Command

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Episode 189: Podcast Brief 3 - Ideation & Adaptability Gain Momentum

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In this week’s episode I’ll round out a description of my top five talents with Ideation and Adaptability. Ideation being the one that I imagine as a hamster on a wheel in my head, constantly running, coming up with ideas about what I’ll do next, ideas to solve problems, sometimes completely random ideas about why things happen the way they do, how things work (usually unrelated to anything that actually matters in my life), and how to express concepts so they’re sticky and/or persuasive.

Adaptability is the talent that allows me to switch gears easily, and that makes me a good person to be around when a project goes sideways.

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Episode 188: Podcast Brief 2 - Strategic and Activator Might Just Look Impulsive

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She called me Speedy Gonzalez. My first coach after becoming a Gallup certified StrengthsFinder coach had a gorgeous Barcelonan accent, and she said: “Sarah, you’re like Speedy Gonzalez. Imagine you notice the village is running low on cheese, so you take money from the village coffer, run fast, as you do, to a nearby village, buy cheese, and run back. Problem solved! Except that when you return, you hear the villagers having a discussion about what kind of cheese to get this time… or maybe they won’t get cheese, maybe it’ll be salami instead… But you’ve already solved the problem, right?”

I’m such a visual person, I immediately imagined the tiny mouse running, like a blur, to the next village and running back carrying a huge block of cheese over his head.

And just like that (snap), I had a deep insight into how I sometimes get in my own way.

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Episode 187: Podcast Brief 1 - When Command is in Your Top StrengthsFinder Talents

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My mother and her twin sister said: “Sarah, you’re so bossy.” Our large family had a reservation at a restaurant and I was being insistent that people stop yammering and get into cars, directing people and touching them on the arm to gesture toward a vehicle.

I was insulted and defensive. It was my intention to get the family to the restaurant on time for our reservation out of respect to the venue, which seemed reasonable to me. I felt like I had been gentle in terms of nudging my aunts, uncles, and cousins to get moving. That’s not how my mom and aunt saw it.

That wasn’t the first time I was called bossy or pushy, and it wouldn’t be the last.