As students and faculty of West Texas A&M, we are familiar with Gallup’s StrengthsQuest. WTAMU is partnering with the Gallup, Inc. to become a strengths-based campus, which will engage students in challenging and meaningful experiences that aid in their intellectual and personal development. It is important to know our strengths because they help us discover and talk about people’s greatest talents.

Landry Morren, student body president of WTAMU, presented the theme of the week, Communication, to students and faculty to get deeper into the theme’s unique characteristics. Landry’s strengths, in order, are Competition, Ideation, Strategic, Adaptability, and Communication. People exceptionally talented in the Communication theme generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters. People with strong Communication talents bring attention and focus to important messages. They can find words for not only their own thoughts and feelings, but for those of others. This gives them the ability to reach out and connect with others in meaningful ways. Other words to describe Communicators are presenter, storyteller, explainer, and conversationalist. They have a natural ability to connect with words.

Gallup.com says that Communicators “like to explain, describe, host, speak in public, and to write. Ideas are a dry beginning. Events are static. You feel a need to bring them to life, to energize them, to make them exciting and vivid. You take the dry idea and enliven it wih images and examples and metaphors. Your word pictures pique their interest, sharpen their world, and inspire them to act.”

Landry says his Communication theme has developed the older he got. He goes on to say that his Communication theme really stuck out amongst his other themes when he served as recruiting chair for the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity. He also served as a tour guide at WT and liked being able to communicate with prospective students. He says communicating is, “not just me conveying my thoughts but listening and understanding.” Landry has a booth set up every Wednesday in the Jack B. Kelley Student Center to communicate with students at 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. He says, “I’m just out there seeing how [student’s] days are going, their semester is going and hear any problems they are having, or any ideas.”

Those who hold the Communication theme are misunderstood as being ‘too chatty’. However, a mature communicator has control over their words, is pithy, and knows and understands their audience. They have a desire to be understood. They are also skilled at helping those who can’t necessarily communicate effectively, and help craft messages for others.

Communicators bring attention to messages that must be heard, are comfortable presenting to others and have the ability to turn events into stories others want to hear.

Sydney J. Harris wraps up communication with, “The two words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.”