Our workplace leadership academy begins tomorrow. I am a sucker for skills building. As I said in the application for the academy, I am a life-long learner. I’m excited. I love taking classes, especially ones where I learn about my assets. And I’m guessing Strengths Based Leadership has to do with, well, my assets. Confident people are productive people, says the leadership book, so bring it on.

Tonite, after taking an online quiz while sipping Chardonnay and ignoring my kids’s pleas for homework help, I discovered that my strenghs are Positivity, Woo, Communicator, Maximizer and Relationship. I think that’s what they were. I am also an ENFP according to Myers Briggs and a 4 or a 7 in the Enneagram. Know thyself!

Although these kind of personality or leadership tests help me get to know myself, they also remind me that other people have other ways. In fact, my way is not the only way. In the Five Love Languages book, which I read years ago, I recall that my love style is to value loving words. (But, okay, I like gifts, and all the rest of the love styles too!) So if my spouse brings me a bag of groceries instead of a kind word (ahem!) that doesn’t mean he’s wrong and I’m right. It just means we have different styles.

But now that I have learned my style is positive and encouraging, I can encourage him (and everyone) to be more like me. Ahem.