Should I Retake CliftonStrengths?

Jim Collison:
0:00] I am Jim Collison, and this is Gallup's Called to Coach, recorded on May 15, 2025.

Jim Collison:
[0:07] In this special edition of Called to Coach, we'll discuss the recent changes to allow multiple assessments on one Gallup Access account and what that means. Today, I'm joined by Jim Asplund. He's Gallup's Chief Scientist for CliftonStrengths. Jim, welcome!

Jim Asplund:
[0:21] Hi! Good to be here again.

Jim Collison:
[0:23] Good to have you. I'm also joined by Emily Lorenz. She's a Senior Methodologist here at Gallup. Emily, welcome.

Emily Lorenz:
[0:29] Thanks, Jim. Glad to be here.

Jim Collison:
[0:31] We have an announcement coming up. Starting in June, individuals can track multiple CliftonStrengths results under one Gallup Access account. This new feature will help users track and retain their results over time and choose which results to display on their account. Has been a very popular request. We're glad to bring it to you at this time. However, this may raise questions for our coaches and coaching community, and we are here to discuss that today. Jim, we thought maybe the best place to get started on this is with a little bit of background and history around CliftonStrengths. Can you spend a few minutes, kind of how we got here today?

Jim Asplund:
[1:08] Sure. Happy to. So, you know, CliftonStrengths been around for a little over 25 years now. And, you know, we've had almost 35 million people, I think, take it at this point in time. And if Don Clifton were alive today, he'd be very pleased by that. So, you know, in typical Midwestern humility, the system was designed hoping we'd someday reach a million. And, you know, we surpassed that ages ago. And so I think, you know, implicit in that was the idea that you'd probably only want to take it once. That would be enough for most people to get the insights and the conversations and the learnings they'd need and want, to explore what it is they do best and what it is that makes them unique and special, and how they can succeed in life. And so, so our systems, our advice and everything were sort of absent any other information designed around taking the assessment and then proceeding from there with this information about yourself. As we've discovered over time, some people want to take it more than once.

Jim Asplund:
[2:15] And administratively, that's been difficult, for reasons, like I said, that are kind of accidental. And I think we can get into later here maybe why we think some of those people have taken it more than once. And we know some of the reasons; sometimes we don't. And so, the change we've made now is to accommodate those situations so people can do what a lot of them want to do, with the understanding that there are some, this clouds the, some of the understanding people have had about strengths over time, I think, is where we're probably going to go with this conversation. And I think that's a healthy conversation to have, in terms of how those might evolve over time and so forth. So I think historically, that's been our position. It's not really a hard-and-fast sort of position, so much as it's been kind of a de facto state of things because of the situation we have — like I said, had many people take it more than once. We have data on that that we can talk about. And we're just trying to make that easier for people who want to do that.

Jim Collison:
[3:17] Jim, you and I back in 2019 spent some time talking about our Stability Report. You kind of looked, relooked at the assessment, pulled some more data on the stability and reliability of the report. Has any of that changed over the last — if we go back to that 20, I think it was a 2016 report that we talked about in 2018 and 2019 ( I could have those dates wrong). But do you, has anything changed since then?

Jim Asplund:
[3:44] No, not appreciably. We haven't taken as hard a look as we did. It was in 2019 we updated our study and then talked about it at the same time. And what we found was, and that paper is available online from us, as well as the findings from it are in our most recent CliftonStrengths Technical Report too, among other things, for people who want to see the details. We basically tracked down people in our database who'd taken the assessment more than once and looked at what happened between their first and second, or in some cases more, take of the assessment and found that by and large, people's results were quite stable.

Jim Asplund:
[4:22] The highlight number we talked about back in 2019 is the full profiles of their strengths from 1 to 34 were correlated about 0.73 across those two takes, which is quite respectable in the scheme of assessments like ours. It fits right in keeping with what we see in the personality literature generally of people who look at taking the same assessment more than once. Another thing that I probably didn't make, I think, as clear as I could have in 2019 is we hand people out as a stacked, you know, a ranked order of themes as the results. Those themes are actually, that ranking is determined by an underlying score. And without getting into the weeds about measurement stuff, which would make Emily and me really happy, but maybe nobody else, the way we report the results actually adds what looks like change to a system that maybe has less change in it. The actual first and second raw scores by theme, almost all the themes are about 98% similar first take to second take, in terms of your raw score on it.

