# A List of Talents and Skills: Seven Kinds and How to Spot Yours Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/list-of-talents-and-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/list-of-talents-and-skills.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building self-awareness at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Talents come naturally; skills are built through practice. See a list of talents and skills in seven kinds, with examples, and how to find and name your own. ## Key facts - Title: A List of Talents and Skills: Seven Kinds and How to Spot Yours - Category: Types of Skills - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Setting Goals, Building Confidence - Primary keyword: list of talents and skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/list-of-talents-and-skills/ ## What this page covers - Talents come naturally; skills are built through practice. See a list of talents and skills in seven kinds, with examples, and how to find and name your own. - Practical guidance for list of talents and skills - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation A list of talents and skills has two halves. Talents are what you do well without being taught: a natural pull toward finishing things, persuading people, connecting with others or thinking problems through. Skills are abilities built through instruction and practice, from writing code to communicating clearly. The most useful abilities are both: a talent practiced into a skill. If someone has [asked what you are good at](/knowledge/self-awareness/strengths-and-weaknesses-examples/) and your mind went blank, the problem is rarely that there is nothing to find. Talents that matter at work seldom look like a gift for singing or sport, and what comes naturally tends to feel too ordinary to count. The list below is built to catch exactly those. ## A list of talents and skills in seven kinds The first four entries are talents at work, taken from Gallup's CliftonStrengths model, which sorts 34 talent themes into four domains: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking. Gallup groups them by how the themes help people work together to accomplish goals, and that makes the four domains a handy checklist: which of these ways of contributing comes to you most naturally? The fifth entry covers the everyday, creative sense of talent. The last two are skills: the technical kind tied to a particular job, and the kind that governs how you work with others and manage yourself. ### 1. Executing talents Executing talents are a natural pull toward getting things done and seeing them through. Gallup's themes in this domain include Achiever, Arranger and Belief. Each names a pattern of behavior rather than a technique you studied, which is exactly what makes the names useful: they give you a word for something you already do but have never labeled. In study and at work, this talent shows up as the person who turns a vague group plan into a shared schedule, who feels restless while a task sits half-finished, or who quietly reshuffles the work when a deadline moves. If people tend to hand you the jobs that must actually get finished, this domain is worth a closer look. ### 2. Influencing talents Influencing talents are a natural tendency to take charge, speak up and get others moving. Gallup's themes in this domain include Activator, Command, Communication and Significance. The Communication theme is a neat illustration of how the two halves of this list relate. As a talent theme, it names a natural pattern some people show from early on. Communicating well in a meeting or an email is also a skill, and anyone can build it with practice. The same word sits on both sides of the list; what differs is whether it came easily or was learned. If you are the one who gets a stalled group to commit to a decision, or who ends up presenting because nobody else will, you may have talent in this domain. ### 3. Relationship-building talents Relationship-building talents are a natural pattern of connecting with people and holding a group together. Gallup's themes in this domain include Adaptability. This is the talent most often mistaken for simply being nice. It shows up as the person new team members drift toward, the one who notices when a quiet colleague has stopped contributing, or the one others turn to when a group chat gets tense. Because it rarely produces anything you can hold up afterward, people with this talent are often the last to put it on a list. ### 4. Strategic-thinking talents Strategic-thinking talents are a natural pattern of analyzing information and thinking problems through. Gallup's themes in this domain include Analytical. You might recognize it as needing to know why a decision was made before you can commit to it, a habit of asking what happens three steps after the obvious next one, or being the person who reads the full brief while everyone else skims. It is easy to dismiss as overthinking. Pointed at the right problem, it is the habit that catches what a rushed plan missed. ### 5. Creative and physical talents This is the everyday meaning of talent: musical aptitude, athletic ability, artistic creativity. These belong on the list, and if you have one, it is real. The musical example also shows the whole relationship in miniature. Musical aptitude is the talent; playing an instrument is the skill it becomes once it has been practiced. Until then, a talent like this rarely shows up as something a team or an employer can use. The catch is that this kind covers only part of the picture. If it were the only kind, anyone without a stage talent would have to conclude they have none, when the patterns in the first four entries are talents too, and the ones far more often put to work. ### 6. Hard skills Hard skills are the technical, job-specific abilities taught by schools or employers: writing code, using accounting software, speaking a foreign language fluently. They are the easiest part of the list to name, because a course, a qualification or a piece of finished work points straight at them. They qualify you for a specific kind of job. They say much less about how well you will do it, which is why they need a column of their own rather than standing in for the whole list. ### 7. Skills for working with others and managing yourself The last entry is the nontechnical kind: the skills that govern how you work with others and how you manage yourself at work. They carry over from one role, organization and industry to the next, and none of them depends on talent. They are built through [repetition and feedback](/knowledge/types-of-skills/skill-seeker/), which anyone can do. There are twelve of them. Four are about managing yourself: building self-awareness, setting goals, building confidence and building resilience. Six are the basics of working with others and getting work done: professional behaviors, communication, teamwork, working with your manager, time management and decision-making. Two are proactive: networking, and getting and applying influence. These are also the hardest to rate from the inside, because you use them every day without watching yourself do it. Rather than guessing at this part of your list, you can [measure where these twelve stand](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and fill it in from a result. Since all twelve are learnable, a low score is a starting point, not a