Amazon.com's Best of 2001: Effectively managing personnel--as well as one's own behavior--is an extraordinarily complex task that, not surprisingly, has been the subject of countless books touting what each claims is the true path to success. That said, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton's Now, Discover Your Strengths does indeed propose a unique approach: focusing on enhancing people's strengths rather than eliminating their weaknesses. Following up on the coauthors' popular previous book, First, Break All the Rules, it fully describes 34 positive personality themes the two have formulated (such as Achiever, Developer, Learner, and Maximizer) and explains how to build a "strengths-based organization" by capitalizing on the fact that such traits are already present among those within it.
Most original and potentially most revealing, however, is a Web-based interactive component that allows readers to complete a questionnaire developed by the Gallup Organization and instantly discover their own top-five inborn talents. This device provides a personalized window into the authors' management philosophy which, coupled with subsequent advice, places their suggestions into the kind of practical context that's missing from most similar tomes. "You can't lead a strengths revolution if you don't know how to find, name and develop your own," write Buckingham and Clifton. Their book encourages such introspection while providing knowledgeable guidance for applying its lessons. --Howard Rothman
Product Description: Unfortunately, most of us have little sense of our talents and strengths, much less the ability to build our lives around them. Instead, guided by our parents, by our teachers, by our managers, and by psychology's fascination with pathology, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected.
Marcus Buckingham, coauthor of the national bestseller First, Break All the Rules, and Donald O. Clifton, Chair of the Gallup International Research & Education Center, have created a revolutionary program to help readers identify their talents, build them into strengths, and enjoy consistent, near-perfect performance. At the heart of the book is the Internet-based StrengthsFinder® Profile, the product of a 25-year, multimillion-dollar effort to identify the most prevalent human strengths. The program introduces 34 dominant "themes" with thousands of possible combinations, and reveals how they can best be translated into personal and career success. In developing this program, Gallup has conducted psychological profiles with more than two million individuals to help readers learn how to focus and perfect these themes.
So how does it work? This book contains a unique identification number that allows you access to the StrengthsFinder Profile on the Internet. This Web-based interview analyzes your instinctive reactions and immediately presents you with your five most powerful signature themes. Once you know which of the 34 themes -- such as Achiever, Activator, Empathy, Futuristic, or Strategic -- you lead with, the book will show you how to leverage them for powerful results at three levels: for your own development, for your success as a manager, and for the success of your organization.
With accessible and profound insights on how to turn talents into strengths, and with the immediate on-line feedback of StrengthsFinder at its core, Now, Discover Your Strengths is one of the most groundbreaking and useful business books ever written.
buy new only!! This is a wonderful book, but you have to buy it new! There's a code on the inside for the strengths quiz, and you cannot reuse the code. I had to buy StrengthsFinder 2.0--the new version--in order to get the quiz without repurchansing the same exact book twice.
It would have been nice to know this....
All Managers Should read this book This book goes along with StrengthFinders by Rath. I enjoyed this book. I agree focusing on an employees strengths are key. In the book, Elephants Can't Change but Leopards can!!! it talks about the Now, Discover your Strengths book and how it can be implemented by Management.
Should be Required Reading This book is the follow-on to "First, Break all the Rules." The latter targets management while this book is for the individual. If you buy your own copy of the book, you get a code with which you can take their Strengths Finder online survey. (You can now also go to the web-site and take the survey for a fee; they used to require a book purchase.) That tool gives you your top 5 strengths, in order, which is what is missing from First, Break all the Rules.
With your strengths in hand, you can now look at your career, your role in your company, and the direction of your life. In my case, I understood why I wasn't happy in the previous year with my job. I had been "promoted" to "leadership" for all of my good technical work and was no longer playing to any of my strengths. I HAD to make a change, which was to get out of the "leadership" role. Management wasn't very happy with me. I continued using the recommendations in this book and formed my own training plan that "exploited" my strengths and developed them further. Its been 5 years, and both me and my management are happy. In fact, this year was my best performance review and raise ever!
My opinion is if you have read the book(s), then take the quiz, that can skew your quiz answers. I believe the strengths it identified for me, just not sure that the order wasn't affected by my having read both books in their entirety first. Thus, consider reading this book first even though it is second in the series UNLESS you are a manager and only have time to read one of the two books. (In that case I would take the quiz using the code from this book, put the book down, and read First, Break all the Rules.)
A good point about strengths There were many things I liked about this book and some that I found difficult. Buckingham's theme of focusing on one's strengths rather than weaknesses (as so many development programs and activities do) is an excellent one. He also provides a very good strategy for doing this: 1. How to distinguish your natural talents 2. Having a system to identify your dominant talents 3. Having a common language to describe your talents.
Let's start with the first - "talents". In talents, Buckingham distinguishes between what is innate and what can be acquired through practice. He categorises one's expertise into talents, knowledge and skills and makes the quite valid point that a person can improve performance in an area through practice and developing knowledge and skills. However, the extent to which overall performance (or expertise) can be enhanced is limited to the degree of innate talent. I liken this innate talent to aptitude.
The system to identify one's natural talents is based on the StrengthsFinder Profile. This profile is completed on line using a code provided with the purchase of the book. When I tried to log in using my code I was told that I had to register at one of these sites: * StrengthsQuest * Vital Friends * StrengthsExplorer * Bucket Book * Gallup Online As I object to having to do this, it is probably unfair of me to comment on this aspect of the book other than to say that I think the idea of a system such as a questionnaire to identify one's talents is a good one.
The final aspect a "common language" is fully outlined in the 34 themes of StrengthsFinder. Two points I would make about these. Firstly, from the text I think it would be hard to identify in others these 34 patterns. I also found the description of these to be a little light on.
On balance, this book is worthy of note for its emphasis on strengths and in awakening us to the notion of "natural talents" - worthy of a read for this point. Choose yourself whether you want to take the test.
Bob Selden, author What To Do When You Become The Boss: How new managers become successful managers
Now, Discover Your Strengths = Your Greatest Talents at Work Brilliant. Readable. Engaging. Empowering.
I was originally introduced to this work through Kristine Gunn of www.HighVelocityTraining.com.
It immediately provided hope that my inherent ideas about how to work with people to help them perform (and internally do the same) could be applied today.
An inspiring work that truly helps you find the path to your own inherent success traits. A phenomenal book, and the integrated online test and report are vital to helping you return to center when you find yourself in the weeds, wondering why you're working so hard and not having fun.
To your greatest success and most fulfilling work. Mark Alan Effinger, RichContent.com ThoughtOffice.com
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