What can your CliftonStrengths profile reveal about you?

On the podcast Die Profiler, three professional coaches in Germany recently analyzed an anonymous profile. No name, no résumé — just the Top 10 CliftonStrengths. Their task was to guess the person behind it.

The profile they looked at? Mine.

What struck me was how much they could infer. One coach pictured a “Greek philosopher under an olive tree with students around him.” Another noticed the combination of Connectedness, Empathy, and Intellection and suggested I might be “highly sensitive, like a radar for what’s happening in the world.”

Some things felt flattering, some uncomfortably true. (“Greek philosopher” sounds nice, but do I just talk or do I make an actual difference?)

All of it was thought-provoking. And that’s the point.

Strengths assessments aren’t meant to be filed away. They can be a powerful lens on who we are — and who we might become — if we actually *use* them. That’s why I’m working with Michael Trautmann on a new method to help people bring their CliftonStrengths to life.

I’m grateful to Michael for sharing my profile, and to the Profilers team (Jan Köster, Florian Meyer, and Nicole Zätzsch) for such a thoughtful and generous discussion.

What about you? Have you taken the CliftonStrengths test?
Have you ever seen your Strengths reflected back to you in a way that surprised you?

p.s. You can find my Top 5 Strengths here. Below is the transcript from the Die Profile podcast episode, translated from German by the podcast coaches.

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Intro: What do our strengths reveal about us? About our path, our decisions, our identity. In "Die Profiler," three professional coaches analyze the strengths profile of an unknown person. Without a name, without a resume, just tracing the strengths. Which talents operate in the background? Which drive and which block? In the end, it will be revealed how close the coaches are to the truth, "Die Profiler," the True Identity Podcast between analysis and clue-finding.

Nicole: Today's case provider is Michael Trautmann, who has brought us an exciting profile. The "Profilers" starting today are Jan Köster, Florian Meyer, and Nicole Zätzsch. Go ahead, Michael.

Michael: Thank you very much, dear Nicole. Yes, the profile I bring to you today has truly very, very positively influenced my decision to have chosen this job correctly, that of a Clifton Strengths Coach. I am super happy to work with such people who have such exciting profiles. Our person today has Intellection as number one, Developer as number two, Strategy as number three, Positivity as number four, and Woo as number five, then Empathy, Ideation, Harmony, Connectedness, and Includer. And the exciting thing about this profile is that there are only two colors in the Top 10. And I am very, very curious to see how you read this profile and what you suspect behind it. Florian, you start.

Florian: I was just joking, we know it from you with the colors, actually a very classic 6-4-profile, a lot of strategic thinking, a lot of relationship building in it. And perhaps a small personal anecdote: I look at it and see Intellection as number one and Developer as number two. Yes, how does that go together? And then it occurs to me, wait a minute, yes, I have the same myself. Intellection as number one and Developer as number two.
Um, so this color distribution is simply amazing. Um, and that even continues beyond the Top 10. Um, on 11 is also another strategic thinking theme, and perhaps so much more to tell once. You brought us the result here in English. That means, I can't help but take it as a hint that it was apparently a non-German speaking coachee with whom you went through this profile. I'm curious how blown away you other Profilers are by it.

Jan: That's how I imagine the profile of a Greek philosopher sitting under an olive tree with a horde of students around him. Um, so someone who is very strong in strategic thinking, who philosophizes, who addresses the problems of the world and thinks about them, and at the same time passes on his knowledge and works in groups. So somehow I think I'm on a track, so someone who can think very strategically, think very long-term, recognize systems and share that with other people. And actually, I also noticed that up to 14, there is only one non-relationship-building or strategic color, and that is with Woo, which also suggests that the person can convince people, bring them along. But I believe, uh, when it comes to Contact or Significance, that all comes much later. So this is someone who can get lost in thought, perhaps under the olive tree or by the campfire with people around him, perhaps even just at the counter in the corner pub, and he inspires with his thoughts. What do you think?

Nicole: I always love listening to you, because it always makes so much arise in me. I immediately jumped on a combination that always triggers something in me. Namely, we already had Connectedness with Empathy and with Intellection in a profile, in my experience, it often indicates, and I always like to offer it in coaching, whether the term has ever come up: Highly Sensitive. So actually, like a radar, figuratively speaking, um, a sensor for what is happening in the world around the person. On the one hand, on a human level, there are so many relationship talents at play here, so really a very fine radar for people and what moves them, and on the other hand, through Intellection and Strategy and also Ideation, a great interest in world events and where the world might move next.

Florian: Jan, I like your Greek philosopher under the olive tree, but I don't think he's quite the lone wolf we have here.

Jan: I said with students.

