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Lesson 3: Always Sharpen Your Edge
Conventional wisdom tells you to push beyond your comfort zone, but the most successful people do something different: they push themselves within their strengths zone. They recognize they'll be most productive, creative, and collaborative when they find their edge and spend their life sharpening it.
This means disciplining yourself to express your strengths daily. You experience your strengths best not from assessments or feedback, but from using them. When you express your strengths, you see them in action and observe how people respond, developing a vivid self-understanding.
To sharpen your edge more precisely, use your top-two strength roles as coordinates for investigating your unique world. Try the "Love It-Loathe It" exercise: carry a notepad for a week, recording activities you enjoy or lose yourself in versus those you procrastinate on or find draining. This simple practice reveals the specific content that energizes or depletes you.
The StandOut assessment functions as an innovation delivery system, providing practical techniques to sharpen your edge and excel at work. While we revere innovation as the mystical driver of progress, for most of us it's less about inventing the internet and more about finding better techniques for our daily work.
Organizations constantly search for best practices, hoping innovations can be harvested and deployed at scale. Sometimes this works, as with Dr. Henry Plummer's discovery at Mayo Clinic that telling patients to "hold your breath" produced clearer X-rays-a phrase still used globally today.
However, most innovations don't transfer effectively between people because they're expressions of unique personalities. When organizations try to standardize these practices, they lose their authenticity and effectiveness.
Diana from Hampton Inn exemplifies this with her turtle mascot ("we won't make progress unless we stick our necks out"), creating turtle-themed recognition programs and guest gifts. When another hotel copied her with bees as their mascot, they missed that the effectiveness came from Diana's authentic expression.
Similarly, Tim, a superstar Hilton Garden Inn manager, has a completely different approach-a lending library where employees contribute books monthly to foster learning. Forcing Diana to implement a library or Tim to adopt a mascot would be ineffective for both.
Organizations don't need few innovations that scale to many; they need many practical innovations delivered to the few people whose strengths align with each innovation. The StandOut assessment's personal learning channel addresses this by delivering weekly practices that specifically match your unique strengths profile.
This mirrors what's happening in other industries by filtering content to match individual preferences rather than broadcasting standardized content to everyone. Facebook delivers ads based on your unique profile. Netflix suggests films that match your tastes. Pandora analyzes your listening habits to play music aligned with your preferences.
With countless practices and innovations available for any job, and innumerable combinations of strengths across people, what's needed is a "Rosetta Stone" to match the right innovations to the right strengths. Your StandOut results serve as this translation tool, connecting you with practices that authentically fit your unique strength profile.
As an Advisor, you begin by asking, "What is the best thing to do?" and thrive when others turn to you for answers. You don't necessarily want to implement changes yourself; rather, you're energized by being valued for your insight and judgment. You constantly gather information to help others make better decisions, paying attention to fine details that ensure your advice is tailored to each unique situation.
You connect with others through your advice-giving. You think practically in terms of steps and modules, breaking complex problems into manageable components. You're a sequential thinker who excels at delayering challenges. You ask numerous questions because you know answers lie in details. You're intrigued by distinctions between similar things, helping you recommend the right path.
To make an immediate impact as an Advisor, seek out your team's or client's toughest problems-you're uniquely energized by challenges that drain others. Break down complex issues into component parts by asking practical questions and pushing past generalizations to reach facts. Position yourself in pivotal, high-pressure moments where your clarity and confidence shine.
To excel, ensure you always have an audience for your conclusions-you need "someone with a dilemma" to validate your value and intelligence. Analysis alone won't satisfy you without someone to advise. Connect with carefully chosen experts in your field who can recognize meaningful distinctions and details. Additionally, become a credentialed expert yourself by pursuing professional and academic qualifications in your chosen discipline.
As an Advisor, avoid appearing as a know-it-all by disciplining yourself to ask plenty of questions before offering solutions. Even when you immediately know the answer, ask questions two through ten to ensure others feel heard. Recognize that you're not at your best running existing operations-you thrive in turnarounds and startups, not as a builder.
As a Connector, you begin by asking, "Whom can I connect?" You see the world as a web of relationships and thrive on connecting people within your network-not just for social compatibility, but for what they'll create together. Your mantra is "One and one makes three" (or thirty or three hundred), believing there's almost no limit to what people with different strengths can achieve together.
At your most powerful, you think in terms of possibilities-"Wouldn't it be great if we linked this person with that person?" You're a natural multiplier, always combining elements to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Your impact comes through your vision of what could be and your excitement about combining people, technologies, projects, or ideas.
To make an immediate impact as a Connector, let your natural instincts run freely-your genuine interest will endear you to others. Start building a private scouting report on your new network, documenting each person's expertise, interests, and experiences. Look for opportunities to surprise colleagues with your network's usefulness. When someone faces a pressing problem, offer connections to the right person or expert who can help.
To excel, stay perpetually attentive to potential connections in all environments. Find leadership roles in expert groups that energize you. Discipline yourself to connect someone to something daily, perhaps through targeted emails linking people to relevant resources. Expand your network by occasionally venturing beyond familiar circles.
The difference between being a name-dropper and a true network builder is follow-through. Your power comes from actually linking people to make things happen, not just mentioning connections. When connecting people, be specific and detailed about why they complement each other. Always ask permission before connecting people, as everyone guards their time.
