To better understand myself, I ended up taking the CliftonStrengths assessment. While I am wary of these personality/proclivity assessments, I find myself falling prey to them time and time again. My main issue with them is how you are feeling in any particular moment dictates how you perform, much like the Hungry Judge Effect. Instead of re-evaluating your outcomes over, say, 1 month or 1 year, and taking the averages to determine the "now" you versus the "persistent" you, it only captures one instance of your mental state and reflects that back to you as if that's always who you were and always who you will be. This in turn creates an internal bias in yourself where you always think you should or do act in certain situations based off what some uninvolved test that assumes no responsibility said about you. It's like the people who are into astrology and will throw in a "that's such a Cancer thing to say!" or "that's the Taurus in you!" to forever trap people in a web of expectation based on something that may or may not actually be an honest assessment of this person's true nature.
I went into this test with best intentions and quickly remembered why I don't like them - they throw a ton of questions at you, all covering the same ten-or-so topics over and over, until you are totally mentally exhausted from it. They also seem very easy to fake. For example, if I could convince myself that a certain outcome made me more desirable for whatever goal I had, it would not be difficult to reach that goal, or at least close to it. Either way, I tried to take it earnestly, but my fatigue and irritation set in, which may or may not have affected my outcome.
Ok, enough overthinking. My top 5 outcomes were: Strategic, Adaptability, Ideation, Relator, Connectedness. I don't necessarily think these are bad, and likely Strategic is one of my core competencies because I couldn't help but notice that the results mixed nouns (Adaptability, Ideation, Relator, Connectedness) with adjectives (Strategic). Also there are 2 actual words (Strategic, Adaptability) and 3 made up words that could easily have been replaced with a real word (Ideation -> Imagination, Relator -> Empathy, Connectedness -> Relatable). It may seem petty that I'd focus on that, but when I see things like this, I can't help but fixate on how underdeveloped the entire thing may be if something as simple as a correct grammar hasn't been managed correctly, especially for something that costs $60 to participate in.
My results fit into 2 categories of the 4 total: Strategic Thinking (Strategic, Ideation) and Relationship Building (Adaptability, Relator, Connectedness). I sound like a likeable guy, I think: probably pretty smart with some good ideas, but I can't help but think about the categories I don't have in my top 5 with Executing, or anywhere in my top 10 in Influencing. I read this as I'm an ideas guy that struggles to do the work and struggles to convince other people to do the work either. So where does this put me?
This brings me back to my above point about the internal bias. Do I let this bother me? Do I start seeing myself as someone who is trapped with his ideas, his desire to be around other people, but can't follow through or enlist help? What kind of career or life is there for me with that?
Or do I chalk it up to me just being in a certain mindset when I took the test and assume if I took it again in 3 months, I'd probably get a better result, that I may or may not be trying to game the test for?