Jim Asplund:
[5:27] The trouble is — there's a couple that are a little lower, but they're still 95% similar — when you move one or two of those in a ranking, you're moving everybody else, too. And so, so some of that change is somewhat artificial in that you might have the same score on a theme twice, but it still ranks 6th versus 8th because some other theme changed. And so, having said that, the scores are very stable. There are a few reasons that can alter that stability a little bit, again, that the paper goes into. But what we've seen — and this is not, that wasn't the first time we've done the deep research — what we've seen is that the stability has been there from the beginning. It's still there. The beautiful part of what we're doing here with this change is it's going to be easier for us to do that study going forward, because it's going to be easier to find people who've taken it more than once. And we'll find out when they switched and all kinds of interesting things that took a lot of detective work before that won't be so hard now.

Jim Collison:
[6:26] Emily, Jim alludes a little bit to the methodology around the way we do survey research. I'm going to give you an opportunity from your perspective to talk a little bit about that, as we think about our audience of mostly coaches, but maybe some individuals who are listening to this as well. Bring your thoughts to this, as we think about our methodology, since you're a methodologist. What is our methodology as we talk about this?

Emily Lorenz:
[6:50] Absolutely. So, as Jim mentioned, a lot of these themes are, you know, there's an underlying score around them, beneath them. And when we are, you know, doing a survey or doing a personality or talent assessment, that score that you get is comprised of, we'll say, like, part of a true score, which in the strengths perspective is like, that's the actual amount of Achiever that exists in my brain, plus a little bit of error. And now that error can be comprised of a lot of different things. It can be, Are you in a bad mood that day? Are you focused when you're taking the assessment? Are you, you know, in an environment where maybe you're distracted and not paying the most attention?

Emily Lorenz:
[7:26] It's a little more on the technical side of things, the measurement aspect. But if people are questioning, you know, maybe why the results have changed slightly, even though the test-retest reliability for the assessment is very high, you can explain it in terms of maybe measuring your height. So let's say you go to the doctor and you measure your height, and you're a certain height. Well, you know what? The next time you get measured, you might be slightly taller or shorter, depending on your posture. Or did you keep your shoes on when you got your height measured? Or if you took your shoes off, were you wearing thin socks or your thick fuzzy wool socks? I think, even though you technically are the same height over maybe that duration of time, there's still going to be a little bit of wiggle around that measurement. And we do see the same pattern happen when we look at psychological measurement or, in this case, you know, measuring strength and talents.

Jim Collison:
[8:14] Jim, we have these two reports that you referred to. We'll have the links to them available in the description on the YouTube video and try and get those out on social media for this as well. When we think about that Technical Report, and that's a report — and Emily, I'm going to ask you this question as well, so be ready. When we think about the Technical Report and this, this Stability Report that we put out talking about that data, as I read those, there's a lot of data in them, right? And they're not, they're not intended to be like a book that you just go in and read. We encourage folks to review them. But Jim, as you think in the, with the mind of a coach, with the mind of a administrator in an organization who's administering these codes, and they're going to get some of these questions, How could I best use the Technical Report or, or the, the test retake, as we called that report? How can I use those to help me? What's helpful in them that would help me answer maybe some of these questions? We'll give some answers here in a second. But your thoughts on that, Jim?

Jim Asplund:
[9:11] Well, as a person with an almost paralytic amount of Individualization, I will say, that depends on the coach and the person they're coaching, which sounds like a terrible cop-out.

Jim Collison:
[9:21] I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

Jim Asplund:
[9:23] We want the high degree of technical information because we feel that that's our responsibility — for those who make any test like this should report that sort of thing. And we also want people who have the ability or a desire to read that stuff to see it. Having said that, to your point, most coaches probably aren't going to want that level of detail, but it's nice for them, I think, to know that it's there, in case they want to look up what other people have studied, in addition to just Gallup or what I've done or what Emily's done, you know, over the years, to see what the wider world has to say about these concepts.