As a Creator, you begin by asking "What do I understand?" Your starting point is your own insight, seeing the world as competing parts and agendas that you feel compelled to figure out. You thrive on discovering patterns beneath life's complexities-concepts that explain or predict how things unfold.
Your power comes from making sense of things-seeing beneath surface appearances to underlying patterns. These patterns help you explain what's happening in the world, both to yourself and others. You're drawn to concepts as the best explanations for most events, and your world is filled with concepts derived from your observations.
To make an immediate impact as a Creator, accept that you need time to recognize patterns before taking action, but discipline yourself to accelerate this process by investigating telltale signs. When ready, present your understanding of patterns to offer better approaches. Always produce tangible output that demonstrates the patterns you've discovered. This output becomes raw material for future creations and helps others understand your thinking.
To excel, schedule regular time to muse and think-this isn't optional but essential for your wellbeing and performance. Create a forum for safe experimentation where you can test fragile new ideas with challenging, like-minded thinkers. Identify your highest-leverage creation-your potential "home run"-and be willing to take risks with it.
Remember that you must figure out patterns while doing, as the world won't wait for your complete understanding. Avoid becoming the stubborn "chief defender" of an idea whose mind is closed to new information. Instead, strike a balance between being opinionated and wishy-washy by remaining inquisitive-genuinely curious and open to new evidence and patterns.
Equalizers begin by asking "What is the right thing to do?" Sensitive to the world's interconnectedness, they feel compelled to keep everything aligned. This alignment might be organizational (restoring order) or ethical (holding people accountable). They protect the threads of commitment that connect us, serving as our conscience and helping us realize how much we rely on one another.
Equalizers thrive on balance and are disturbed when the world tips too far in any direction. Their moral world is disrupted by dishonesty, ambiguity, unfulfilled commitments, unrighted wrongs, and disparities in rewards. They think categorically (black/white, true/false) and strive for predictability and consistency. People seek them out for clarity and opinion as they have a strong sense of what's right in almost any situation.
To make an immediate impact as an Equalizer, deliver reliable follow-through-be conservative about commitments but deliver without fail. Claim your love of bringing order, speak your values authentically, and call out inappropriate behavior. Showcase your objective sense of fairness, help colleagues methodically tackle complex tasks, establish clear accountability, and define responsibility boundaries explicitly.
To excel, seek opportunities to stand up for others' rights-you'll instinctively find persuasive arguments. Establish precedents by referencing similar past situations. Be thorough with facts and data to avoid seeming merely judgmental. Pursue situations requiring objective mediation, and develop professional mediation skills to help others find common ground even in entrenched positions.
Your strength as an Equalizer leader is providing structure and ethical guidance. Teams trust your commitment to doing the right thing and following through on promises. Your discipline creates space for others' creativity. As an Equalizer manager, your strength is providing certainty and security through predictability. Your visible hard work and follow-through inspire commitment.
The StandOut assessment was developed through rigorous scientific methodology. It uses situational judgment tests (SJTs), which research shows are powerful predictors of job performance, on par with cognitive ability tests. For StandOut, situations were designed around impact moments in life where technical knowledge would have minimal relevance.
The assessment was refined through testing with 232,000 global participants in 2009-2010, with demographic data collected from over 6,000 respondents showing an even gender split, mean age of 42, and predominantly college-educated sample. The scoring measures each strength role twelve times across thirty-four situations, with scores standardized using t-score calculations.
Reliability testing showed impressive stability-90% of participants had their leading role remain in their top three when retested six months later, with all nine strength roles showing statistically significant consistency. Validity studies with top performers in various industries demonstrated that specific talent clusters emerge to explain success in different roles.
For example, a study of 140 top executives at a national financial institution showed Equalizer as the primary strength role-fitting for a regulated industry requiring balance and order. Similarly, a study of 55 highest-rated hotel general managers revealed Teacher as their lead role (supporting research that the best managers teach), followed by Equalizer (creating order and structure) and Stimulator (creating spirited environments that celebrate team success).
For sales professionals, a study of 82 top sales representatives showed Influencer and Connector at the top with Equalizer third-validating that persuasion combined with network-building and commitment-keeping creates the most successful sales representatives.
StandOut 2.0 represents a significant evolution in how we think about human potential and performance. By identifying your unique strength patterns and providing tailored guidance on how to apply them, it bridges the gap between knowing your strengths and actually leveraging them for success.
The assessment doesn't just tell you what you're good at-it shows you how to be exceptional. It recognizes that excellence comes not from being well-rounded but from becoming more of who you already are. In a world that often pushes conformity, StandOut celebrates the power of authentic differentiation.
The most successful people aren't those who overcome their weaknesses but those who find roles that maximize their strengths. They understand their unique edge-their comparative advantage-and sharpen it relentlessly. They don't just play to their strengths occasionally; they build their entire careers around them.
By providing a framework to identify your strength roles and practical guidance to apply them, StandOut 2.0 offers a pathway to not just incremental improvement but transformative performance. It's not about becoming marginally better at what you do-it's about becoming significantly better by doing what comes naturally to you in a deliberate, focused way.
In the end, StandOut's message is both liberating and challenging: You already possess unique talents that make you exceptional. Your task isn't to become someone different but to become more fully yourself-and to find ways to make your natural genius useful to the world.
