My "sticky strength" is Strategic. When I was little, my favorite story was The Snow Queen, where Kay is held prisoner in the Snow Queen's castle unless he can complete an ice puzzle. Day after day, he struggles to arrange the pieces of ice, like a Chinese puzzle, into the word that will make him free. While others perhaps found his dilemma frustrating or cruel, I found it exhilarating... I loved the idea of the challenge of completing the puzzle. I love games of strategy like chess and backgammon. I learned to solve a Rubik's Cube to the point of completing it in only a few minutes. I innately "see" the paths to possible solutions.
Most of my thought processes would look like a giant sliding puzzle - if this moves there, then this can lead to that, which in turn can mean this... I couple this with my Ideation strength to constantly generate new ideas to throw into the puzzle to improve the outcomes. In my ideal world, I wouldn't need sleep but could just lay there all night generating ideas and moving them into plans and processes.
My Learner strength supports this as well. When I am brainstorming solutions or creating new programs, I usually find that I don't know everything I need to know to make it as good as I want it to be. So I immediately seek out the knowledge or information I need. When I look back on my results, it is not unusual for me to have read numerous books or reference materials, learned new software or other systems, and even taken additional courses or training, just to create or improve a specific project. Because I love learning, this is not a hardship but a pleasure.
All of those strengths could easily cause me to get bogged down and endanger actual accomplishments if I didn't have my Activator strength. Activators can't wait to get started... we also tend to become "super producers". Once I decide what I want to do and how I want to proceed, I am off and running. It is not unusual for me to pause only for brief food and sleep breaks while in the middle of a project. Because all my endeavors are puzzles to be solved, the challenge of the work and exhilaration of solutions keep me motivated. Activators believe action is the best device for learning. We make a decision, take action, look at the results and learn. This learning then informs the next action and the next.
This process is then complemented by my final strength - Maximizer. Excellent, not adequate, is my measure. I am good at evaluating my work and figuring out how to make it better. Sometimes people accuse me of being a perfectionist - but that is not really the case. I am always ready to create and put things out there, knowing the flaws will inevitability surface, but confident I can then go back and tweak it to make it better. "Back to the drawing board" is a given and a positive for me.
Maximizers are also fascinated by strengths... their own and others as well. When we find a strength, we are compelled to nurture it, refine it and stretch it towards excellence. I am not much interested in things I don't do well. People sometimes tell me they think I'm good at everything. My response is always quick and honest - of course that's not true, but you usually don't see me do things I am not good at.
My love of maximizing strengths, my own and those of my students, is the foundation of this course. I hope my students will benefit as much as I have from this class!
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