People with strong Maximizer talents are at their best when they are pushing for excellence in all they do.
Maximizer®
A theme in the Influencing domain of CliftonStrengths
People exceptionally talented in the Maximizer theme focus on strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence. They seek to transform something strong into something superb.
Full Theme Description
Excellence, not average, is your measure. Taking something from below average to slightly above average takes a great deal of effort and in your opinion is not very rewarding. Transforming something strong into something superb takes just as much effort but is much more thrilling.
Strengths, whether yours or someone else's, fascinate you. Like a diver after pearls, you search them out, watching for the telltale signs of a strength. A glimpse of untutored excellence, rapid learning, a skill mastered without recourse to steps — all these are clues that a strength may be in play. And having found a strength, you feel compelled to nurture it, refine it, and stretch it toward excellence. You polish the pearl until it shines.
This natural sorting of strengths means that others see you as discriminating. You choose to spend time with people who appreciate your particular strengths. Likewise, you are attracted to others who seem to have found and cultivated their own strengths. You tend to avoid those who want to fix you and make you well rounded. You don't want to spend your life bemoaning what you lack. Rather, you want to capitalise on the gifts with which you are blessed. It's more fun. It's more productive. And, counterintuitively, it is more demanding.
This Theme’s Power and Edge
Maximizers focus on quality and bring this focus to others. They prefer working with and for the best. They create strengths within groups by enabling people to do what they naturally do best. Their drive toward excellence can lead to a new standard of success.
How People with Strong Maximizer Talents Describe Themselves
“I am committed to excellence.”
“I need quality to be valued as much as quantity.”
I love a maximum return on investments.”
“I hate an obsession with fixing weaknesses.”
“I bring an emphasis on quality.”
Maximizer: Helps and Hinders
Helps
You have a commitment to excellence — your own, your team's, and your individual teammates'. You push not just to accomplish more, but to achieve the highest quality in all you do.
Sometimes people don't recognise their own star power. You see the best they can become and can inspire them to achieve it.
You are never satisfied with "good enough" and, as a result, you hold yourself and others to the highest standard. You require excellence — not being average.
Your focus on excellence causes you to gravitate toward projects that are already working well — and you see ways they can become even better, taking them to world-class performance.
Hinders
You tend to evaluate rather than celebrate. Rather than celebrating the successful completion of a project, you look for ways it can be better next time. This can cause the members of your team to feel unappreciated.
You tend to be a perfectionist, which can lead to procrastination: Whatever you are working on, it can always use just one more tweak, one more enhancement, one more … . Give yourself time to perfect things or realise that your high standards will produce "good enough" that is close to excellent. And delivered on time.
Because you naturally focus on how things can be better, you don't tend to receive compliments well. As you're being recognised, your inner voice is listing all the ways it could have been better — and more praiseworthy. Learn to say, "Thank you," and skip the reasons you don't deserve it.
Not only do you not receive compliments well, you have a tendency not to give them either. You don't look at what went wrong, but how it could have been done better. In your mind, this is not a criticism, but advice on how to elevate performance the next time. Praise can be a blind spot for you — so be intentional about praising the performance of others and highlighting what they did well. This will help ensure the consistent, near-perfect performance you want to see from others.
Theme Contrast
| Maximizer | "I aspire to meet or exceed a standard of excellence." |
| Competition | "I aspire to be number one." |
| Maximizer | "I want to build something great." |
| Restorative | "I want to fix something broken." |
If Maximizer is a Dominant Theme for You, Take Action to Maximise Your Potential
Focus on your strengths once you have claimed them. Refine your skills, acquire new knowledge, practice and keep working toward mastery.
Devise ways to measure your performance and that of your colleagues. These metrics will help you spot strengths.
Develop a plan to use your strengths outside of work. In doing so, consider how your strengths relate to your personal mission and how they might benefit your family or the community.
Study success. Deliberately spend time with people who have discovered their strengths. The more you understand how positioning strengths leads to success, the more likely you will be able to create success in your own life.
Make your weaknesses irrelevant. For example, find a partner, devise a support system or use one of your stronger themes to compensate for a weaker one.
Explain to others why you spend more time building on strengths rather than fixing weaknesses. Initially, they might confuse what you are doing with complacency.
Help your friends and colleagues recognise others’ talents and strengths.
Meet regularly with mentors, role models and your manager for insight, advice and inspiration.
Potential Blind Spots to Watch Out for
Your desire to exhaust all possible outcomes can frustrate those who want to come to a suitable conclusion and move forward. Sometimes, you will need to accept that “good enough” is adequate and appropriate.
You might be disappointed when a project or initiative falls short of your definition of excellence. Try not to get discouraged when you have to work on or sign off on something that is acceptable, but not ideal, in your eyes.
If Maximizer Is a Lesser Theme for You
If you don’t have the intensity of the talents in the Maximizer theme, it doesn’t mean that you do not strive for excellence. Instead, you are probably less selective about where or with whom you invest your energy.
Among your top themes, find those that provide you with energy and motivation. Focus, Futuristic and Significance talents could help you apply your efforts toward the best possible outcomes.
Regularly ask people you respect and who encourage you to excel for guidance. Share and discuss the projects and plans that you have been working on with these people. Ask them to help you find ways to make them even better.
Set goals that will create new standards of success for you.
Help others understand that, for you, getting a product to a standard of quality might mean excellence, but may not mean perfection. If people around you want to “polish the pearl,” ask to move on to other tasks that might better fit your talents.
Source: Gallup®
“Not trying to be everything is smart. Not working on everything, but rather emphasising the development of selected powerful talents, is the route to excellence.”
— Donald O. Clifton, psychologist and father of strengths-based psychology.