Standout Strengths: Factory Settings

Initial (Early) Inclinations Exercise

Clues about your talents and potential strengths often show up early in life but few of us have people around to notice and encourage these traits. As children, we knew who we were and what we liked to do even if we lacked the right words to explain it. Then, as Marcus Buckingham says, “At some point your childish clarity faded, and you started listening to the world around you more closely than you did to yourself. The world was persuasive and loud and so you resigned yourself to conforming to it’s demands.” But it’s not too late to learn from our childhood.

Examples

Age 1 Brooke Shields appears in TV commercial

Age 2 Jay Greenberg asks his non-musician parents for cello

Age 3 Tiger Woods shoots a 48 on 9 holes of golf

Oprah Winfrey was reciting sermons in a Mississippi Church

Age 4 Andre Agassi hits tennis balls with Jimmy Conners

Age 5 Architect Frank Gehry made models from wood scraps

Age 6 Ron Howard stars as “Opie” on Andy Griffith Show

Age 7 Stephen King writes his first short story

Age 8 Julie Andrews masters 4 octave range

Age 9 Mathematician Maria Agnesi gives one hour lecture in Latin

Age 10 Ben Affleck and Matt Damon meet on acting projects.

Age 11 Warren Buffett buys first stock

Age 12 Stephen Spielberg makes short movies

Age 13 Bill Gates writes his first computer program

Age 14 Wynton Marsalis plays trumpet for Philharmonic

Age 15 Paul McCartney is invited by John Lennon to join band

Age 16 Henry Ford quit school and starts as engineer

Age 17 Harry Houdini starts as a professional magician

Age 18 Mary Shelly tells Frankenstein in ghost story competition

Age 19 Bob Marley forms The Wailing Wailers

Age 20 Anne Sullivan begins teaching blind and deaf Helen Keller

Age 21 a depressed law clerk, Henri Matisse starts painting

Student Examples

Lori loved to bake mud pies at age 3 and still loves to bake

Skip loved to draw at age 7 and wants to pursue architectural drafting

David took a TV set apart at age 6 and still loves mechanical things

Factory Settings Explorer - Early Inclinations

Print out this exercise and think through your life starting with your earliest memories.

What Did You Enjoy At These Ages?

What Were You Good At?

Age

Thinking About Strengths

"Most job-hunters who fail to find their dream job, fail not because the lack information about the job market, but because they lack information about themselves."

~Richard Bolles, Author of 40 year best-seller, What Color Is Your Parachute

"The people who will hire you first need to differentiate you from other candidates. Your most immediate recognizable advantage is that unlike your competition, you understand the skills and attributes necessary for professional success. That you know who you are, what you offer, and how you want to be perceived will differentiate you from others. And because you understand yourself and can communicate this understanding you will project a unique presence."

~ Martin Yate, Author of the 25 year best-seller, Knock'em Dead Job Search Guide

"Try to think of the responsibilities from jobs you've had that you love so much that you would do them for free. Then, search for positions with those types of responsibilities.... When you love what you do, it no longer seems like work, and that should be the ultimate goal for each and every one of you."

~Abby Kohut, Corporate Recruiter and Job Search Expert

"Condense your whole career onto five 3x5 cards."

~Lou Adler

"Your professional profile identifies your profession or field of expertise. It might also mention which parts of that profession are your strongest suits, the areas you're most interested in."

~Orville Pierson, Highly Effective Job Search Author

"People always ask me, "Which career-aptitude tests do you use?" We don't use test. We talk to people. Can you tell us stories? Who are you? Who have you always been?" We collect stories and we look for the through line. The through line starts ten or twenty or thirty years ago. It starts in childhood. This stuff is in us."

~Liz Ryan, The Human Workplace

"I had to get to know myself, my resources, my strengths and know what I have to sell. Then I had to have the patience and the knowledge to find the right venue for what I had to offer. I had a faith that the right venue would show up...and it did.

~Occupation Change the World

Standout Strengths

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Factory Settings

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