verdict. ## Talent or skill: why the line blurs A talent is a natural aptitude you show without formal training; a skill is an ability built through instruction, practice and experience. Practice improves a skill, while the talent itself is not something anyone can teach you. In real life the two blur, especially at high levels: watch someone who is very good at something, and it is often impossible to tell whether it started as talent or was built entirely through practice. That is good news for your list, because it does not have to be sorted perfectly. What matters is knowing which abilities come easily to you and which you have deliberately built. It also settles the worry underneath many lists. Talent without practice does not turn into a dependable ability, and a skill can be learned with no special talent behind it. Skills are built by repetition and feedback, which anyone can do; talent mainly changes how fast and how far the building goes. If an item on the list does not come naturally to you, that tells you where you start, not whether you can learn it. ## How to build your own list of talents and skills The seven entries above are categories. Turning them into your own list takes three moves. Start with the four talent domains and ask which way of contributing comes to you most naturally: getting things finished, getting people moving, holding a group together, or thinking a problem through. Then look in the unremarkable places. Talents are easy to overlook precisely because they feel ordinary to the person who has them, so the evidence is in what others ask you for, what you finish without being chased, and what you do in a group when nobody has assigned roles. [Someone who has watched](/knowledge/self-awareness/what-am-i-good-at/) you work, such as a teacher, a coach or a shift supervisor, will often name a talent you would never have written down yourself. Next, name each talent precisely. A vague sense of being good at something is hard to build on, because you cannot tell which part of what you do is working. If you have ever felt good at something without being able to say what it is, you are in good company. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work put that gap into words: > Something I feel I'm missing — and I think you can only learn it through experience — is how to gain power and influence at a workplace. In other words, how do I turn the fact that I'm really good at networking and at talking with lots of people into real influence, or into moving up more easily? > > I've sometimes seen people who are really good at positioning themselves to be the one who gets brought along. I think I'm actually quite good at that naturally, but I would like to know what I'm doing that works, and what doesn't. She was asking a question, not describing a method, and the question at the end is the useful part. Sensing that you are good at something naturally is where a talent starts. Knowing what you are doing that works is what lets you repeat it on purpose, and that is the point where a talent begins turning into a skill. Finally, pair every item with evidence. A talent is visible to others only through what it produces. Writing that you are naturally organized is a self-description; describing the student event you organized, or the deadline you held when the group fell behind, is evidence. That is the practical difference between the two halves of your list: talents are the starting point for knowing yourself, while [skills backed by examples](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/career-skills-resume/) are what an application or an interview actually needs. Put hard skills in one column and workplace skills in another, each with one concrete example beside it. ## The skills behind a list you can use Look at what the list has asked of you so far: an honest read of what comes naturally, a decision about where to point it, and the nerve to treat the gaps as things to build. Each of those can be practiced. **Building Self-Awareness** is what turns a set of categories into an accurate picture of you. It means telling apart what you are genuinely good at from what you have merely become competent at, by looking at how you work, how a task feels while you do it, and the results it produces. Feedback fills in what you cannot see from the inside: the strengths other people rely on you for are often the ones you have stopped noticing. **Setting Goals** gives the list a direction. Unlike school, work lets you choose much of what you practice, so a clear list of talents tells you where your effort will pay off most: roles and tasks inside your strengths zone, rather than an endless campaign to fix every weakness. Set against your work values, the list becomes a way to judge whether a role fits you, applied to the next year or so rather than locked into a five-year plan. **Building Confidence** is the belief that you can do specific things, and it grows from doing them rather than from thinking positively. That changes how you read a gap on your list: "I have no talent for this" becomes "I have not practiced this yet." Take a manageable step, practice at that level, and let each finished attempt add to the evidence until the item earns its place on your list. Which skill to practice first is the remaining question, and it has a quick answer. The **free Job Skills Test** scores you on these three and on **the rest of the twelve** from the seventh entry above, then points to [the skills worth practicing first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), so your effort goes where your list is thinnest. Every one of them can be built. ## Where your own list already begins You may already see one of the four talent domains in an ordinary week: the project timeline you ended up writing, the shift you reorganized when two people called in sick, the question you kept asking until the reasoning held. That is raw material, and the skills that sharpen it can be built at your own pace without turning into someone else. Applications, interviews and job offers will each ask what you are good at in a slightly different form; with a list you trust, you answer from evidence instead of starting from a blank page every time. If you can point to one thing people already hand you because you do it well, the first line of your list is written. What remains is the part you cannot see from the inside. ## See the skills half of your list The only step left is to fill in what reflection alone cannot reach. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: in 7 minutes it shows where you stand across all twelve and which of them would make the biggest difference to the work you want next. ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Talents come naturally; skills are built through practice. See a list of talents and skills in seven kinds, with examples, and how to find and name your own. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Setting Goals, Building Confidence. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/setting-goals.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/confidence.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/list-of-talents-and-skills/ Preferred summary: "Talents come naturally; skills are built through practice. See a list of talents and skills in seven kinds, with examples, and how to find and name your own." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.