CliftonStrengths® in sports: Athletes and coaches from the high school to olympic levels

The CliftonStrengths® assessment has demonstrated merit across a variety of contexts. However, research involving the intersection of strengths and sport is sparse. This is the first study to examine the prevalence of strengths in athletes and coaches (N = 1,516) from college, high school/club, and Olympian/USA team/professional teams. Participants completed the standardized online CliftonStrengths® assessment independently, received their personalized reports identifying their top five signature strengths, and voluntarily shared their results with the researchers for database inclusion and future analysis. This study also compared the prevalence of each strength to a general public sample of 12.5+ million individuals. The top five signature strengths among athletes were: Restorative, Achiever, Adaptability, Competition, and Strategic. The top five signature strengths among coaches were: Achiever, Restorative, Learner, Relator, and Responsibility. It was notable to find Restorative as the highest-ranking strength among all types of athletes combined, and when comparing the combined athlete and coach sample to the general public sample, there was a much lower ranking of the Input strength (for athletes and coaches) and the Responsibility strength (specifically for athletes). These findings are discussed and recommendations for future research are provided.