The 34 Talents

Your specific combination of talents is the patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that define you. It is important to understand each of your primary talents because they determine two things. Firstly, they determine what you are able to learn quickly and become great at. Secondly, they dictate the tasks you enjoy and which you receive energy from. It is important to be aware of your talents so that you can leverage them.

Archetypes

The Archetypes are groups of talents, categorized by type. Each talent is connected to a specific Archetype, which describes the fundamental behaviour and collective strengths of your talent combination. The graph shows how significant each archetype is compared to others. The more of your primary talents that fall into one archetype, the more dominant and natural this fundamental behaviour and collective strengths will be to leverage. The more your primary talents are spread out into multiple archetypes; the more well-rounded and contextual your behaviour will be.

Time Focus

Time focus indicates whether the respondent tends to focus on the past, present, or future. How the respondent focuses on the specific time dimensions depends on related talents. While looking at the time focus graph, it is not only essential to understand where the respondent tends to focus, but also if there is a time dimension where the respondent cannot put their focus.

Discussion Behaviour

This dimension explains the typical behavior you tend to see from the respondent in a situation where two or more people exchange views, opinions, knowledge, etc. Whether it is a feedback session, a constructive discussion, or a confrontation, based on the respondent's primary talents, he/she will lean towards a pattern of behavior.

Stress Behaviour

The stress dimension does not explain whether the respondent is stressed or not. It instead indicates how stress is expressed in the respondent's behaviour. This indication gives insights into the signs respondents show as they get stressed, which allows people to spot and counter potential stress. The graph also gives you an indication of how prone the respondent is to become stressed.

Motivational Drivers

Motivating drivers explain why the respondent gets motivated - In other words, what makes them tick and drives them forward. This dimension includes 15 motivational situations that make sense and add value for them as individuals. The list is not exhaustive but consists of the 15 most common motivating drivers found in a global survey and found to be universal values that, although they vary, exist across all cultures.

Motivational Behaviour

This dimension gives insights into what types of behaviour that motivates the respondent in an organisational and team context. These insights describe the behaviour that makes us act and how we then take action. If the respondent has multiple motivating behaviours, it is important to understand in which contexts which behaviour applies.

Work Behaviour

The work behaviour dimensions are a simplification of the respondent's talents, put into everyday language. Work behaviour also translates the talent profile into common job-post and everyday language. This dimension is good at explaining how the person will behave in a workplace, but only the talents can explain why the person behaves this way.

Team Behaviour

The team behaviour dimension indicates which roles the respondent can play in a team. The dimensions build on Professor Belbin's nine team roles, which states that high performing teams need all roles covered but not necessarily from nine different people. If the talents allow it, one person can cover multiple roles in a team - Research shows that the average person can take on three-team roles while maintaining their expected performance.

Knowledge Dimension

The knowledge dimensions are based on the process of knowledge and indicate where, in this process, the respondent is naturally best at adding value. The process of knowledge explains how knowledge is created to how it is passed on and implemented by others.

Top Talents

1. Targeted (100)

You are always in the pursuit of achieving or accomplishing goals. You work hard and get things done. Your talent explains your drive, and it pushes you to do more and to achieve more. By being targeted, you focus on the goal and what is essential to achieve. Once you meet your goal, you quickly set up the next objective to pursue.

Strength: Your talent fills you with the energy needed for working long hours without burning out. It is the trait you always can rely on to get you started with new tasks, objectives, and challenges. It is your power supply that sets the pace and defines the level of productivity for you individually and in your workgroup.

Challenge: You need to achieve something every day, or you will start feeling a sense of dissatisfaction or discontent. No matter how restless you feel, you sometimes deserve a day off. Others may feel pushed aside or even stepped on with your relentlessness to reach your goals.

Insight: Be sure to align objectives with your manager, partner, or team to ensure you accomplish priority goals and do not diverge towards other tasks due to your restlessness for achieving something. Accept your restlessness by understanding your targeted talent and remember to celebrate your victories before moving onto the next goal.

