Strengths

Scores | Charts | Descriptions

Input®

People especially talented in the Input theme have a craving to know more. Often they like to collect and archive all kinds of information.

Score Distribution

Shows scores for this strength across all staff.

Users with Input strength

Theme Description

You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information ‐ words, facts, books, and quotations ‐ or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity. If you read a great deal, it is not necessarily to refine your theories but, rather, to add more information to your archives. If you like to travel, it is because each new location offers novel artifacts and facts. These can be acquired and then stored away. Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to say exactly when or why you might need them, but who knows when they might become useful? With all those possible uses in mind, you really don't feel comfortable throwing anything away. So you keep acquiring and compiling and filing stuff away. It's interesting. It keeps your mind fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will prove valuable.

Action Items

• Look for jobs in which you are charged with acquiring new information each day, such as teaching, research, or journalism.
• Identify your areas of specialization and actively seek more information about them.
• Make time to read books and articles that stimulate you. Schedule the times.
• Deliberately increase your vocabulary. Intentionally collect new words and learn the meaning of each.
• Enjoy reading the dictionary and the encyclopedia ó this might seem strange to some people, but for someone like you it is a good way to strengthen your self-concept.
• Devise a system to store and easily locate information. This can be as simple as a file for all the articles you have clipped, or as sophisticated as a computer database.
• Identify situations in which you can share the information you have collected with other people.
• Accept that you will never feel that you know enough.
• Partner with someone with a strong Focus or Discipline theme. This person will help you stay on track when your inquisitiveness leads you down intriguing but distracting avenues.

How to Manage a Person Especially Talented in the Input Theme

• Focus this person's natural inquisitiveness by asking him to research a topic of importance to your organization. He enjoys the knowledge that comes from research.
• Position him in roles with a heavy research component.
• Pay attention to his other strong themes. If he is also strong in Developer, he may excel as a teacher or trainer by peppering his lesson with intriguing facts and stories.
• Keep him posted on the news within your organization. He needs to be in the know. Pass along books, articles, and papers you think he would like to know about and read.
• Encourage him to make use of the Internet. He will use it to find information he thinks he needs. Not all of his fact-finding will be immediately useful, but it will be important for his self-esteem.
• Help him develop a system for storing the information he collects. This system will ensure that he can find it when he and the organization need it.
• When you are in meetings, make a point of asking him for information. Look for opportunities to say something positive about his recall, such as "It's amazing. You always seem to have the facts we need."