Rating: 
Summary: It Hits The Spot
Review: Have you ever felt as though you didn't have the opportunity to contribute 100% in your job because your boss and/or work environment didn't understand, appreciate, or take advantage of what you did best? It's frustrating, but there is something you can do about it.This book helps you discover your strengths and provides insight on how to develop them. To job hunters; hiring managers and recruiters wish you would read this book. To managers; your employees wish you would knew how to identify their strengths and make the most of them. To everyone; your colleagues, families, employees, and managers wish you would read this book so you'd have a better understanding of what you do well, can communicate it, and learn how to manage around your weaknesses effectively.
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Summary: Emotionally Charged Learning and Now, Discover Your Stengths
Review: I have been in business for 25 years mostly as a top executive for Xeorx and then Intel. I consider it my obligation to continue to improve myself at every level in order to maintain my career and stay ahead of the internal competition. To me it is not just a credo it is a way of life and one that has served me well over the years and put three girls through college. Nothing has ever helped more than improving my leadership skills. My top five books this quarter are mostly bestsellers such as Emotionally Charged Learning by Eric Schiffer, "Good to Great" by Jim Collins, Execution by Larry Bossidy and now this one which is shared with one other. Emotionally Charged Learning taught me how to be a better "knowledge" oriented leader which gives me more power to have my employees better excel. Good to Great taught me to take another look at what really works and Execution taught me to focus even more on reality. This book taught me to discover what was already inside and use it to the maximum potential. These books have been essential to me and my ongoing success.
Rating:
Summary: A SUCCESS
Review: This book is a great book if your looking for success, not just in business, but in life. This book, along with the book, The Little Guide To Happiness, are highly recommended if personal happiness is your goal.
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Summary: Human Interaction: the Next Generation
Review: I read the book in 3 days! Fascinating new approach into human interaction. A whole new way for people to relate to others and mostly to understand their own strengths. The concept of themes is fascinating and the StrengthsFinder test has helped me understand why I am drawn to certain tasks - not for the task itself, but for the underlying talent I am able to use, develop and master. As I read through all the 34 themes, I started to see those around me in a whole new way - all a sudden their behavior and quirks started making sense! Talents and strengths started emerging and with the help of the section on how to manage people by theme, I can now improve my interaction with others - even in a non-business setting. This book will not tell you which job or field to choose, however, by knowing your major themes, it is easier to choose something that is in-line with your true self. With this strength-based concept, interpersonal relations as a whole are tremendously enhanced, not to mention the potential for more effective human management within corporations. Overall, an excellent and fascinating read, and a wonderful self-knowledge tool.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent. Enjoy the rest of your life.
Review: All your life you probably have been told to work on your weakest link, to develop what you are missing, to become a renaissance person by turning all your weaknesses into strength. This is nice, but completely utopic for one thing, and really painful for another. Who wants to really seriously focus on their weaknesses. If they are weaknesses, there are for a reason. It is because you really don't like doing those things. But, within a Protesto-Judeo-Christian upbringing, this was not an acceptable answer. Well, maybe now it is. Comes now this wonderful book, who allows every one to go out swinging on their strength alone, and become the best you can be. The test alone, with the website follow up, is worth the price of the book. In my case, the finding of my best 5 strengths was right on the mark.
Rating: 
Summary: Huge Disappointment
Review: This is my first time to write a review after buying dozens of books through Amazon. But a contrary poinion is needed here.
The premise was great: working on our strengths is more important than focusing on our weaknesses. The first 2/3 of the book repeated this idea in various ways. That is great, but I already beleived that or I would not have purchased the book. Almost 1/3 was spent explaining how to manage people by understanding the strengths of your employees. A few pages in between explained the profiles that are derived from the online test. These pages are descriptive, but quite general. They sound like horoscopes from the newspaper. But no space was spent on how to apply the descriptions of the strength profiles. And that is what I came expecting to learn.