2. Learning (83)

You love to learn, and the process of obtaining new knowledge, practising what you have learned, growing it into competences, and gaining the confidence in your skill excites you. The outcome or the subject is not necessarily important, but the process is.

Strength: You are a natural learner and always strive to educate yourself or develop new skills. You have an intense curiosity and are always willing to try something new. You build a broad knowledge base that your colleagues can leverage and gain value from utilising.

Challenge: You can be too focused on the learning process, thus not focusing on the goal you want to achieve with the knowledge. You need time to learn and may expect that learning is always the highest priority.

Insight: Understand that your restlessness and drive comes from your need to acquire knowledge and skills. Remember, always keep the objective in mind to ensure you are learning the right things and do not go too deep into a particular subject. Take responsibility for satisfying your talent and don't expect others to do it.

3. Just (79)

You value balance and fairness and often fight injustice, inequality, illegality, and selfishness. You are very conscious of how people are treated and how you treat people. You expect others to behave in the same way.

Strength: You can create an environment with balance, where justice prevails, and where everyone has a fair chance. You stand up for people that are mistreated or can't stand up for themselves, and you are good at doing things "the right way".

Challenge: You are challenged when things are unfair. Your morals are often a lot higher than the ones around you, which can be difficult as you expect people to have the same view on the world as yourself. This sense of fairness can incline you to become everybody's judge and create rigid systems.

Insight: Before acting as a judge of the situation, always take a step back and consider if you are the right person to judge. Remember, not everyone thinks as much about fairness as you do, and the situation may not be as big of a deal as you might think.

4. Principled (76)

You possess a set of core and consistent values, which affect your behaviour and determines your direction in life. These values give your life meaning and dictates what is right or wrong. Since you are value-driven, your work has to be meaningful to you. It is widespread for principled people to be family-oriented, spiritual, and value high ethics, in themselves and others.

Strength: Your consistent values and high ethics make you very credible, dependable, and easy to trust - People know that you will deliver what you have promised. You are very confident and passionate about the things you do, and you work hard for what you believe in. Once you have accepted a set of values or a mission, you will do anything to enforce it.

Challenge: You will become resistant if you don't agree with the value set that a person or company possesses. Likewise, you will also find people superficial if they value money or power.

Insight: Learn to accept other peoples’ or companies’ values even though you don’t agree with them. Accept that there exist numerous perspectives on the world and try not to take the disagreement personal.

5. Focused (73)

You want to know a clear destination, to determine the direction you are headed and what is most important right now. If these things are outlined, you can focus on pursuing the goal and filter unimportant tasks and trivial disturbances away.

Strength: You are very passionate about what you focus on and have a high level of concentration. You are efficient, and you are always securing that you and your team are on the main path to reach your destination.

Challenge: You are impatient and find disturbances and unnecessary offsets frustrating. Your ability to intensely focus on a destination makes it challenging for you to chase multiple objectives of the same priority.

Insight: You can benefit a lot from indicating (e.g., with a post-it) that now is not the time to disturb you, and they should shoot you an e-mail so you can get back to them later. Also, try to time your work to control that you do not lose touch with your other tasks. Lastly, remember to finish one task at the time.

6. Individualising (73)

You are fascinated by the differences in people and can notice the unique qualities of each individual. You can instinctively observe how each person is motivated, builds relationships, and thinks, thus their potential and opportunities for development.

Strength: You have the ability to identify each individual's strengths and potential. This ability makes you able to accommodate your behaviour to each person and excellent at spotting talent and uncovering potential. You can select and organize teams so everyone can contribute the most.

Challenge: You are not good at working in rigid and controlled environments where rules dictate people's behaviour. Your ability to vary your behaviour to each individual may be perceived as negative and untrustworthy.

Insight: Remember, many people expect fairness among individuals, so if you choose to treat everyone uniquely, you should be explicit about it. Another way for you to derive energy is to help write desired actions or goals down for others, as it will help you hold them accountable.

7. Developing (71)

All you see is potential in people and progress. You are drawn to growth and are driven by helping others experience success. While interacting with people, you are on the lookout for signs of growth, as it is your fuel.