Jim Asplund:
[9:57] The other way to kind of read it, though, is — and I think the test-retest paper is easier to make this case because it's so much shorter — is to just kind of read the narrative around kind of why we look at this, so that they understand, you know, what the situation was that prompted us to look at it. It wasn't that we had any sense that it was unstable. It's just that we get asked about this a lot. We knew that there were some people who had taken it more than once. As researchers, we were curious what that looked like. And so, again, we thought it was our responsibility to answer the question we get asked a lot, but also to make use of the data we had. And so, if you look inside that report and the Technical Report, but you'll be able to see the rationale for why we did it. You'll be able to see some discussions about the data we had available.

Jim Asplund:
[10:44] So we didn't know, in any cases, why people took it again. We have some hypotheses, based on questions we've gotten over the years on it. And then we addressed kind of the information we had available to us, because people ask about other things, too, right? Like, "My results changed a lot. Is it because I'm a woman? Or is it because I'm old? Or is it because I live in India?" I mean, you know, you just think of the kind of things people ask, and we have data for all of the things I just mentioned and, and a couple others besides. And so we could explore, in some cases — for example, people who took the assessment in two different languages: Their results changed a little bit more from time 1 to time 2. I think that's not unexpected. Our mastery of a given language is going to be variable.

Jim Asplund:
[11:35] And for those who are blessed to be very fluent in more than one language, they're still going to be better in their native language probably than in the other one. And so, their comprehension of our material as translated is going to be slightly different there as well. And so, I think, setting the numbers aside, you can read through the scenarios we addressed and kind of what conclusions we made from that. And then, if you have questions about the numbers, you know, you can always email us and see if we answer, and/or phone your smart friend who may be your math friend who likes that sort of thing and ask them. But I think with the people you talk to, there will be occasions where the results do change a fair amount. Again, it's not the default. The default is a small amount of change. Sometimes change happens. And I think people shouldn't be afraid of that.

Jim Asplund:
[12:26] This is a weird segue. I'm listening to Mel Brooks' autobiography right now, which I recommend to anyone, by the way. He's hilarious. But at some point in there, he's talking about a play, and I'm no thespian here, but he's talking about how a guy was recommending to use the difficulty — you know, the situation didn't play out like it was supposed to — to use the difficulty. So if they put an obstacle in your way, and you're in a comedy, trip over it, make, make people laugh. Or if it's a drama, you know, be angry about it.

Jim Asplund:
[12:53] And so, I think a coach, you know, this is a chance to use that difficulty. If people are confused or worried that the results change, it's a good way to have a conversation with them about how do they feel about that change in results? And why do they think they might have changed? And rather than be afraid of that or worried about what that might mean, I think it's incumbent on you to try to use that difficulty and have a better conversation with the person you're coaching around what might have happened and what they think.

Jim Collison:
[13:22] Oh, I love that. Emily, what would you add to help coaches thinking about those, those documents and how to use them?

Emily Lorenz:
[13:29] I think it's a way to elevate your coaching and open up a new conversation with the person you're coaching. You know, as Jim mentioned, there's a lot of tables and a lot of numbers in the document, but there's also some narration around some things we were expecting to find and what we found. I think, you know, we've got the overall numbers on the 0.73 — that's the correlation of results over time. But there is some deep dives into, you know, what is the correlation over time for younger people or for men or women or for people from different racial or ethnic backgrounds? And I think, you know, that's a good chance for you to get really personal with your, the individual that you're coaching.

Emily Lorenz:
[14:07] Maybe there's someone who took it for the first time as a freshman in college, and they weren't really paying a ton of attention because they didn't understand the impact it would maybe have on them. And then they took it again 10 years later, when they were starting a new position at an organization, and they maybe see a little bit of shuffling in results. That's a good opportunity for you to demonstrate your expertise and, and know, you know, OK, well, overall, we see that the test-retest reliability is 0.73. But actually, when we look at people who maybe retook it over longer periods of time or who retook it after taking it for the first time as a younger individual, maybe in college, this is what it looks like, even though it's still very stable for those, those circumstances. But I think it's a good chance to demonstrate your expertise by having some of those tidbits in your back pocket when you are coaching someone.

