My Sweet Spot

Up to this point we've looked at how to analyze your MAPP exam on Assessment.com. In this post we are going to look at how to use that information to determine your personal "Sweet Spot".




Wikipedia defines a Sweet Spot as "a place where you get a maximum response for a given amount of effort."



In our lives, this is the place where our: 1) talents, skills, and giftings overlap our 2) passions, motivations, and energizing activities.


The most effective people in the world are those who have discovered their Sweet Spot and are living the majority of their life within it.


So, in my last post we made a summary of what I have within my Talent and Motivation circles. Using the info from that summary we are going to start identifying what my Sweet Spot contains.

The first step is to re-read both lists and write down anything that shows up on both lists.


My Sweet Spot:

• Leading, directing, managing, and supervising people.
  


• Communicating to people in an influential or persuasive manor.



• Teaching people information that will result in their good, growth, or gain.
  


• Seeing the big picture and directing people within that picture towards the accomplishment of the overall goal.



• Coordinate the skills and direct the actions of others towards a goal that benefits everyone.
  

The second step is to put this summary into one short sentence. Here is what you could say my Sweet Spot is:

Communicating information that will inspire people to take action and then leading them, through providing direction and coordinating their skills within the scope of the big picture, towards the accomplishment of a goal that benefits everyone.

The third step in using the MAPP test is to go back to the top of your MAPP Assessment, where we chose the top 5-10 phrases that jumped out at us and motivated us the most, and compare them with our Sweet Spot summary to see how they fit within it.

Here were my top motivational phrases from the career list:

1. Develop/apply human skills


2. teach


3. instruct


4. human development


5. training


6. inform

As you can see, these phrases are an exact match of my "Sweet Spot" summary.

Now that we have extracted a pretty clear picture of who we are from the MAPP exam, we should have a pretty clear answer to the question, "Who Am I?"

However, during my journey to discovering "Who I Am" I chose to validate my MAPP exam findings with a series of other tests and simple processes. Although the other exams did not uncover any new or 'life changing' information about myself, I found that they made my picture of 'Who I Am' even clearer by giving even more detail into some of the other components and aspects of my life.

One of my next posts will show you what these tests and processes are and give you some guidance on how you can walk through them to if you would like.

Thanks again for reading my posts!

My Assessment - Who I Am Part 1

I now want to show you my results from this exam and show you how I used this information to learn more about who I am.

This is just a shot of the top of my report showing you that it is indeed my MAPP report from my Assessment.com profile.



As you scroll down the report the first part you come to is the listing of the top 20 career areas that your personality matches with the best. This was a wonderful section for helping me narrow down my search for a fulfilling career. Here's how I used this section:

1. List the most common words or phrases - in my report I found that the following words came up over and over again.

• Consult, consulting, evaluate, influence, teach, counsel, training, human development, develop/apply human skills, promote, inform, dispense information, teach/nurture, write/send information, supervise, instruct, manage, business training, communicate, demonstrate...

2. From that list, pick the top 5 - 10 words/phrases that jump out at you - choose the words or phrases that excite you, that give you energy, that make you feel good. These are some of the words from my list that jumped out at me.

• Develop/apply human skills, teach, instruct, human development, training, inform...
  

3. Match your top 5-10 words with the career areas that match them the closest


Next, the report gets into the section called "Narrative Interpretation". In this section there are 9 sections discuss more details about who you are.

The first section is INTEREST IN JOB CONTENT. This helps you discover your 'motivations and preferences'. This is a 'first glance at your top motivators'.

Here are a few pieces of info I learned about myself from this section:

• Prefer to work with and around people and I prefer to do is in a leadership, managing, supervising, communicating way. Togetherness is essential for my work/play environments.


• Very conscious of meaning, purpose, potential & destiny. I am highly motivated by the cause of good, growth, and gain in the lives of others. I prefer to do this by influential communication.


• I think in Big Picture terms.


• I am wired to be an executive or manager. I don't do well being in a subordinate position.


• I'm highly motivated by recognition by others.


• I love projects that can be planned, scheduled, and completed.


• I need change and variety. I wouldn't be good on an assembly line. Routine causes me to lose interest.
  

The next section is TEMPERAMENT FOR THE JOB which identifies motivation and talents. Here's what I learned about myself:

• Need change/variety. Change is motivating, stimulating, energizing to me.


• Benevolent (giving of myself for the benefit of others) which means I gain pleasure in helping others.


• Strongly motivated to be organizationally active with others.


• Self assumed responsibility for the good, growth and gain of others.


• Love new ideas and have talent for understanding or even 'experiencing' abstract ideas, concepts, theory, assessments, etc...


• Strongly motivated to have direct access to listener, communication with goal of causing the listener to understand, accept, and act on what is being said.


• Is going to persuade: the only questions are where, when and for what purpose.


• Leads people with emphasis on performance and creating measurable results.


• Independent, self-directed, self-achieved activity is preferred.


• Not great with detail but strong awareness of ideas, patters, concepts.
  
  

The 3rd section is APTITUDE FOR THE JOB focuses on combining talents with motivations/preferences. Here's what this section taught me:

• Ideas are the heart of my talent. Gifted at perception and mental seeing.


• Enjoys taking ideas of others, filtering through own experiences, and then communicating them to others for their entertainment/pleasure/benefit.


• Strong potential for academic, scientific, research, literary, executive, or consulting activities.


• Good at seeing the core concepts and how they fit within the big picture.
  

The 4th section is called PEOPLE and it deals with motivational levels and even talents for dealing with people. Here's what this section taught me:

• Mentor: trusted counselor or guide.


• Interested in helping people reach their full potential.


• Motivation and drive to educate, train, or influence others.


• Highly motivated persuasion with goal of having listener hear, understand, accept and act on what is said.


• Persuasion is the primary preferred trait with intent to convince people toward a particular idea, viewpoint, direction, objective, or product.


• Feels both privilege and responsibility to use communication (including persuasion) to voluntarily provide beneficial information to others.


• Self-satisfaction comes almost exclusively from the subjective realization that the information, voluntarily given, has been helpful to other persons.


• Feels prime responsibility as developing the will to work with employees and motivating them to higher levels of attainment and performance.

I'll continue going over the rest of my MAPP assessment in Part 2.

I hope you're having some fun and getting some useful information from my posts.

As strange as it may sound, I'm absolutely enjoying writing this for you!

Till my next post... Cheers!