Athletes Committed to Excellence (ACE), a club that aspires to unite and lead the student body toward lives of excellence through positive, healthy choices, tested their members’ qualifications and leadership skills on Nov. 1 with a 45-minute talent assessment called CliftonStrengths (formerly Gallup StrengthsFinder), club member Katherine Aubert ‘19 said. It consisted of over 100 questions that tested the members’ five main strengths as leaders.

“[This assessment] showed me my strengths which is super unique for a test like that,” club member Mark Jareczek ’19 said. “It’s usually like this is bad about you, fix this. It boosted my confidence in some of the aspects of my leadership that I thought I possessed.”

Gallup research finds that people who use their CliftonStrengths are more engaged and productive at work and three times more likely than others to have an excellent quality of life, sponsor of the ACE club Bradley Anderson said.

“This assessment was unique because a lot of leadership development focuses on identifying your weakness and improving them, while this training focused on analyzing our strengths in hopes to better capitalize on them,” Aubert said.

After the assessment, the club members were presented with a 20-page breakdown of their results, explained in more detail by Dr. Abigaile Van Horn, Associate Director of Leadership, Ethics and Values at North Central College, Aubert said.

“I think it will have a very positive impact on ACE and the teams that we represent because we spend a lot of our time focusing on our weaknesses, so I think this boosted our confidence in using what we excel at to bring about more positive results on our teams and community in general,” Aubert said. “I know that personally, I will keep these results in my mind when looking at how to be most effective in my role at my job, in running and in the classroom, and I think this has impacted many other ACE members in the same way.”

Van Horn helped the 20 ACE leaders analyze the results and how focusing on those strengths can improve their leadership, Anderson said.

“As I reflected on the night during my drive home, I came to the realization that the students are really getting a head-start by learning about their strengths this early in their lives.  And for that, I am thankful,” Anderson said.