Strength: You are good at spotting unused potential, making you have great belief in others' abilities. You love helping people become better, which over time, will make many seek you out for advice and encouragement.

Challenge: You are challenged when others stand still. This need for growth in others will incline you to try to develop people who do not necessarily want your help. You can also end up focusing on development when it is not enough time for it or when you are not the right person to develop.

Insight: Always focus on how you propose your help to others and listen to the individual you want to help. It is important that the other person is open to your support and that it is the right time to do it.

8. Inclusive (71)

You include and welcome people to whatever you are doing and make them feel welcome. This way, everybody feels like part of the group, and the group benefits from all their support. You are sure that deep down, we are all alike, and therefore it doesn't make sense to judge or exclude other people.

Strength: You have the ability to make everyone feel welcome, and as they belong. You don't give anybody a special treatment and are good at keeping a positive team spirit.

Challenge: You have a difficult time (de)selecting people, and it can affect you if a person leaves the group - especially due to cut downs. You can lose focus on the objective due to valuing team spirit and relationships higher than the goal, and you most likely won't enjoy working in competitive environments.

Insight: Remind yourself who is relevant to include at what times throughout the process. It can quickly kill the effectiveness by bringing in too many opinions to the table too early. Don't take it personally, if somebody forgets to include you - Often it wasn't due to bad intentions.

9. Problem Solver (69)

You love solving problems. You retrieve your energy from getting the opportunity to fix breakdowns or issues because you find them fun and challenging. In which domain you are able to solve problems, depend on your other talents.

Strength: You quickly gain an overview of how things work and, therefore, always seem to find a solution. You have a tremendous operational mind that can make things work and succeed.

Challenge: You depend on other talents to ensure an optimal solution, or you may need a quality controller to stop you from making quick fixes you need to solve again later. You quickly get mixed into others' problems, wanting to resolve them.

Insight: Before jumping straight to a solution, assess two things: 1) is now the right time to solve this problem, and 2) is my solution an optimal solution that solves the problem long term. This process forces you to solve the most critical issues first and to find a sustaining solution.

10. Responsible (64)

You take psychological ownership for every task that is expected of you, and you feel emotionally bound to follow through to completion - Excuses are unacceptable. You have high standards, so you always deliver at least what is expected, and you get the things done.

Strength: You have a high work ethic and are willing to do anything to deliver what you have promised. You are very dependable and are driven to take on responsibility.

Challenge: Your willingness to volunteer may lead you to take too much on your plate at once. This willingness can force you to work too hard to get everything done, or you will end up not delivering what you have promised. Your high standards can make you spend too much time on a single assignment if you don't align expectations from the beginning.

Insight: Always consider if it is the responsible thing to do towards you and your employer to take more responsibility on your shoulders. By being responsible for too many tasks can exhaust you mentally and physically.

11. Innovative (60)

Your mind is made to create ideas, to look for connections, and to view the world from different angles and perspectives. You are driven by finding a fresh perspective, discovering a new opportunity, or finding a different solution. You are generally perceived as creative or original thinking.

Strength: Ideas come to you with ease, which gives you the ability to feed your team with ideas or solutions to problems continually. You will often be the focal point of the team because it is likely built around your idea.

Challenge: You will be challenged by limiting your focus to one objective as your mind keep feeding you with new ideas to pursue. You may have to partner up with a person who can talk through your ideas and sort the best ideas out.

Insight: Find a system that stores all your good ideas so they can be used when it is time. The best result comes from you taking responsibility for the ideas you get. You will quickly get bored, so make some small changes to your work.

12. Empathic (58)

You can sense the emotions of the people around you and are driven by understanding those people you interact with. You can see the world through their eyes, and without necessarily condoning their choices, you can understand them.

Strength: You have the instinctive ability to understand and anticipate others' needs, feelings, and desires. This ability makes you good at addressing sensitive and critical matters and help people find the right words and sentences to express their feelings.

