My Strengths Finder, Strength # 1

The next five afternoons I will share each of my five strengths as indicated through the StrengthsFinder indicator.  Of the 34 themes, these are my “top five”.  Hopefully this will give insight into who I am, how I am wired, and why I lead and blog the way I do.    I am simply sharing the feedback results the indicator gave to me after I took the assessment, but after the paragraph describing the strength I will offer some commentary on the weakness of this strength.

Relator

Relator describes your attitude toward your relationships. In simple terms, the Relator theme pulls you toward people you already know. You do not necessarily shy away from meeting new people—in fact, you may have other themes that cause you to enjoy the thrill of turning strangers into friends—but you do derive a great deal of pleasure and strength from being around your close friends. You are comfortable with intimacy. Once the initial connection has been made, you deliberately encourage a deepening of the relationship. You want to understand their feelings, their goals, their fears, and their dreams; and you want them to understand yours. You know that this kind of closeness implies a certain amount of risk—you might be taken advantage of—but you are willing to accept that risk. For you a relationship has value only if it is genuine. And the only way to know that is to entrust yourself to the other person. The more you share with each other, the more you risk together. The more you risk together, the more each of you proves your caring is genuine. These are your steps toward real friendship, and you take them willingly.

The negative of this strength is that it often keeps me from meeting new people quickly. I tend to have a few close relationships, and many surface friends, but I tend to be labeled as “hard to get to know”.  I certainly do not mean to come across that way, but it is the negative side of this strength.