The word Forté has French origins and means “one’s strengths.” Strength is defined as “a good or beneficial quality or attribute of a person or thing.”

So, what are YOUR strengths. . . or better yet, What’s your Forté? We each possess a unique combination of communication strengths. These strengths influence our personal style and preferences for communicating as well as dictate how we can best be motivated in life and work. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a way to gain more insight into our strengths and, more importantly, how we may be perceived by others?

We do!

What’s your Forté was the question that began the Forté journey more than 40 years ago. At that time, there were no existing assessments that focused on individual strengths, and more specifically, on communication-style strengths. Over the years, Forté has been tested, retested, refined to boast an above 80% validity rate.

Those high levels of validity have always been a cornerstone of the Forté Communication Style survey. The results have to be highly accurate and actionable. As the first computerized communication-style profile (initially on an IBM Series 1, then migrated to the IBM PC in 1981!), ease-of-use and ease-of-interpretation joined validity as the foundational pieces of Forté.

Forté focuses on the “who” you are as it relates to your personal communication-style strengths. Then, it analyzes how you have been adapting your strengths over the most recent 30 days to an identified environment. Using predictive analytics (now known as AI), Forté then shares how you are “most likely” coming across to others. Ultimately, this drives a communication-style strategy for you to use over the next 30 days to reduce or remove any possibilities for miscommunication or misunderstanding.
 
Your first completed Forté survey is called the “benchmark” survey. This is an important distinction because it creates your baseline. It remains the same from “cradle to grave” as it does not change over time. Forté is not intended to be a one-time interaction! As life goes on, Forté will walk with you through Forté Adapting Updates that can be taken as often as every 30 days. This invaluable tool provides a current and relevant communication-style strategy that can be applied over the next 30 days. Another great feature is that the system will trend the adapting updates so you can learn the optimum adapting strategies that assist in accomplishing your goals.

Something to note is that you can complete adapting updates for every different environment in your life, such as “how my team expects me to act at work;” “how my boss expects me to act at work;” and “how my direct reports expect me to act at work.” You will receive a different communication-style strategy for each environment. When you think about it, you’re adapting throughout the day, so why not adapt in the ways that are most effective? With this knowledge, we can find tools and strategies for how to utilize your strengths most effectively over time.

If you would like more information or have questions, please contact us via Contact - > The Forte Institute or (910) 452-5152. And if you would like to experience Forte for yourself, click here for a complementary Forte Communication Style Survey. This will take you less than eight minutes and you will have your results immediately upon completion.