Challenge: Your empathic talent makes you sometimes get too close to people. Because you have the ability to understand others, it may be difficult for you not to take responsibility for how they feel or not to act on their emotions.

Insight: Assess if you have the mental capacity to take responsibility for other people's emotions. It is okay to put yourself first and prioritize your well being. Be aware that your focus on others' feelings is not an escape path from your own.

All Talents Explained

1. Targeted (100)

You are always in the pursuit of achieving or accomplishing goals. You work hard and get things done. Your talent explains your drive, and it pushes you to do more and to achieve more. By being targeted, you focus on the goal and what is essential to achieve. Once you meet your goal, you quickly set up the next objective to pursue.

2. Learning (83)

You love to learn, and the process of obtaining new knowledge, practising what you have learned, growing it into competences, and gaining the confidence in your skill excites you. The outcome or the subject is not necessarily important, but the process is.

3. Just (79)

You value balance and fairness and often fight injustice, inequality, illegality, and selfishness. You are very conscious of how people are treated and how you treat people. You expect others to behave in the same way.

4. Principled (76)

You possess a set of core and consistent values, which affect your behaviour and determines your direction in life. These values give your life meaning and dictates what is right or wrong. Since you are value-driven, your work has to be meaningful to you. It is widespread for principled people to be family-oriented, spiritual, and value high ethics, in themselves and others.

5. Focused (73)

You want to know a clear destination, to determine the direction you are headed and what is most important right now. If these things are outlined, you can focus on pursuing the goal and filter unimportant tasks and trivial disturbances away.

6. Individualising (73)

You are fascinated by the differences in people and can notice the unique qualities of each individual. You can instinctively observe how each person is motivated, builds relationships, and thinks, thus their potential and opportunities for development.

7. Developing (71)

All you see is potential in people and progress. You are drawn to growth and are driven by helping others experience success. While interacting with people, you are on the lookout for signs of growth, as it is your fuel.

8. Inclusive (71)

You include and welcome people to whatever you are doing and make them feel welcome. This way, everybody feels like part of the group, and the group benefits from all their support. You are sure that deep down, we are all alike, and therefore it doesn't make sense to judge or exclude other people.

9. Problem Solver (69)

You love solving problems. You retrieve your energy from getting the opportunity to fix breakdowns or issues because you find them fun and challenging. In which domain you are able to solve problems, depend on your other talents.

10. Responsible (64)

You take psychological ownership for every task that is expected of you, and you feel emotionally bound to follow through to completion - Excuses are unacceptable. You have high standards, so you always deliver at least what is expected, and you get the things done.

11. Innovative (60)

Your mind is made to create ideas, to look for connections, and to view the world from different angles and perspectives. You are driven by finding a fresh perspective, discovering a new opportunity, or finding a different solution. You are generally perceived as creative or original thinking.

12. Empathic (58)

You can sense the emotions of the people around you and are driven by understanding those people you interact with. You can see the world through their eyes, and without necessarily condoning their choices, you can understand them.

13. Futurist (52)

You always look into the future and ask “Wouldn’t it be great if…”. You see a detailed vision of what the future holds and are often very positive/optimistic. You are driven by the new and exciting.

14. Confident (51)

You have great faith in your abilities, judgments, and decisions. You know that you are good and you know what is best for you. Others may guide and suggest, but you alone have the authority to form conclusions and act.

15. Connecting (50)

The connecting talent describes your attitude towards relationships. You prefer having close friends and like to get to know people on a deeper level as everything else seems superficial to you. You dare to give from your inner self to build your connection and make it easier for them to open up.

16. Disciplined (48)

Your world needs to be structured and ordered so that you are in control. Predictability makes you feel comfortable, so you set up routines and focus on-time schedules and deadlines. You master the detail and are impatient with errors.

17. Holistic (48)

You are certain that everything happens for a reason, and we all are part of something bigger. You believe that all people are connected, which implies that we have specific responsibilities in this world. Your awareness of these responsibilities and how all things affect each other dictate your value system. Ordinarily, people with this talent are considerate, caring, and humble.

