Glossary
Strength Deployment Inventory
What is the Strength Deployment Inventory?
The Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) is a proprietary assessment based on Elias Porter's Relationship Awareness Theory. It describes motives in relationships, including how a person reports responding when things go well and during conflict.
What does it measure?
According to the developer's methodology, SDI 2.0 produces four related reports:
- Motivational Value System: the relative mix of motives reported when things are going well.
- Conflict Sequence: the reported pattern of motives as conflict develops, including accommodating, asserting, or analyzing.
- Strengths Portrait: a ranking of productive behaviors the respondent reports being more or less likely to use at work.
- Overdone Strengths Portrait: a ranking of behaviors that may become unproductive when strengths are taken too far.
The going-well framework combines three motive scales into seven categories, including blends.
- Altruistic-Nurturing concerns helping people;
- Assertive-Directing concerns achieving results;
- and Analytic-Autonomizing concerns logical order and self-reliance.
These definitions describe the developer's model, not independently established diagnoses.
How is it used?
The tool is intended to support discussion of relationships and work behavior. A profile can provide language for that discussion without being a fixed diagnosis or a complete explanation of someone's motives.
A discussion example
In a hypothetical team discussion, someone says they normally enjoy helping colleagues but, during disagreement, first step back to examine the facts. Comparing their going-well and conflict reports could lead to a useful question: “When you become quiet, do you need time to think, or is something else happening?” The person's account and the actual situation matter; a profile alone cannot answer for them.
Criticisms and evaluation questions
For a self-report tool, ask how responses may depend on self-perception or a wish to present oneself favorably. Does the evidence show repeatable scores, support the proposed categories, and include the population in which the tool will be used? Does it predict a relevant outcome beyond simply giving people a shared vocabulary? These are questions to investigate, not proof that the assessment fails them.
Why it matters
Describing an assessment is different from showing that it improves teamwork, leadership, or conflict resolution. Those claims need evidence about what happens when people use it.