The topic discussed during many conferences, discussion forums, internet forums or articles in professional journals on people management is talent management. Talents (employees with special abilities) should be discovered, their strengths should be nourished, they should be given interesting, challenging tasks and be assured of constant development. The question is, how to find out what talents we and our employees have? One possible way is to take so-called self-assessments, that is psychometric tools, in which a person answers a series of questions about themselves, and as a result get a profile of their strengths. Today I will present three of them, in my opinion the most interesting: Clifton StrengthsFinders 2.0^®, VIA Survey and Strengths Profile. The Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment was created under the leadership of educational psychologist Donald Clifton for the Gallup Organization. It was first introduced in 2001 with the bestselling book, Now Discover Your Strengths. The updated StrengthsFinder 2.0 was later released in 2007. The Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment helps identify the areas where the employee have the greatest potential for building strength. It measures recurring patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. During up to one hour-long online assessment, the person see 177 paired statements and choose which one best describes him or her. After completing the CSF, a person receive the results which are his or her five greatest strengths in ranked order with a set of information tailored to their unique profile. Obtained report (paid) includes customized order of the 34 CliftonStrengths themes from 4 domains:

• Strategic Thinking
• Influencing
• Executing
• Relationship Building

and personalized insights about how they appear in the person’s life. To perform the assessment, you can look for a consulting company that has the Gallup Organization’s accreditation in providing the Clifton StrenghtFinder or visit: https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/home/pl-pl and order an on-line assessment. The test can be performed also independently for a small fee by purchasing one of the Gallup Organization’s products regarding the development of employees’ strengths and using the provided access code to the on-line assessment. You will then receive a shortened version of the report with your top five strengths.   VIA Survey (full name: Values in Action Character Strengths Survey) has its roots in the academic environment. It was prepared by Prof. Martin Seligman, called the father of Positive Psychology, from the University of Pennsylvania and Prof. Christopher Peterson from the University of Michigan and validated by Robert McGrath, Ph.D. According to the authors, 24 character strengths can be distinguished that belong to the 6 basic virtues: Wisdom, Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance and Transcendence. Every person possesses all of them but in different degrees, giving each person a unique character profile. To get to know your individual profile, you have to answer 120 questions by choosing how much the statement describes you and your behavior. Assessment can be done free of charge on the website: https://www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths-Survey After completing the survey you receive a report with a ranking of all your strengths from the strongest to the weakest. For a fee, you can get more detailed reports: VIA ME! and VIA PRO Report, which include an in-depth analysis of the constellation of your own strengths and comments on how they can be applied in private and professional life for better development.   Strengths Profile is an online assessment developed by private Australian company Capp, on the basis of ‘Strengths’ methodology’ by Alex Linley, Ph.D. With this tool one can assess his or her strengths across three areas: Performance (how well a person performs when using these strengths), Energy (how energized a person is by using these strengths) and Use (how often a person uses these strengths). There are four types of Strengths Profile:

• Introductory, assessing 21 strengths and Expert, assessing 60 strengths for individuals;
• Team and Manager Insights for organizations.

What distinguished this assessment from others is that in a report one obtain not only the information about one unique strengths, gathered in categories: Realized Strengths,  Unrealized Strengths and Learned Behaviors, but also about Weaknesses. All of the types of SP are paid and can be purchased on:  https://strengthsprofile.com/en-gb   Personally I took Clifton StrenghtsFinder and VIA Survey and I fully identify myself with the obtained results. Performing such an assessment may give the person valuable insight into their abilities and characteristics, and contribute to their ling-lasting development. There is only one condition for getting reliable results: one must be completely honest with oneself and respond in accordance with reality and not his or her wishful thinking about own functioning or requirements of the environment. To what I sincerely encourage you and your coworkers to do 🙂