The cup is half full, not half empty. People with Positivity talent themes naturally look at the positive side – where it is half full. But there are many types of ‘HALF FULL’s:

1. One’s personal life
2. Other individuals
3. One’s community
4. Other communities

Level 1: I want to be HAPPY

This person with Positivity talent is contented just being optimistic, hopeful, fun-loving. There is a Chinese phrase 自嗨 that best describes this person – just to make myself high in spirit. He/ she finds ways to make everything more exciting and more lively. Some cynics may reject his/ her energy, but he/ she is rarely

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The Beauty of Belief

A person with Belief talent theme is naturally guided & driven by important causes, purposes or values. He is ethical, altruistic and stedfast. He has some very deeply-held beliefs about what is true, what is unchanging, what can be, and always will be. These beliefs go very deep, and provide personal power to stand strong no matter what. This person generates meaning, purpose & direction for life, resulting in a tremendous amount of power, drive & motivation from within. So long as he revolves his life around his deepest values and beliefs, he will experience motivation, drive

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A Futuristic Person Dreams

Between the age of 11-18, I only had 5 ‘dream jobs’. No, they were not the typical ‘lawyer, doctor, pilot…’ dream jobs. My dream jobs were to be a teacher, principal, pastor, missionary and entrepreneur. Incredibly, at that age, my Futuristic talent theme was creating a big challenge because these 5 jobs are in 3 very different spheres: education, religion and business. The good news is that I fulfilled all 5 dream jobs by the age of 40.

These are the 4 elements that help my Futuristic talent theme perform at Balcony level (at its very

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I usually utilise my Activator theme in the following phases:

1. What is available out there that excites me because it has potential?
2. How can I cut off all unnecessary discussion and get into action?
3. How can I motivate others to join me in the initiative (especially in pioneering)?
4. How should I change my course of action as I gain a better feel of what works and what doesn’t?

In 2002, I was in a leadership task force to expand our outreach to the youth. Even though there were about 12 of us with diverse views and conviction, I managed

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An 18 year old student got her StrengthsFinder profile. After scrutinising her Strengths Reports, she approached me with a troubled look at the end of a Strengths Introduction session.

“I’m unsure about these three talent themes – they don’t seem to describe me” #activator #individualization #deliberative

STEP #1: Define Talent Themes Precisely & Concisely

To check for her understanding, I asked…

(1) What do you understand by these three themes?

Some people are still unable to pinpoint & confirm their top 5 with these reports. In

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“You will take over and coach the Under-11 soccer team”, I was told as a new teacher in 1995.

Truth be told, I had never been a good soccer player as my body-kinesthetic intelligence is very low. As a teacher taking over the team, I also found out that my school’s soccer team had been trashed 3-0, 5-0 and 8-0 the year before. It had a terrible soccer culture. But fast forward a year, I brought this team to the Top 8 in the National Finals. We won all the District Level matches and this story was captured in

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My Relator operates in 2 extremes: being ever ready to befriend someone, and also ever ready to “unfriend” someone. Relator has a very sharp radar to detect authenticity, genuineness, and trustworthiness. It allows me to build a deep and trusting relationship with a stranger when my radar is getting all the positive signals. On the other hand, the Relator in me is sensitive to pick up signals when ‘this person won’t go far together’, I would then classify this person as part of ‘surface relationships’

The ‘Through Thick & Thin’ category may not have a long list but this is

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Today, I was walking along a small lane and witnessed a possibility of two cars colliding. The word “crisis” loomed before me. I instinctively stretched out my hands, stared at the drivers and ‘commanded’ the cars according to what I want. I would think that if there were two other cars unwilling to give way, resulting in a stalemate situation, I would have also stepped out to ‘command and control’ the situation.

My Command is the most alive during a crisis and stalemate situation. My Command theme is usually manifested in 4 phases:

1. Arise to the Challenge
2. Assure the Crowd
3. Activate a

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The tension was building up between my wife and I with regards to the way we wanted to develop our son. Yew Ann has Global Developmental Delay (GDD). He crawled at his 15th month (instead of 6-8 months) and walked at his 28th month (instead of 10-15 months).

One day, I caught myself getting frustrated with my wife for holding Yew Ann’s hand when they were walking in front of me. I insisted that she should let go so that Yew Ann could be independent at a faster rate since he was already much slower than his peers.

“Hee Guan,

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Insights from Strengths Coach Tan Hee Guan

In May 2011, Don Clifton’s intern Rick Yamamoto ignited a little fire in my cognitive domain as a small group of us attended ‘StrengthsFinder for Halftimers’. After Rick’s coaching, I went on to spread this little fire to some friends and companies.

This little fire was rekindled as I became the Asia pioneering batch of Certified Strengths Coach in 2013. But the Baptism of StrengthsFIRE came only in 2014 during my conflict resolution with my wife. When Strengths transform my marriage, I can no longer coach with just cognitive understand of Strengths, I co-found

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