There are very few people who can resist the allure of a good personality test, and I’m no exception. Myers-Briggs? Been there, INTJed it. The Enneagram? Not to brag, but I’m #1. So when our leadership team sent out the CliftonStrengths assessment, I had my results within the hour. Little did I know, this wasn’t just a fun internal exercise. Our results were meant to give us a better understanding of how to work together as a team—and boy, did they deliver.
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or those unfamiliar, CliftonStrengths is an hour-long behavioral questionnaire that focuses less on labeling your personality and more on identifying how you naturally think, work, and contribute. Instead of pointing out what you’re bad at, it highlights the talents you lead with—things like communication, responsibility, and adaptability—to help teams operate more effectively by leaning into those strengths.
Going into our team’s results reveal, I assumed we’d get a handful of interesting insights, a few “oh yeah, that tracks” moments, not unlike my experience with most Buzzfeed quizzes (I guess if I was a PopTart, I would be Strawberry-flavored). But that’s not what happened.
Nearly everyone agreed their own results felt highly accurate, obvious even. But when we were challenged to match each team member to their top ten strengths from an anonymous list, obvious flew out the window. Out of twelve of us, we only correctly identified three people (and that was with hints!). That humbling exercise revealed something important: while we intuitively appreciate how we work together, we don’t always see the full depth of what each person brings to the table.
Mapped across the four domains—Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking—our team is strikingly well-balanced. Where one person leaves a gap, another naturally fills it. We may not have been able to predict each other’s top ten strengths, but collectively, they fit together with surprising precision. What once felt like good chemistry started to look more like intentional design. And when we looked at how those strengths show up in our actual roles, the alignment became even clearer.
Strategy: Curiosity as a Compass
Our strategy work is led by individuals with top strengths like Learner, Ideation, and Intellection, which explains why discovery phases around here tend to be… thorough. There are a lot of questions. A lot of “what ifs.” A lot of research deep-dives. In fact, if you mention data in any form, we will be asking to see it 0.2 seconds later. That curiosity is exactly what keeps us from rushing to solutions before we fully understand the problem—and it sets a strong foundation for everything that follows.
UX Design: Built For Real People, By Real People
Putting people first isn’t something our design team has to remember to do—it’s how we’re wired. Empathy allows us to deeply understand the lived experiences behind user behaviors. Individualization reminds us that no two clients are exactly alike, pushing us to design solutions that reflect nuance rather than averages. And Positivity brings an optimistic, solutions-oriented energy to both collaboration and iteration. Together, these strengths shape a design practice that listens closely, adapts thoughtfully, and creates experiences that feel intentional, inclusive, and genuinely human.
Operations & Project Management:
Smooth Sailing Specialists
Our Project Manager, powered by Woo, keeps communication flowing and momentum high. Timelines stay visible, stakeholders stay aligned, and collaboration feels natural rather than forced.
Behind the scenes, our Operations Director, guided by Empathy, ensures the team is supported, workloads are sustainable, and processes actually work for the humans using them. It’s a strength that helps the entire organization run smoothly—and keeps projects steady and predictable for our clients.
Leadership: Vision, Cultivation, and Flexibility
Our Design Director, top ranked in Adaptability, brings calm and flexibility to complex projects—especially when requirements evolve (as they inevitably do). Rather than forcing rigid plans, this allows our team to adjust thoughtfully while maintaining quality and forward momentum.
Our Development Lead, with Developer as a top strength (yes, really), brings a natural focus on growth and continuous improvement to the intersection of design and engineering. That mindset strengthens collaboration across disciplines and replaces siloed hand offs with true partnership—something our clients notice right away.
And finally, our CEO and Founder, driven by Ideation, brings big-picture thinking and possibility to the table. That strength shapes how we frame challenges, explore opportunities, and partner with clients to imagine what could be—not just what already exists.
Our Takeaways
None of this radically changed who we are—but it gave us shared language and sharper definition around how we work. That clarity allows us to build project teams more intentionally, anticipate complexity before it becomes a problem, and lean into the right strengths at the right time. We spend our days advocating for user-centered design, and this exercise reinforced what we already believe: whether you’re designing a product or a team, the best results begin with understanding the people at the center.