Jim Collison:
[14:53] I want to reiterate what both of you have said. And Jim, you said it depends. And then I think, in some cases for coaches, you said, Jim, don't be afraid to really engage in this conversation. By the way, I get this conversation at least two or three times a month from coaches in the community. Like, what do I do? And I think there's some good opportunities to lean into this by turning that back and saying, "Let's look at both reports, and let's see what's changed." And let's have this conversation, Jim, to your, it depends, it depends on you. Talk to me about what's been going on with you, right? Talk to me about some things that have been happening, you know, over the last X number of years between reports, or even maybe a year between reports, where what's happening? What's, what are you thinking? Jim, would you add anything to that?

Jim Asplund:
[15:40] No, I think that's, that's good. Emily brought up a really good example. For example, you know, in the, in the paper, we have some hypotheses. So, so some things you can try on people if they don't really know. Emily's example of the college student, I'd forgotten the number, and Emily asked it the other day, and I went and looked at the data to make sure this was accurate. And they do, college students take the assessment quite a bit faster than your general respondent. And if you think about a lot of students — and I'm not trying to pick on them, but, you know, sometimes they're showing up at school their first year, a lot of things are coming at them, and someone told them to do this. And oftentimes, they gave them really good background information that they may or may not have paid attention to; sometimes, it just is in a packet of things they're supposed to do.

Jim Asplund:
[16:23] And so they take it. Now, they won't remember that that's what happened, but it's possible that when you see them 10 or 12 years later, and the results are different, that the first time was kind of a close, close, but not quite version of the assessment for them, because they were looking around and making new friends and doing nine other things at the same time, multitasking, like, like people do. And so, so in the in the paper, we have some hypotheses that people can throw at the people if they're still wondering, to help them with those conversations, because I think, you know, to your point, it's actually can be a really good opportunity for the coach to have a really interesting conversation with the person they're, they're coaching.

Jim Collison:
[17:06] Emily, would you add anything to that?

Emily Lorenz:
[17:09] Yeah, as Jim was talking, I was just thinking of some of the qualitative research that I've done with the college students and their experiences with CliftonStrengths. And, you know, a lot of it depends on the programming. Jim mentioned, like, how they're instructed to take it is really important. Putting a lot of thought and rigor into the "why" and explaining it is hugely important. But a specific student came to mind where he said, "Yeah, I took it on my cell phone in the back of my parents' car on my way to new student orientation." And I'm thinking to myself, there's, you know, you probably don't have the world's most accurate results, because I'm sure you were not paying, you know, attention.

Emily Lorenz:
[17:42] And, and it was interesting. Other, other students in the focus group were saying, "Well, oh, I sat down, you know, in my, you know, in my office set up at my, my parents' house, and I really focused and I took it. And I think my results are more accurate." So just that dynamic too, I've heard a lot of, you know, college students, they take it sometimes in a, in a rushed setting. And that's why it's so important to make sure that people have, you know, a good, focused, you know, clear space, a good mindset, before they are taking it, and that they dedicate the time to take it, because they're going to get so much more out of it, and the results will be a lot more reliable over time if they are putting in that effort the first time that they take it.

Jim Collison:
[18:15] Emily, sometimes we say long, you know, an opportunity to take it again is when there's been long periods of time between it or significant development. When you think about a college student, a lot can happen in those 4 years, right? So where 4 years, Jim, this goes back to your "Depends," you know, comment, 4 years for a 30-year-old may not equal 4 years for an 18-year-old, right? And so, there may be a case in a career services situation where it was taken as a freshman. That kind of situation happens. How did you, the key question to ask is, How seriously did you take it? And if it wasn't taken very seriously, Emily, would you say, maybe their senior year of college, 22, 23, that quick, it may be appropriate to take it again, to get a more accurate read. Am I, would I be OK in saying that?

Emily Lorenz:
[19:10] So, you know, it depends, Jim. I think, when we look at those specific situations, the test-retest reliability over time is still very good. But there are circumstances where students are like, "You know what? I didn't really pay attention." Or I've heard, you know, some students will say, "Oh, well, I answered based on who I thought I was going to be in college, based on who I actually am." And although that's less common, there's, you know, some of these edge cases where, yeah, it does make sense, because the student maybe didn't give it their full, wholehearted attention the first time, that they should really, you know, maybe consider taking it again. That is one of the situations where we do say, you know, if you weren't paying attention the first time, maybe, maybe give it another go.

