Consistent-Sea

Look closely - those are shells placed upon the branches of this driftwood I discovered in Bonita Beach, FL 

I was recently on vacation and taking a walk down a beautiful Florida beach.  I say “on-vacation”, but my wheels hardly ever stop turning and I was thinking about which talent theme to feature in my next post.  With Achiever as my #5 signature talent, I set a goal to review all 34 StrengthsFinder themes this year within The Strengths Zone weekly blog.   

Then I saw it.

From the distance, the object looked like a piece of driftwood that was covered in barnacles.  Perhaps it was in the sea for a long period of time and marine crustaceans attached to it like ornaments on a Christmas tree.  As I got closer, I saw that the driftwood was actually covered in carefully placed sea shells.  People had placed them repeatedly on branches and crevasses.  Some actually wrote-on or decorated their shells with markers.  

While the tradition was likely started by someone leveraging an Ideation talent, it continued and persevered through wind, rain, tides and even a hurricane.  Beachgoers established a set of social norms to enforce the predictable motion of replenishing shells on the branches for the good of the order.  There was a fairness and balance to this "beach-art".  People spontaneously understood the rules and followed them.  

Consistency is an uncommon "top 5" signature talent theme.  Of all 34 themes, it appears in the top 5 only 12% of the time.  For me, like Discipline, it is near the bottom (#33).  While they are similar, Discipline is more internal; how a person manages order for themselves.  Consistency, on the other hand,  is mostly about finding fairness and balance for others.     

People who are talented in the Consistency theme are aware of the need to treat people with sameness and equality.  They are the conscious of what is right and fair and function best in environments with clear rules that apply to everyone.  Where Individualization finds fairness in treating individual people differently, Consistency finds fairness by treating groups of people the same.  By championing Consistency in the workplace, leaders with this talent quickly establish trust with their assigned teams.  

People with this talent help to create fair advantages for the rest of us and establish balance, familiarity, sameness.  Their obsession with repetition and playing by the rules can be calming in our fast-paced and chaotic world.       

Here are some ways that people with the talent of Consistency demonstrate it in the workplace;

* A person with Consistency can become the guardian and enforcer of a team's shared values and group norms.  They can easily explain and enforce these rules for the good of the order.  

* People with the signature theme of Consistency prefer to get tasks accomplished and decisions made rather than participating in brainstorming of long-term strategic planning.    

* The Consistency theme lends itself to helping others leverage their own talents.  People with Consistency can lean into their desire for a level playing field by providing every member of a group an equal platform to communicate and leverage their own talents at work.    

Dan is currently serving 20 years to life as the Sr. Director of Destination Experiences at Universal Orlando Resort.  He prefers white-water rapids over data lakes and lists Ideation, Futuristic and Positivity amongst his signature talents.