Rating: 
Summary: Know Thyself
Review: In our culture, there is a strong emphasis on identifying our perceived weaknesses and shortcomings and trying to fix what we believe to be wrong with us in relationships, in the workplace and in all aspects of our lives. In Now, Discover Your Strengths, authors Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton offer a refreshing and exciting approach to living with excellence and success. Rather than focusing on our weaknesses, discovering our strengths and becoming aware of our natural talents allows for growth and consistent excellence. I especially appreciated the authors' discussion of people's habitual reluctance to examine, discover or even acknowledge their strengths and our tendency to credit successes to luck or circumstances. This reveals how there is so much more available to people in the way of success and satisfaction by including and taking credit for our strengths in our identity. Noticing and identifying our natural behaviors and innate talents - our strengths - that set us apart and support us allows these strengths to expand and develop with consistency. Another excellent book that explores all that is possible when you discover that you are not your weaknesses is Working On Yourself Doesn't Work: A Book About Instantaneous Transformation by Ariel and Shya Kane. Like Now, Discover Your Strengths, this book identifies the traditional and habitual ways that people relate to their lives and environment and offers a different approach that is revolutionary. The Kanes suggest that simply with awareness, which they define as a "non-judgemental way of seeing," you can act appropriately and naturally in your life. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in having it all.
Rating: 
Summary: So, what?
Review: Do not buy the book for your own use. You get to know your strengths, basically things you see anyway through how you do things, but there is no advice in the book on how actually apply this knowledge about yourself!!!An I am doubtful about the quality of the test, since I took it twice, one with a time limit, another without, since I had to use a dictionary an understand the questions without an adrenalin rush; AND THE RESULTS ARE TOTALLY DIFFERENT!!! So which test is right then? When one just pushes some buttons in a rush or thinks about how one is approaching tasks or people generally in his life? Probably this is due to English as a second language, but I even had to think about a simple questions. The problem with the test I believe is that there are strange pairings of the questions whether one eigher always inclined to push a little bit to the right or to the left in order not to be mediocre by saying neutral. Or actually wonders how do they use ones neutral answer as both answers weighted equally or as non of the above??? And to say it once more what do I do with the answers about myself? I expected more from the book.
Rating:
Summary: Looking in the right places
Review: I enjoyed the authors book "First Break All The Rules", and this sequal is great also. I always assumed companies built their teams on peoples strengths, but after being in the workforce I now know that most managers spend time trying to make workers something they are not. Find out what someone does well, place them in the proper position and let them do the job. Not rocket science, but I would love to work for a company that used these principles. Check out Rat Race Relaxer: Your Potential & The Maze of Life for workplace survival tips also.
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.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
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 ...
| 