Jim Asplund:
[19:47] Yeah. And, you know, there are a few instances, too, I think, where if you're young enough, life may have not, may not have provided you — presented you with some situations to respond to things quite — you may not have had an opportunity to know you have Command, for example, if you haven't had any leadership opportunities when you're 18, 19 years old. You may feel some of that, but the way we ask the questions, you'd be like, "That's not me." Ten years later, when you've been out in the workforce or out somewhere else doing something else, you would have had those opportunities. And then that will have manifested itself more clearly to you.

Jim Asplund:
[20:21] So I, you know, I like to point out, you know, all Emily's, in addition to all Emily's good points, you know, it is a developmental process. And, you know, as we age, we continue to develop, you know, it just slows down. But when you're in college, and Emily leads all of our higher ed research, you know, it's a more interesting way, thing to study in some respects, because they are changing faster. It's my favorite brother's birthday today. (He's my only brother, so it's a good joke.) And it's funny, because you think about how we changed, and yet we needle each other in our 50s exactly the same way we did, 50 years ago, 40 years ago. So, you know, some things are very stable. And so, certain little things can change and bubble up to the top or, or bottom. And, and as we develop, we sort some of that out. But, but the stuff that makes us unique, it's there. It's just, sometimes it's a little harder to measure when you're 18 years old, because you don't know yet.

Jim Collison:
[21:19] For sure. For sure. So as I think about recapping a little bit of this, we talked about the time between reports may be a factor in that. We talked about the initial assessment, taking at a very young age or not taken seriously the first time. By the way, not unique to college students. We have, I'm sure we have organizations that ask their people to take CliftonStrengths, and I'm sure there's professionals who go through that very, very quickly, maybe not understanding where they're headed with that. Two other areas I want to, I want to talk about — and Jim, you also mentioned, three would be taking the assessment the first time in a different language, maybe not your native language, or taking it in English first, and then taking it in your native language may cause some variance.

Jim Collison:
[22:01] Two, two things I want to talk about. One is, you know, we just kind of came through COVID. I've had a lot of folks ask me questions about trauma and traumatic events and that, and how that could have an effect. Jim and Emily, if you've got anything you want to add on that, the effect of going through trauma or traumatic events or, or very stressful events, would that be something to look at as well or a question to ask?

Jim Asplund:
[22:23] Certainly it's something worth looking into. I mean, we don't have any research on that specific to ourselves. We're going to try to do some. And Emily's got some plans around how we can do that. But if you look at the larger literature, in terms of talent and personality, real extreme trauma, like traumatic brain injuries and things like that, definitely have an effect on your personality. And so, I think it's plausible that something obviously very extreme like that could do it, but also other sources of trauma certainly change what you focus on and what you attend to. And if you're very nervous or very anxious or very depressed, you know, your brain is telling you different things than it ordinarily did. And so I think it's not, it wouldn't be surprising if it altered your results as well. But what we've got to rely on there is the larger literature, where we, our stuff tends to agree with in other areas where we do have research, so I wouldn't doubt that it would here as well.

Jim Collison:
[23:22] Emily?

Emily Lorenz:
[23:24] Yeah, I really like what Jim mentioned about, you know, if you're in a particular mental state — let's say you recently went through something very, very traumatic that's changing, you know, a lot of things for you. If you're in a completely different head space, when you sit in front of your computer to take CliftonStrengths, you might answer slightly differently. It kind of goes back to like, are you wearing those thin socks when your height is measured? Or are you wearing those thick wool socks when your height is measured? You're still kind of the same height, but it's going to show up a little bit differently. And, you know, based on the research that we've done with CliftonStrengths, by and large, like, it is very stable over time. I think that's an important message I want to echo, but there are some situational things that are happening within us that can affect the way we answer some of these questions.

Jim Asplund:
[24:06] And, you know, not to take it too far outside this discussion, but — and I'm no mental health scientist, so — but we do know of clinicians who use strengths as part of a rehabilitation process or drug and addiction counseling and things like that. We're looking for ways to study that or help other people study it with their own patients. So I think if people find that beneficial, the process itself, even if the results look a little different than they did before, the process itself might be worth quite a bit to someone to help kind of reframe a very challenging experience that they're going through. And we do have, I've met a lot of people who are doing that. Again, not a mental health professional myself, but the ones who I've met who are doing it are feeling like the results are pretty good. So, so even if the results might be a little "noisier" because you're, you're in a bad place right now, it still might be beneficial to, to do it.

