PL 101: Understanding Your Gifts and Strengths from the MBTI (Discussion 2)

Please note: In order to successfully complete Course 1, you must respond to this post. Your comment/response should answer the questions/shows that you completed the given activity (if any). Read the post carefully and follow the instructions given. Save your responses to a document that you can later refer to. You will need to copy/paste your response in the course evaluation form at the end of each course to show that you have done the work and to refresh your memory.
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Hello Leadership Crew!

I have just gone through the introduction thread and read about all of you. If you havent yet introduced yourself, then please stop by and share a little about yourself so we can get to know you. Im encouraged by all the great people that have joined. This should be a fun and enriching program!

Let me first zoom back and talk more broadly about your career and how we can help. When you become a leader on 7 Cups, we want you to find the work fulfilling. Fulfilling work means that it is:

a) work you are good at;
b) work that is interesting to you; and
c) work that solves an important problem or meets an important goal (Thiel, 2015).

The sweet spot is that blue area in the middle below.

If you do work that you are good at, but not interested in, then you wont do a great job. If you do work that you are interested in, but not particularly good at, then it wont be great work. If you do work that you are good at and interested in, but it isnt helping to solve an important problem, then we wont be a good fit for you. We need alignment on all 3 things. We work very hard at the beginning of your work with us to match your inherent strengths and interests with needs we have so that we can work together to solve problems that we all care about.

You have strengths â things that you are just really good at when compared with others. Operating out of your strengths feels good, is personally fulfilling, and enables you to hit flow states. As a result, you are much more effective and productive. Operating out of weaknesses is a drain. If you have to do work that you are not good at, then you wont be as effective. Doubling down on your strengths enables you to level up much faster and it helps 7 Cups make much more progress. Â

The next step becomes helping you find ways to identify your strengths, gifts or natural talents. You can learn some of this through self-observation - what do you seem especially good at? Are there things that just come natural to you that are more challenging for others? My wife, for example, is really good at writing; it just comes natural to her. Im pretty good at public speaking, whereas others find it more challenging.

Another way is to ask people you trust. You can say: What do you think Im good at? Or: what do you think are my top 1-3 strengths? Things that stand out to you about me? Note: only ask people you trust because sometimes people can give you feedback in a harmful rather than helpful way especially if they are not trustworthy.

For the purposes of this course, we are going to use personality tests to help you identify your strengths. Some of these are better than others; they are more reliable and have more research behind them. Broadly, we are using them here to help you begin to map out your strengths and to help you find ways where you can naturally excel here on 7 Cups, in your personal life, and in whatever career your are in or choose further down the road.

To start:

Go to this site here and take the test: https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test

Next, in the thread below, answer the following questions:

1. What is your personality type? Include your 4 letters please Â

2. What were the main things you learned about yourself?

3. What are your top 3 strengths or gifts according to this test? Please describe them.

Last, when people interact with one another, it makes the course more enriching and it allows us to learn more about one another. In addition to posting in the thread, please also be sure to respond in a helpful and positive way to at least 3 other comments in this thread.

You can also ask any questions in this thread and well respond to them as well.

Very excited to kick this off with all of you!

After fulfilling the requirements of this post, please check out the next post here! You must take part in the brainstorming/activities given in all of these posts to successfully complete the program.

This post is brought to you by the Leadership Development Program Team, find out more information about the program here.