What is Soar?

Donald O. Clifton (1924–2003) was a psychologist, a researcher, and later chairman of Gallup. His life’s work became the strengths movement: a public argument that people grow fastest where they already have talent — not where they are most broken.

Out of that work came CliftonStrengths®: a shared language for talent that millions of people now carry. Gallup built the assessment. Don’s question built the movement. Soar exists because that question is still unfinished business for the world.

In 1992 Don Clifton and Paula Nelson published Soar with Your Strengths. The title is the thesis: stop spending a lifetime repairing what is weak. Name what is already strong. Then fly with it.

Soar.com is not a mood word. It is a pointer back to that book — and to Don’s wager that ordinary people, given a true read on their talent, can turn potential into contribution.

Start with Paul introducing the entire mission of Soar — then leading with strengths after hard seasons, and Paul at the 2016 CliftonStrengths Summit.

Want the product overview too? Watch the Soar AI Studio vision.

Paul’s father was a materials engineer and a gifted taxonomist. He wrote the foundational book in his field. Classification was how factories learned what a piece of matter — and what a process — could become.

He did not stop at naming stuff. He classified raw materials. He also classified the processes and machines used to add value to those raw materials. Then, with DCLASS and DSEARCH, manufacturers could turn that stock into high-value finished goods — efficiently, at scale.

1. 1Classify the raw materials.
2. 2Classify the processes and machines that add value to those materials.
3. 3Finish the goods — DCLASS + DSEARCH made that manufacturing path searchable and efficient.

Same shape. Different material. Don Clifton classified raw talent. Then you add skills, knowledge, and practice to that raw talent to achieve excellence — the way classified materials plus classified processes and machines become high-value finished goods.

1. 1Classify the raw talent (CliftonStrengths).
2. 2Add skills, knowledge, and practice to that talent.
3. 3Achieve excellence — contribution at scale.

Paul’s enthusiasm for Don, for Soar with Your Strengths, and for Gallup is a life mission: help a billion people learn their strengths — and then live them. Career. Money. Health. Relationships. Community.

Upload is the first honest step. Your CliftonStrengths report is the taxonomy. The grid is the room. The work is to soar.