Jim Collison:
[25:04] Last one, and this is going to be maybe controversial, so get ready on this, and I haven't really prepped you guys for this, but I was thinking about, as we were talking through: Is the effect of CliftonStrengths coaching on an individual — because a lot of the language we use in our coaching is also some of the language that ends up in the assessment, right? And if you've been heavily coached, and I, Jim, I know from a fact, like, I've taken the assessment a couple times, as we've been, you know, for practice, for testing, for some of those kinds of things. And I know as much as I want to answer it as truthfully as possible, it doesn't, my brain sometimes wants to mess around with a little bit and, and maybe force myself to get some other things that I want. Does the, do we have any thoughts on the effect of someone who has been through a lot of CliftonStrengths coaching and then taking it again, that introducing some variance? I don't know. Your thoughts, Jim?

Jim Asplund:
[25:59] Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts. In general, the items are not so transparent. So it should be hard for most people, even the ones who've been coached, to get the strengths that they "want" or the ones they think are the right ones. Now, like you, I've taken it many times, and I wrote the items, so it makes it really hard. But there are a couple themes — I mentioned before, we have a couple themes that are a little noisier than the other ones. I'll go ahead and tell you: It's Maximizer and Individualization. And if you think about our strengths philosophy and the way we talk about it, there's almost no way to ask those questions, no matter how we kind of write them, that doesn't kind of give those away a little bit when you take it again. Again, the difference is small. They're still highly stable. They're just slightly less stable. And what you see is the scores go up the second time. So we basically taught them that this is a new way of looking at the world, if you will — some people. Some people obviously already had it.

Jim Asplund:
[26:57] Again, those differences are very small, so I could be wrong. But if there is an effect, it's on those two, and it's in them learning about that from somebody in the content. But those effects are tiny. And so I think it's not a problem, but it's something that, you know, in an extreme case maybe you could see it. I'm going to guess, most coaches, you know, they're not, they're not teaching to the test quite like that, right. You know, they're, they're working from the individual's point of view, and, and the person being coached is not going to know all that stuff that well. But we've done this, right, and so when we update the assessment, we change items from time to time, and we change translations, and we try them out on ourselves. And we were pleasantly, although irritatingly, pleased and surprised at the same time to see how poorly we answered the ones we even wrote, you know, a few months later, because we didn't remember which ones they were for. And so I'm really confident that that's not a big problem. But there's a range in that where there's no problem to a tiny problem for some people.

Jim Collison:
[28:00] Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's something that's come up. Emily, you have any additional thoughts on that?

Emily Lorenz:
[28:05] I think Jim answered it perfectly. I don't have anything to add.

Jim Collison:
[28:09] Sounds good. Listen, because I spend a lot of time with coaches, that comes up from time to time. And I also know human nature a little bit. Sometimes, you know, as much as we want to be as truthful in the assessment as we can be, you read those questions, and you're like, Oh, I wish I was a little more like this, you know, kind of — .

Jim Asplund:
[28:29] Yeah, and it's an unconscious thing. I'm not judging people. I mean, the reason we have the paired items is precisely that.

Jim Collison:
[28:37] To prevent that, right.

Jim Asplund:
[28:37] It's very easy to oversubscribe to things if you only give them the one choice. Yeah, I was organized on Tuesday, so I'll check that box. But if you pair it up against some other alternative that's a lot more true, it's going to make you a lot more honest about that. Not because you're trying, in most cases, to do anything. It's just that it forces, like real life, it forces you to prioritize.

Jim Collison:
[29:00] We have a lot of success — we started with this idea, and we'll kind of end with it as well. We have a lot of success when I ask coaches to have those individuals compare the two reports and have a conversation about them. And so, I think this is a great opportunity for coaches, for individuals, even if you're listening to this, you came to it from a Google search or an AI-generative search of some kind, and you're like, Hey, how do I handle this? Take a look at both reports. Ask yourself some great questions about what's changed and why. And I think, actually looking, you know, we break those down, those down into some domain structures, and looking at how they rank in the domains and comparing the domains together often gives some great insight as well. And at the end of the day, it's a great opportunity to ask yourself a lot of great questions.

