Now, Discover Your Strengths

Rating:
Summary: A nice change from the normal negative focus
Review: My favorite part of this book is how aggressively positive it is. Rather than the usual focusing on weaknesses or negative behavior (i.e. studying sub-par performance to understand what makes up excellent performance), they insist that we focus on excellence as a separate science. This doesn't sound groundbreaking, but it really is a different approach than what most of us have experienced throughout our lives. The online test is a useful tool, but when I first got back my results, I didn't agree with them. I had to put them down for a few days, read some more of the book, and come back to the test results before I realized that they were right. However, if you're looking for something that will tell you exactly which career you should choose, you will be disappointed by this book. It doesn't hand you all the answers at the end, since one of the things it emphasizes is how your strengths can be used in many different roles and organizations. The book is intended to help you figure out where to start - it's up to you to figure out which way to go.

Rating:
Summary: Low - high - low
Review: This book really is a collection of three books.

The first part of the book argues that we all have certain talents that are fixed in our brains early in our lives. According to the authors, we should move away from focussing exclusively on our and others weaknesses and look more towards developing our natural strengths.

This part of the book left me with a somewhat unconvinced feeling - apart from self-evident insights - as it is relatively short, relies heavily on anecdotal evidence and often sounds more like philosophy than like science.

Then there is - as the title suggests- the self-help/self-evaluation part. The authors are members of the Gallup organization, which has developed a scientific method and a tool that allow the grouping/evaluation of people according to their talents. Due to the high amount of experience that Gallup has in gathering and evaluating data as well as the discussions in the book this part works very convincing and academically sound. The tool has been implemented on the internet and anyone with an internet connection and a unique copy of the book can evaluate her-/himself. This is the core of the book. It is highly convincing and required reading for anyone in business.

The third and final part of the book covers ways in which you / your manager / your organization can implement the insights of the two previous parts. Here we again read a lot of common sense and well-meant advice, but no research to back up the advice.

The shift in paradigm for the general public presented here is so large that the authors must have felt obliged to write parts I and III. However, these parts need to ripen further.

Buy this book. Then wait for the next revised edition or for books carrying this work on.

Rating:
Summary: Nw, Discover Your Strengths
Review: A follow-up to "First, Break All The Rules", this book brings home how little emphasis our culture gives to our natural strengths and aptitudes. Based on the findings of a Gallup study of nearly two million people, the authors share how much more successful organizations are when they design programs that will enhance an employee's strengths rather than try to overcome weaknesses.

The authors define a weakness as "...anything that gets in the way of excellent performance." P.148. They make distinctions among a skills weakness, a knowledge weakness and a talent weakness. Skills and knowledge weaknesses can be overcome. It is the talent weakness that takes tremendous resources, focus and energy with little result. One of their prescriptions for a talent weakness is to focus on your strengths to overwhelm the weakness. Another is to find a partner who complements your talents and weaknesses.

Thirty-four talent themes are defined as a result of the Gallup study. Purchasers of the book are given a passcode that enables them to take an on-line assessment test that will surface their top five themes. With these in mind, the authors then offer tips on how to best utilize your strengths.

Rating:
Summary: Editor, EbonyInvestor.com
Review: First of all I want to say the themes and your top five findings should not be taken as the gospel. Now having said that, I really think the books provides guidiance to individuals who want to identify or confirm their beliefs about what talents come natural to them. And yes, everyone has talents! I think it is an excellent read for up and coming high school freshmen who are on the verge of discovering themselves and potential careers. While for the most part, the book should not steer one away from a particular career (in some cases maybe it should), it should help determine how your talents can best be used in your choosen career path. It should be required reading for raising freshmen prior to entering high school.

Rating:
Summary: Now,Discover Your Strengths
Review: Up to the point and very easy to understand by foreigners.
Everybody should read this book and take the test. Why did I not have access to this book before ??

Denise D'Hondt - Brussels (Belgium)//

Rating:
Summary: If you liked First Break All The Rules, you'll enjoy this
Review: We all have asked or been asked the interview question, "What are your strengths?" Buckingham and Clifton provide convincing rationale for asking that question as well as concrete terminology to answer the question. But this is not a "get you through the interview" book. The authors clearly articulate why you should be asking this question to both yourself and to those you hire.

"First Break All the Rules" (the precursor to Now Discover Your Strengths) challenged managers to concentrate on, search for, hire for, and nurture strengths. "Now Discover Your Strengths" gives managers the tools (an on-line strengths assessment and several open-ended questions) and language (34 signature themes) to make that possible on the individual, departmental, or organizational level.

Why would any person or organization want to focus on strengths? Buckingham and Clifton claim 8 out of 10 employees are in positions that do not capitalize on their strengths; thus, they are not performing at maximum or even baseline levels of productivity. Certainly, this is an unacceptable level regardless of the size of your organization or the type of industry in which you work. If that isn't enough, the authors posit other reasons including: 1) increased employee retention, 2) increased job satisfaction, 3) decreased absenteeism, 4) decreased on-the-job accidents and worker compensation claims - just to mention a few.

However rather than focus on the fact that so many of us function outside of our strengths, take Buckingham and Clifton's advice. Discover your strengths and began the journey that could redefine the paradigms for your organization. Based on the staggering amounts of research data collected by Gallup and the completion of an on-line Strengthsfinder assessment, you can determine your "signature themes." It is then up to you (with some suggestions from the authors) to develop your themes(or the signature themes of the people you supervise) into strengths.

