I remember my mother saying to me when I was young that there is nothing more powerful than the ability to read, because once you can read you can learn and transport yourself to wherever you want to be. "With a book, you're never alone" was another one of her favourite sayings. Perhaps this accounts for some of my own love of reading and the written word.

How our strength of Scribe combines with other strengths in our profile will impact on the messages that we want to give and the ways in which we give them. It might also shape whether we want to play Scribe on a bigger stage (writing things for a wider audience), or whether we just want to use Scribe closer to home (for example, in the messages we write in birthday cards or the notes to our spouse).

Either way, there is remarkable potential in Scribe and the power of the written word. Here are seven examples of how Scribe dynamics play out in practice:

1. Scribe and Narrator: This is perhaps the classic Scribe combination, since from the time of Homer (the ancient Greek poet that is, not Homer Simpson) and beyond, we have been captivated by people's ability to tell stories. Once those stories became written, rather than passed down orally from generation to generation, they acquired a new magic to captivate us all of their own. The Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling perhaps best embodies this for our modern times.

2. Scribe and Explainer: People with this strengths dynamic use the written word as a way of conveying what they mean and helping people to understand. The best text books in any discipline are written by people with this combination, since they have the fundamental gift of being able to share meaning through the way they write. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Outliers, amongst others, characterises this gift.

3. Scribe and Resolver: A related dynamic can be found with people who pair Scribe and Resolver. This is the person you need to write the instruction manual for your new smartphone, or the troubleshooting guide for when your printer goes wrong. There is an entire industry that has grown up around the value we place on this strengths dynamic, exemplified by any of the books in the "... for Dummies" series, Haynes car manuals, and the "... Made Easy" genre.

4. Scribe and Time Optimiser: When Scribe combines with Time Optimiser, we would expect to see productivity and prodigious output. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is recognised for this in music, while Professor Adrian Furnham at University College London is the doyen of the psychology world in this regard, having written well over 700 scientific papers and more than 60 books.

5. Scribe and Esteem Builder: Some people use the written word very specifically to help others to realise their potential and to believe in themselves. Established examples of this include Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach, and Susan Jeffers' Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, both of which have transformed the lives of countless thousands of people.

6. Scribe and Change Agent: The power of the written word is extraordinarily effective at inspiring people to change. When Scribe combines with Change Agent, you find the person who is able to invoke change through what they write. Seth Godin is one of the figureheads in this space, both through his daily blog and his numerous books, including Linchpin. Check him out!

7. Scribe and Legacy: One of the beauties of Scribe as a strength is that it automatically creates its own legacy: the output of the written word. As such, Scribe can combine very naturally with Legacy, because our written output will outlast us by decades, generations, centuries and even millenia. Just think about how much we have learned through the Scribe-Legacy dynamic of all the authors who have lived before us...

I know that the Scribe-Legacy dynamic is one of the combinations that drives me, but equally I recognise how other strengths always come into play as well. If you have Scribe in your profile, which dynamics does it create for you? The written word has captivated us for centuries, and will do so for centuries more.

With best wishes,

Alex Linley