Jim Collison:
[29:47] Jim, as we wrap this up, and Emily, I'll give you your, the final word. But final thoughts, Jim, as we think about our philosophy — let me repeat this — our philosophy on this is not changing, but we wanted to give individuals, coaches and individuals, some great information to work with, now that this will be available. It'll be easier to compare these and to look at these. Jim, final thoughts?

Jim Asplund:
[30:08] Well, I, you know, as a researcher, I believe, you know, pretty deeply that more information is generally better. And so, I think it adds burden on the respondent to think about stuff some. So I understand that. But in general, I think having more information available for you — setting aside, it's going to be a lot easier to take it again, administratively, there's going to be a lot fewer steps involved, and you can use the same email, and all that sort of thing that'll make your life easier. Having those more results there should reaffirm, for most people, what their strengths are and how they sit. And even, you know, I took the thing the first time when it still had 35 themes. And my results are in a drawer over here somewhere. And it's slightly different. As I age, my Command has dropped a little bit, probably to the pleasure of everyone around me. But otherwise, they're pretty similar.

Jim Asplund:
[31:01] And being able to look at that from 1998 and now, you know, it's comforting. Even though I do know better, it's still nice to see. And being able to kind of reflect on that period of my life and kind of how I might have come up with those results is a good reeducation about myself, as I think about how I do things and how I interact with other people. And so, the goal here is to help people have the results that they feel are the most like them, not make it hard for them to take it again if they can't find their old results or if it's just easier to be in their new company's team grid to take it again with the same people at the same time, just to get that out of the way. And to make it real obvious kind of for them to choose kind of the version that they think is who they really are. And I think, over time, we'll be able to learn a lot studying the multiplicity of people's results. We'll find that they are indeed stable, and that that variability that's in there, to Emily's excellent point earlier, is mostly error. So it'll be pretty random, But there might be a few little gems in there, in terms of how we age or how we confront big challenges in life, and so forth, that we might learn something that's useful to people, too.

Jim Collison:
[32:15] Emily, final thoughts?

Emily Lorenz:
[32:17] Yeah, I want to kind of, you know, tie it back to something Jim mentioned earlier about like the rank-ordering and the scores behind these different things. You know, my top strength is Achiever. My second is Learner. You know, I have a higher score on Achiever than I do have Learner. But that doesn't necessarily mean that, like, I'm way more Achiever than I am Learner. And if I retook the assessment, and I had Learner No. 1 and Achiever No. 2, that really, I'm still leading with Achiever and Learner. And I think that's a good tidbit that you can help, you know, your people you're working with understand if they do see a little bit of shuffling in those results, it doesn't mean that you're a completely different person. It means that maybe, maybe your Learner score changed a little bit, maybe your Achiever score stayed the same, and that's why the rank-order shuffled a bit. So when we think about, you know, the, the profile overall, I would encourage people to get, to get, lean more into a lot into those Theme Dynamics, those combinations, rather than, OK, No. 1 is Achiever, No. 2 is Learner — because that's gonna, that's gonna be more productive for your coaching conversations, but also, you know, true to the science, with respect to when, you know, what happens when people retake the assessment

Jim Collison:
[33:23] I think with that, we will wrap it. I want to thank both of you, Jim and Emily. Thanks for coming and spending the last 30 minutes with me. There's going to be an infinite amount of conversations that now begin around this. For the listeners who are listening right now, as we're recording this here at the end of May, this functionality is going to go live in June. We're still not 100% sure of all the technical aspects of getting this merged. In most cases, I'm going to say here, you'll need to contact us. So reach out to our excellent customer support. We have chat, chat support that's available on our website. You can go to gallup.com/cliftonstrengths. Chat support is available there. We have phone numbers you can call us at from around the world — not in every location, but in most locations, you can contact us, and we'll need to, this will not automatically happen to your account. We'll need to, we'll need to manage this for you, at least at this point in time in it. I'm sure that will change as we, as we learn and grow going forward. I want to thank you for joining us today. If you have any questions, you can always send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Thanks for taking the time. If you're one of our Gallup-Certified Strengths Coaches, thank you for doing that. Thanks for listening today. With that, we'll say, Goodbye, everybody.

Jim Asplund's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Analytical, Individualization, Ideation, Maximizer and Strategic.

Emily Lorenz's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Achiever, Learner, Positivity, Maximizer and Input.