Beyond "Name It, Claim It, Aim It": Strengths, Motivation, and What Drives Us
Beyond "Name It, Claim It, Aim It": Understanding what drives your strengths
If you’re familiar with strengths-based development, you’ve probably encountered Gallup’s foundational approach:
Name it — identify your strengths
Claim it — embrace them as your own
Aim it — intentionally apply them to your goals and challenges
This gives us such a powerful starting point: understanding what we naturally do best and leaning into it.
If you’ve embarked in this journey, I’d love to invite you to reflect not just on what your strengths are and how to apply them, but why you use them the way you do.
Drawing on Dan Siegel’s work, we can consider three key drivers of motivation - he calls them ABCs - that shape human behavior at a deep level:
Autonomy: the drive for independence and agency
Bonding: the drive for connection and belonging
Certainty: the drive for predictability and safety
These motivational patterns often operate beneath the surface of our awareness. When we bring them into view, we can better understand not only our strengths but the intentions behind how we use them.
For example:
Autonomy + Achiever®: "If I do it all myself, I know it will get done right."
Autonomy + Input®: "Having all the knowledge at my fingertips, helps me figure things out by myself."
Bonding + Woo®: "If I connect with others, I’ll feel accepted and valued."
Bonding + Individualization®: “Knowing enough about this person can help me feel connected to them.”
Certainty + Analytical®: "I gather data so I can feel prepared and safe."
Certainty + Empathy®: “Tuning into your feelings can help me anticipate what’s coming.”
By reflecting on these drivers, we begin to see how our strengths can serve us — or subtly limit us — depending on the deeper motivations behind them.
In practice, this invites us to go deeper into the “aim it" to ask:
What is driving me to use this strength in this way?
Is this strength helping me assert, connect, or protect myself — and is that serving me?
Am I expressing this strength from freedom, or from a place of fear or old habit?
This second level of reflection can help us move from simply using our strengths to using them more wisely and intentionally, aligned not only with what we’re good at but also with what serves us best.
If you’re curious about exploring this next layer — what drives your strengths and how you can use them with more freedom — let’s connect. I offer a free chemistry call to see if CliftonStrengths coaching with me is right for you.