18. Mediating (48)

You look for agreements and common grounds because there is little to be gained from conflicts and friction, so you prefer keeping them to a minimum. You find it much more essential to create harmony and cooperation.

19. Initiating (46)

You are driven by initiating and starting new tasks and projects. You want to get started as quickly as possible while you still have many things going on. You don't like to use too much time on analyzing as you know deep down that only action can lead to performance. Once a decision is made, you have to act. You believe that getting started is the best way to learn, because once you take action, you look at the result, and learn before your next move.

20. Positive (46)

You are optimistic as you can always see the positive side of things and expect the best. You enjoy making other people smile through humour, praise, or whatever is needed.

21. Strategic (46)

You have a distinct way of thinking, and you always look at things from a strategic point of view. This perspective allows you to see patterns, play out scenarios, predict potential obstacles, and draw out the best plan to get to your destination.

22. Contextual (41)

You go to the past to look for answers or connections that can explain the present or the future. You need to understand the history behind how things or situations emerged to have confidence in your decisions.

23. Improving (40)

You always strive for excellence and resent mediocrity. You are driven by taking something good and making it superb - whether it is your skills, others' abilities, solutions to tasks, or anything else. You prefer to work with other highly skilled people to capitalize on their strengths, and you are motivated to deliver the highest quality of work.

24. Charming (38)

You enjoy the challenge of meeting new people, getting them to like you, and winning them over. You thrive in a social setting and derive energy from making new connections. In your world, strangers don't exist; only friends you have not encountered yet.

25. Thinking (38)

You are a true intellect. You like to reflect and enjoy mental activity. You enjoy the process of thinking things through a second time, solving complex problems, developing ideas, or understanding other people's feelings (which of them exactly depends on your other primary talents).

26. Adaptable (34)

You live in the present and always go 100% into what is happening here and now. Your future is not planned but is to be discovered. Unexpected events and sudden requests don't trouble you. You are instead fascinated by the change and are driven by trying new things. You will often excel in a position as a fire extinguisher because you receive energy from jumping from task to task.

27. Competitive (33)

You are driven by winning. You enjoy competing and comparing your performance to others, as it is the only way to determine if you are ahead. The effort you put in, your intentions, and reaching the goal doesn't matter unless you outperform your peers.

28. Organising (31)

You are an expert in coordinating people and information. Be able to manage complex assignments and finding perfect configurations motivate you. You are driven by responsibility and being allowed to lead and delegate tasks between team members. You work efficiently, flexibly, and can adjust to solve the assignment in the most effective way.

29. Researching (31)

You are very curious and love the process of collecting information and knowledge - and you are good at it. You are driven to understand things, and the more diverse the topics are, the better.

30. Assessing (27)

You are careful and vigilant because you know the world is unpredictable and not in order. You sense risks and weigh the relative impact before you take any action. The assessing talent gives you a serious and considerate approach to life.

31. Significant (27)

You want you and your work to be significant, to stand out, and to be recognized. You are driven to be known and appreciated for the unique strengths you bring. The same for the people around you - You want to be associated with admired, professional, and successful people. If the people are not one of these, you will push them to achieve until they are.

32. Controlling (19)

You are driven by being right, taking charge, and having others follow you. Once you have formed an opinion or goal, you are compelled to get people to agree with it and to start pushing them in your direction. You are not hesitant in regards to confrontations as they are mostly in your advantage. After all, the confrontation is the first step towards a resolution.

33. Analysing (18)

Your talent makes you value knowledge, information, and sufficient data before making a decision. It is your basis for thoroughness and precision. It also makes you critical, challenging, and demanding of evidence towards other people's decisions. You are driven by things that are or can be thoroughly analyzed and well worked out.

34. Communicating (13)

The communicating talent makes you driven by capturing people's attention by speaking, hosting, explaining, and/or writing. You are most likely very good at it, and your language is filled with images, examples, and metaphors that can capture attention. You have an urge to bring stories or ideas to life by making them exciting and giving them energy.

Test Validation