A quick and helpful read. Recommended for any manager/supervisor or anyone grappling with career decisions.

Rating:
Summary: The only thing this book has going for it is the CD-Rom.
Review: Cute, in other words, but not worth the paper it's printed on in terms of being a useful resource for people wanting to change their lives. The authors obviously show a remarkable strength in the area of making money, if you decide to buy this book. (By the way, if you get it used, odds are the CD-Rom and its mysterious # won't work for you.)

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Skills Inventory - Management , Self Assessment
Review: "First, Break All the Rules" left my wife and me asking, "How do you learn your strengths?" While buying a copy of "First..." for my boss, I found "Now, Discover Your Strengths."

The book is fascinating. The concept of locating and concentrating on using strengths (your own and your employees') rather than fixing their weaknesses is well layed out.

Strengths are talents, innate or developed tendencies and abilities which have, through experience, education or training been honed to a level placing the possessor in rarified air in this regard.

The book and tape give you a code which serves as a password to take an online test to discover your top 5 strengths of 34 identified by the Gallup Organization. I would guess three will not really surprise you, two will send you diving back into the book to read more about them.

By the way, my wife called the number on the StrengthFinders Website and explained that I bought the book and she, too, would like to take the test. The phone representative gave her a new code, and she took the test.

...

The Talents and Strengths share similarities to some of the elements of the "Inner Self" of "Follow your Bliss" or the "Authentic Self" of Dr. Phil McGraw's "Self Matters." When you find yourself learning a skill with remarkable ease and speed, or doing all the recommended reading in a course during the first week, these are clues. You likely have an affinity for the subject.

Others might be a burning desire to please, to help, to inform, to relate and more.

The business goal is to put the person with the strength in the position that uses it. Then to use the techniques of Great Managers to guide them to brilliance. I recommend both "First" and "Now."

Rating:
Summary: How to identify and develop skills and talents
Review: In Now, Discover Your Strengths, readers learn how to identify and develop their skills and talents, as well as those of your employees. Effectively managing behavior, our own as well as that of others, is an extraordinarily complex task, but the mastery of which is an essential prerequiste for success in the workplace. Now, Discover Your Strengths proposes a new and somewhat radical approach as Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton place their focus upon the enhancing of people's strengths rather than eliminating their weaknesses. The authors articulately describe thirty-four positive personality themes (included "Achiever", "Developer", "Learner", and "Maximizer") while clearly explaing how to build what they called a "strengths-based organization" through capitalizing on the fact that such traits are already present within ourselves and those we are responsible for which we have a management responsibility. It is also available in abridged Audio Cassette and Audio CD formats.

Rating:
Summary: Capitalize on your strengths
Review: When evaluating ourselves and others, we tend to focus more on weaknesses than on strengths. Likewise, when confronted with problems, we tend to look at defects instead of looking at what makes something work well. A strong assumption underlying this tendency is that in order to solve a problem or to develop ourselves we need to focus on what is wrong. Because we think that fixing what is wrong múst lead to healthy functioning, to problem-solving and to growth.
Based on a large study from the Gallup organization, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton say this kind of thinking is misguided. They say that to excell in you chose field and to find lasting satisfaction in doing so, you need to know and understand your strengths. The authors envision an organization that is built around the strengths of each person. This is in accordance with Peter Drucker, who once said that in the organization of the future, people's strengths will be so well-aligned that weaknesses won't matter.

The reality now is quite different: most managers seem to take their employees' strengths for granted and focus on minimising their weaknesses. They euphemistically talk about 'skill gaps' and 'areas of improvement', and then send their people off to training to get these defects fixed. The authors call this 'damage control' instead of 'people development'.

The authors say that the best managers are guided by the following beliefs:
1) each person's talents are lasting and unique, and
2) for anyone, the greatest opportunities for development lie in the area of their greatest strength.

They argue that you have to capitalize on your strengths and to manage around your weaknesses. The authors define a strength as a talent completed with skills and knowledge. Talents are more important that skills and knowledge. The authors explain that skills and knowledge can be learned relatively easily but a talent can't be. Discovering your talents is therefore of great importance. But hard, because "talents are so interwoven in the fabric of your life, that the pattern of each one is hard to discern. Hiding in plain sight, they defy description. But they do leave traces."

The authors provide the following suggestions to read these traces:
1) monitor spontaneous reactions,
2) monitor yearnings,
3) talent involves fast learning and
4) talent often leads to satisfaction

Next, the book describes an assessment tool, StrengthFinder, which is based on a framework of strengths. The book does not provide the tool itself though.

The theme of this book is an important one: looking at what makes people excell and function well instead of what is wrong with them. In its view on people development this book reminded me of:
1) Appreciative Inquiry: managing at the speed of change by Watkins and Mohr (see my review),
2) the Solutions Focus by Jackson and McKergow (great book! see my review) and
3) Positive psychology (read my review of Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman), a new school in psychology which aims to understand healthy functioning of people (instead of their dysfunctioning).

If you're responsible for, or involved in, employee development in your organization, this book will be very useful for you.

Coert Visser, www.m-cc.nl