People with strong Input talents are at their best when they are providing additional perspective and informed tools that others can benefit from.

Input®

A theme in the Strategic Thinking domain of CliftonStrengths

People exceptionally talented in the Input theme have a need to collect and archive. They may accumulate information, ideas, artifacts or even relationships.

 

Full 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.

 

This Theme’s Power and Edge

People with strong Input talents bring tools that can facilitate growth and performance. They love to provide relevant and tangible help to others. Their resourcefulness and curiosity lead them to store knowledge that can be culled and shared.

 

How People with Strong Input Talents Describe Themselves

  • "I am a collector of resources, information and objects that interest me."

  • "I need space to store the resources I naturally acquire."

  • "I love to provide relevant and tangible help."

  • "I hate not having things that someone could use."

  • "I bring tangible tools that can facilitate growth and performance."

 

Theme Contrast

Input “I love to collect things that are potentially helpful.”
Learner “I love the process of learning.”
Input “I help people by sharing tangible tools I have acquired.”
Ideation “I help people by sharing creative ideas I have conceived.”
 

Input Helps and Hinders

Helps

  • Your natural ability to ask the right questions helps you discover important information that leads to better problem solving. You do your homework and provide insights that your team needs to succeed.

  • Your input needs an output — as such, you have helpful information, research and resources to share with others.

  • When you are asked to research a topic, your associates can count on you to be thorough. Coupled with that thoroughness is an ability to sift through it all and find the most helpful information.

  • Your curiosity about and interest in a wide variety of subjects enable you to make connections with others from a wide variety of cultures, backgrounds and experiences. And if you don't know something about it, you ask questions to find out more — demonstrating your interest in others.

Hinders

  • Your inquisitiveness leads you to ask a lot of questions. Use your emotional intelligence to discern when your probing can become uncomfortable and even detrimental to a relationship.

  • Be careful of inundating others with too much information. "Information overload" can cause a loss of attention in others.

  • Avoid sending lengthy emails loaded with minutiae. Try to stick to the pertinent details that will keep your readers engaged.

  • If you are a team leader, others may perceive your "need to know" as micromanagement. Explain that your desire to be kept informed is unrelated to your trust in their abilities.

 

If Input is a Dominant Theme for You, Take Action to Maximise Your Potential

  • Identify your areas of specialisation and actively seek more information about them.

  • Read books and articles that capture your interest.

  • Build your vocabulary by learning unfamiliar words and their meanings.

  • Strengthen your self-concept by reading references books like the dictionary or encyclopedia.

  • Create a system to store and easily locate information.

  • 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 strong Focus or Discipline talents to help you stay on track when your inquisitiveness leads you down intriguing but distracting avenues.

  • Find subject-matter experts who are interested in what you are learning, your question and ideas.

 

Potential Blind Spots to Watch Out For

  • Unrestrained input can lead to intellectual or physical clutter. Consider occasionally taking inventory and purging what you don’t need so that your surroundings — and your mind — don’t become overloaded.

  • You might give people so much information or so many resources that you can overload and overwhelm them. Before you share your discoveries with others, consider sorting out what is most meaningful so that they don’t lose interest.

 

If Input Is a Lesser Theme for You

If you lack the intensity of the Input theme, it does not prevent you from being curious or collecting important information or knowledge. It likely indicates you are more selective about the types of information you seek and acquire.

  • Among your top themes, find those that help you absorb and analyse the information you need to make good decisions. Analytical, Context, Deliberative or Learner talents may help you gather and remember important information in the same way that Input talents do for others.

  • People with high Input talents typically learn through reading. You may learn best through “doing,” so look for opportunities or roles where you can get hands-on experience.

  • Be intentional and proactive about adding subject-matter experts to your personal network. You do not have to be one yourself, as long as you know whom to ask for information.

  • Invite others to help you brainstorm and refine ideas when you need to make an important decision. Seek out people who have subject-matter experience or different opinions or beliefs than yours. Their collection of information and knowledge can help inform your decision.

 
 

Source: Gallup®

 
 

“I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew); their names are WHAT and WHY and WHEN and HOW and WHERE and WHO.”

— Rudyard Kipling, author