Session 7 · Guide and forms

Life's Great Question: Orientation

BEFORE SESSION 8

Why Take Life’s Great Question

About fifteen minutes, free, and it turns your strengths toward other people

“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

— 1 Peter 4:10 (NIV)

What it is

Life’s Great Question is a short, free online survey from Tom Rath, who also wrote StrengthsFinder 2.0, the book behind CliftonStrengths. It names the three ways you most naturally contribute to the people around you.

Rath’s research found that every group needs three kinds of work. Some people Create: they bring new ideas. Some Operate: they build reliable systems. Some Relate: they connect with and care for others. Within those three sit twelve contributions, and the survey names your top three.

Why we ask you to take it

1.It turns the question outward. CliftonStrengths tells you how you are wired. VIA tells you the character you bring. This asks the next question: what do you give? Rath swaps “What do I want to be?” for “What does the world need from me?” In his words: “Instead of following your passion, find your greatest contribution.”

2.It gives your strengths somewhere to go. For forty years a job told your strengths where to work. Strengths do not retire; they go looking for work. Three plain verbs tell them where.

3.It feeds Session 8. Your three contributions slot straight into your Contribution Hypothesis: “…which makes me suspect I am meant to ___ for ___.”

The twelve contributions

Your report names your top three of these twelve:

Initiating	Challenging	Teaching	Visioning
Connecting	Energizing	Perceiving	Influencing
Organizing	Achieving	Adapting	Scaling

One man’s result. The program lead’s three are Initiating, Adapting and Teaching. That is a fair description of building WhyzMen: start it, shape it for this room, and teach it.

How we will use it

When	What happens
Session 8	The Strengths Portrait. Your three contributions sit beside your CliftonStrengths Top 5 and VIA top 5, and help you write your Contribution Hypothesis.
Session 11	Mission and the One Thing. Your three verbs give you words for rung two of your mission: “I do ___ for ___ so that ___.”

Before you click

•Go to tomrath.org/contribify and click Start Your Inventory. Enter your email; that is where your results are sent.

•Take fifteen quiet minutes in one sitting. Answer as you are; your first instinct is usually the honest one.

•On the results screen, click Download PDF Report, or Send PDF to have it emailed to you.

•The free survey and its PDF are all you need. Nothing to buy.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Life’s Great Question: Discover How You Best Contribute to the World (Tom Rath, 2020) is optional. It is short, and it goes deeper on each of the twelve contributions and how to put yours to work.

Copies are available to borrow from the program lead. Ask at any session. If you would rather own one, it costs under $10.

Bring to Session 8

Write your three contributions here, and bring them with your CliftonStrengths Top 5 and VIA top 5.

My three contributions	Where I already do this
1.
2.
3.

One question to sit with: Which of your three would you do for free, with no title and no audience? That one is most likely to carry your next chapter.