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Two tests · five years apart

Strengths

Strengths

I have taken Gallup's StrengthsFinder twice: in 2009 as a PhD student in Pittsburgh, and in 2014 as a professor in Doha. Four of the same five themes came back both times. This page is what they say about how I work, checked against what I have actually done.

2009 and 2014

Two snapshots

20092014outside the top five1 Input4 Input2 Learner3 Learner3 Individualization4 Intellection1 Intellection5 Achiever2 Achiever5 Futuristic

StrengthsFinder ranks 34 themes of talent for each person and reports the top five. My two lists share four themes: Input, Learner, Intellection, and Achiever. What moved is the order and one name at the edge.

In 2009 my profile led with collecting and learning. By 2014 it led with thinking and finishing, Futuristic had arrived, and Individualization had dropped out.

Gallup groups the themes into four domains. Mine sit almost entirely in one of them.

  • 4 of 5Strategic thinking
  • 1 of 5Executing
  • 1 in 2009Relationship building
  • noneInfluencing

no influencing themes, either time ↓

If you only read one part

The short version

Collect, then thinkInput and Intellection: I gather widely, then go quiet and work out what it means.
Learning is the workLearner and Achiever: getting good at something new is how I make progress.
Then look aheadFuturistic: once I understand something, I want to know where it is going.

Each theme, with evidence

Theme by theme

Strategic thinking

Intellection

2009 #4 → 2014 #1

I like to think, and I need time alone to do it.

Gallup describes Intellection as a constant mental hum: people who need room to reflect, who argue with themselves to test an idea, and who would rather be in at the start of a project than handed it at the end.

  • It was my top theme in 2014, the year I was teaching organizational behavior and running executive programs in Doha.
  • The part of building a course I enjoy most is the design: deciding what students should be able to do at the end, then working backward to each session.
  • My PhD was a long reflection on how leaders emerge in open communities like Wikipedia, which still shapes how I think about teams.

Executing

Achiever

2009 #5 → 2014 #2

Every day starts at zero, and I need to finish something by the end of it.

Achievers measure a good day by what got done. The drive restarts every morning, which brings stamina and a steady whisper of discontent.

  • I rebuild courses on almost every run: Data Visualization moved entirely into Tableau with about fifty short screencast lessons, and Data Mining moved from R to Python.
  • At CMU Qatar I taught a full undergraduate load while co-directing executive education, including three-day programs for up to 114 managers.
  • In 2009, writing about my first results, I joked that a PhD student needed a strength called EnjoysWorkingVeryHardForLittlePay.

Strategic thinking

Learner

2009 #2 → 2014 #3

The trip from not knowing to knowing is the part I enjoy.

Learners are drawn to the process of getting good at something more than to the credential at the end. New subjects and fast-changing fields energize them.

  • When I moved from teaching organizational behavior into data science, I did it by taking the ten-course Data Science Specialization in 2015.
  • I took graduate computer science courses through Georgia Tech's online program in 2018 and 2019, while working full time.
  • In 2026 I took Effective Coding with AI as a student. Several of the projects on this site came out of it.

Strategic thinking

Input

2009 #1 → 2014 #4

I collect things: books, articles, data, examples.

People strong in Input are curious collectors who keep things because one day they might be useful. The test's own warning is that input without output goes stale.

  • My reading library has more than a thousand ebooks, and I have kept a dated folder for every project since 2012.
  • I save AI news as I read it. That habit turned into AI in the News, the student briefings that open my classes.
  • This website is partly an answer to the warning: a place to turn what I have collected into something other people can use.

Strategic thinking

Futuristic

2009 not top 5 → 2014 #5

I spend a lot of time thinking about what comes next.

Futuristic people are pulled forward by a detailed picture of what could be, and they use that picture to energize the people around them.

  • It entered my top five in 2014. Two years later I left academia for data science at UPMC and then Duolingo, and came back to teach AI.
  • My newest courses, AI Methods for Social and Visual Data and Artificial Intelligence for Business Leaders, are built around what is changing.
  • I ask each class for its odds on AI going very well and very badly. This fall's median answers were 30 percent and 20 percent.

Relationship building

Individualization

2009 #3 → 2014 not top 5

Everyone is different, and the differences are the point.

Individualization is a gift for noticing what is distinct about each person and how different people can fit together.

  • It was third in 2009 and outside the top five in 2014, but I do not think it went anywhere. My 2014 Achiever description was mostly about listening and recognizing other people.
  • My executive programs in Doha drew managers from 25 organizations, from ministries to banks to an airline, and the work was making one room useful to all of them.
  • Advising capstones is the same skill: every team, partner, and question is different.

For students, colleagues, and clients

Working with me

Read with care

What the test can and cannot tell you

StrengthsFinder ranks your themes against each other, not against other people. A theme at number six is still strong; it just did not make the list. Themes near the cut line can trade places between sittings, so Individualization slipping out in 2014 is partly a real change and partly the noise you would expect from any self-report measure.

I teach organizational behavior and statistics, so I hold both of those thoughts at once. I used StrengthsFinder with my own students at CMU Qatar in 2014, as a starting point for a leadership assignment rather than a verdict. That is how I read my own results too.

Theme descriptions on this page are my paraphrases of Gallup's. CliftonStrengths and StrengthsFinder are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. I wrote about my first results in a short post in 2009.