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Summary: Gallup: Discover Your Customer Dissatisfaction
Review: Four stars for content, and zero for product "features". The book applies an old strategy wisdom to the domain of self- and people management: focus on your strengths, and ignore your weaknesses unless they seriously get in your way. The authors argue that vast sums of time and resources are wasted on trying to correct people's weaknesses. Consider what the same resources could achieve if instead planted in the much more fertile soil of somebody's natural talents and strengths. True enough, and perhaps an eloquent reminder of this insight is worth paying the price of the book. It then goes on to describe three dozen natural talents - qualities that cannot be trained, such as empathy, analytical orientation or the ability to woo - that Gallup purports to have identified based on 2 million interviews. Each talent is described in some detail and suggestions are given on how to handle a person based on their strengths. Somewhere on the way to this section of the book you are supposed to take the Strengthsfinder test Gallup offers on the Internet, gaining access by an individual code that is printed on the inside of the printed book's jacket. The last part of the book describes how an organization can determine what talents it is looking for and how to recruit accordingly. I took the test and found the results mildly surprising. I would have guessed at a different set of strengths in myself but do not deny that the outcome makes sense. I do see the identified strengths in myself, but would not have rated them top-five. I shall take the advice obtained anyway and focus more on striving on those strengths at least for a while to see what happens. All in all I found the book to be very stimulating and well worth the time reading. It has given me some ideas on how to lead my own company into a new direction. So far so good. I will now discuss the product "features". The first one can arguably not be helped. Namely, that in order to kick off the "strengths revolution" one will need "psychometric" consulting services to determine what one has, what one needs, and how to recruit for it. "Psychometry" needs a reliable sample of individuals, ranging from a few dozens to a few hundreds... The second feature can definitely be helped. If you want others in your organization to take the test - as I did - you will need to buy each one of them the paper version of the same book. Naturally, you cannot use the same code you used and you cannot purchase additional codes from Gallup ...
Rating: 
Summary: Good message but ...
Review: The authors definitely presented some contrarian - if not completely original - thinking. The book started out promising and did indeed contain some gems, but I was left somewhat unsatisfied, given some of the stellar reviews I had read here. I felt they included a good bit of filler to make 257 pages. I would have rather they spent more time on a complete review of the case studies; as it is, they just cited parts and pieces, leaving the analytical reader questioning if these examples were contrived. Two-thirds into the book, the authors switched gears, moving from self reflection and managing one's own strengths and weaknesses to the area of managing others' strengths and weaknesses. They had not fully developed the first subject, but yet they ambitiously introduced a new one - which really warrants its own book. I was also disappointed in the StrengthsFinder tool website. Only one pass is allowed and I could not find much explanation on how answers are processed, much less an objective third-party review of the test. This seems strange for a "25-year, multi-million dollar effort".
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Summary: Now Discover Your Strengths
Review: Now Discover Your Strengths describes a revolutionary way to approach managing people by placing them in positions that capitalize on their strengths rather than positions in which they would work tirelessly in attempts to correct weaknesses. The implications of the concepts and strategies found in this book encompass all organizations from business to education. An important concept that is discussed in the book is that leaders should focus on the strengths of individuals and place them in positions in which their strengths will produce the best results for the organization. This concept does two things. The first is that the individuals placed in positions that capitalize on their strengths will tend to enjoy their job more. The second is that the organization will benefit from the strengths of the individual.
Educational organizations can use the information in this book to help guide administrators when making personnel decisions. Teachers can use the concepts in this book to help students realize their strengths and reduce the anxiety about their weaknesses. As an educator I have used the book to identify my own strengths. I also read a small section of the book to my Anatomy and Physiology class to support materials I had presented regarding the brain and how people learn.
The thirty-four themes provide a description of the different strengths followed by short examples of what the strength sounds like. The book then discusses common questions asked, how to manage your strengths, and how to build an organization based on strengths. This book is enlightening and challenges people to view themselves and others in a different light by asking themselves, "what does he/she bring to the table and how can we best utilize it".
Rating:
Summary: Lead through strength
Review: This book pinpoints a philosophy I have held throughout my corporate career. Know where you want to go, identify your greatest resources and lead through strength. When activity utilizes strengths there is a healthy flow in the organization. Bravo, Buckingham and Clifton.
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