Florian: Yes, okay. With students at his feet. Okay, I think it brings me directly back to the question we always had relatively quickly in other episodes. Is this a leader or is this not a leader? I mean, we know a strengths profile doesn't reveal what job position we have, but only how we fulfill that position. But it wouldn't be a classic leadership profile that we would suspect at first. I'm just looking again, yes, all Influence themes are very far down, but that doesn't have to mean anything. I would be very curious about the reveal, if it turns out to be a leader or a leading personality in the end, but we're not that far yet. Um, has your Greek philosopher-teacher gained a bit more contour now?

Jan: I could imagine that this is someone for whom it is important to help people grow personally, who probably thinks a lot about that. Individualization and Woo are at 15, but Individualization and Adaptability. So I see someone for whom there is too little Orange (Influencing themes) for a coaching attitude. This is probably someone who thinks more about how I can enable individuals or entire groups to work together using systems, tools, or techniques.

Nicole: With the systemic aspect, I would agree. I find that the combination of Strategy, um, indeed also with Connectedness, always promotes this strategic, system-oriented thinking, or reveals it in such a profile.
What I would ask the person in coaching is actually, how do you advance your topics? So, what is important to you? What are the topics you pursue daily, and what do you make of them? Because I don't see the solution orientation so strongly in terms of how it can proceed. That would interest me. So not in the sense of "it doesn't exist." So I wouldn't approach it from a deficit perspective, but I would like to ask the person, um, how do you advance your topics? Do you need others for that, or which of your strengths supports you in that, and it can also be based on these thinking talents and the strongly pronounced relationship talents.

Florian: I'll bring a feeling into it right now. This profile conveys a lot of calmness to me, somehow. So yes, that's due to the one or two colors, meaning it's not terribly colorful in the first few meters or first ten places. But also the strengths themselves, these are rather strengths of people who are in a certain calmness, in a certain composure. And all that "horsepower," that comes much further down here on our list under 34. Um, that's another feeling that the profile gave me.

Jan: I look at our client, Michael. That's certainly someone you can work very well with, with all your energy. When you sit at the kitchen table with that person, then your energy probably gushes forth, he gives the whole thing depth, and then it just has to be implemented. I can imagine that very, very well. Personally, with this profile, I really have the need to get to know the person. Um, because I believe you can really go into depth with ideas and conversations with him. I would say he has certainly developed some kind of method.…

Nicole: I also have that suspicion, and somehow I think we've been working very intensively with this method lately.

Jan: Yes, exactly,

Nicole: This person has been a bit in the room for me the whole time. Shall we make a very cheeky guess?

Jan: It's John Stepper's profile.

Nicole: I would have said that too.

Michael: Yes. Um, you are great. Um, you have to tell me later, um, before I reveal for those listeners who don't know who John Stepper is, whether you recognized it, because I've spoken abstractly about the profile before, if you really did, then I'm doubly impressed.

Jan: I put forward a few theses, that he developed a system and a Greek philosopher reflected, and I observed you a bit, how you reacted. Um, so whether I was heading in the right direction.

Michael: Yes, so for those listeners who don't know him, John Stepper was previously a manager, he was a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank, increasingly found it to be a career roulette, and took this feeling of potentially becoming a victim in the next change round as an opportunity to ask himself how he could actually draw attention to what he can do, and he developed the Working Out Loud method. Um, and we did this test in New York. I coached him and he was super impressed by the summary I gave him. And what's so exciting about the profile is that he manages, even though he – so you can explain perfectly how one comes up with such a brilliant idea like Working out Loud, right? This creativity and this interest in people is totally explained. But when he stands on stage, he is celebrated like a guru. So why does he then have influencing power?
He has it through the competencies he possesses, and not because he is a natural-born Contact or Communication talent. I experienced him, and I asked him, I'm allowed to tell you. We worked on a product together in New York, um, and were guests in an office of a very charismatic woman, um, at SyPartners, and Jessica Orken was also on our podcast "On the way to New York." She came in and greeted us, and John became 10 cm smaller. He was suddenly very quiet and reserved and so on, and then I first had to explain everything he does, and then he grew back to normal size and was suddenly present again, but he comes through competence.

The second point, which Nicole very correctly suspected, is that he needs a team and a system for implementation. So implementation is also very, very far down. He achieved this through a circle of 20 coaches worldwide who work with him on new products, just as I did. We developed Working Out Loud for Leaders together, and I can already say that we are currently working on a Working Out Loud for Clifton Strengths.

Jan: It certainly sounds really interesting. We will definitely mention it again in the podcast here. So be sure to subscribe now, continue to follow the podcast. Many more exciting episodes and many strengths are coming. I'm already looking forward to the next episodes with you. This is incredibly fun, and we look forward to your feedback. No matter which channel, we can grow together with you and further develop our strengths. See you next time. Ciao.

Note: all bold and italics are as they appeared in the translation.