journey from not knowing to knowing. The thrill of the first few facts. The growing confidence that comes with mastering a skill. The outcome of the learning is less significant than the getting there.
That was a relief to read. Because I have never been someone who needs to be the expert. I need to be learning. Those are different things.
This assessment series is, in some ways, a Learner project. All of it – the years of taking tests, reading reports, sitting with results, going back and going deeper – that’s not credential-building. That’s just what Learners do.
And paired with Restorative, Learner means I don’t just fix things – I understand them deeply first. I learn the system before I restore it.
Developer – Potential Is All I See
Developer at number four stopped me.
Gallup’s description opens with this: You see the potential in others. Very often, in fact, potential is all you see.
I read that and sat with it for a long moment. Because it’s true.
I don’t see people as they are in this moment and assume that’s the whole picture. I see them as works in progress – alive with what they could become, what they haven’t yet named in themselves, what’s waiting to be uncovered. That’s not a technique I learned. That’s just how people look to me.
The compound effect here matters:
- Developer paired with Positivity creates what Gallup specifically identifies as a strength combination suited to celebrating growth and fueling cultures of development.
- Positivity provides the energizing warmth that makes people feel safe enough to grow.
- The Developer spots the increment of progress; the small shift, the new behavior, the glimpse of something clicking into place, and names it.
- Together, they mean I don’t just believe in people. I make them feel believed in, and I notice when they’re evolving.
This is also – and I want to name it directly – why the coaching session I paid for that summer was so deflating.
I had Developer in me. I could feel what was possible in that conversation.
And the coach wasn’t using it.
The Coaching Session That Changed My Framework
After getting my CliftonStrengths results, I was excited. I wanted to go deeper – to excavate what these strengths meant for me specifically, in my actual life and work. So I paid for a coaching session with a certified CliftonStrengths coach.
I had just experienced what real excavation felt like through the work I’d done with Alice Karolina, which made what came next hit harder.
I purchased a coaching session with a Certified Clifton Strengthfinder Coach, and could not WAIT for my session.
We began the hour-long session by reviewing the report of the top 5. Then, overviewed the rest of the 34.
The coach read the document with me. Each description. Over and over, for each strength, she asked: Does that resonate? Does that resonate? Does that resonate?
No excavation.
No specific questions.
No real attempt to understand how these strengths showed up in my particular life, my history, my patterns, my blind spots.
Just the report, read aloud, confirmed.
I left feeling like I’d paid someone to read to me, and I want to be honest about what that experience gave me because it did, in fact, give me something, just not what I expected.
It gave me a very clear understanding of what excavation work is not.
It is not reading someone their results and asking if they agree. It is not surface-level confirmation of what the document already says.
Real excavation asks harder questions. It goes into specifics. It finds the places where the strength shows up in ways the person hasn’t noticed. It sits with the shadow side. It connects the result to the actual life being lived.
That’s a big part of why The Valued Experience® framework digs. Because I know from personal experience what it feels like to be handed a mirror and left to look at it alone, and I didn’t want to build something that did that to people.
Connectedness — Everything Is Linked
Connectedness at number five is the one I want to end on, because it’s the one that explains everything else.
Gallup’s description opens with: Things happen for a reason. You are sure of it.
And I am. Not in a naive, everything-works-out way, but in a deep, structural, almost cellular way. I believe we are part of something larger than ourselves. That our actions affect each other in ways we don’t always see. That the invisible hand is real, and attending to it matters.
Gallup also notes that Connectedness paired with Developer creates something specific: the ability to see not just individual potential but how individual growth connects to something larger. You don’t just invest in one person’s development – you see how that development ripples outward.
That pairing is, in some ways, the philosophical engine behind the whole ecosystem I’ve built. The Valued Experience® and The Valued Workforce® aren’t separate things. They’re two expressions of the same conviction: that personal transformation and organizational reality are not separate territories. They’re linked.
The Connectedness description also connects directly to Cosmos from my Values Bridge results – the faith that sustains, the sense that nothing happens in isolation.
Two different frameworks. The same root truth.
What I Want You to Take from This
There are strengths you know you have. And then there are strengths so woven into how you operate that you’ve never thought to name them because they’ve always just been you.
CliftonStrengths gave me language for the latter. And language matters.
When you can name something, you can develop it intentionally rather than just accidentally. You can recognize when you’re in your strength zone and when you’re being asked to operate outside of it. You can stop apologizing for the things that come naturally and start investing in them deliberately.
I still have the app on my phone. I still reference these results. I used the Gallup podcasts and videos to go deeper when the coaching session didn’t. I did the excavation myself – which is, honestly, exactly what a Learner with Developer and Restorative would do.
But if you take this assessment and want someone to really dig into it with you, make sure you find someone who actually digs.
