Now, Discover Your Strengths
by Donald O. Clifton, Marcus Buckingham
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Book Reviews of Now, Discover Your Strengths
Book Review: Strengths best focus for change
Summary: 4 Stars
Strengths Best Focus for ChangeThe Gallup Organization (the pollsters) have been doing a systematic study of excellence for the last thirty years. They interviewed over two million people about their strengths and found that each person's talents are enduring and unique and each person's greatest room for growth is in the area of his or her greatest strength. Gallup's report, by Marcus Buckingham, author of "First, Break All the Rules" and Donald Clifton, is called "Now, Discover Your Strengths" (Free Press, 2001). When most people think of changing they focus on their deficits. This is usual to our culture, but not as helpful to our self-improvement as focusing on our strengths. The survey calls strengths the activities that we consistently do near perfectly, without much effort or thought. Strengths grow out of our talents, naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be put to a productive use When these natural talents are combined with knowledge and skills, our performance is outstanding. Most people don't know where their real strengths are because they don't think that whatever comes easily to them is as important as what requires struggle. In fact, people often feel that "everybody can do that" when thinking about their talents. They don't realize how unique their own combination of talents, knowledge and skills can be. Others deliberately suppress their natural talent because of social pressures. We can change our level of knowledge and skills, but if the natural talent is not there we will never be great at what we are trying to learn. Learning to do what we have no talent for helps us go through the motions, but can never help us give a great performance. Talents are revealed by looking at what we yearn for, what we can learn most rapidly, and what positive activities bring us the greatest satisfaction. These areas are clues to our natural talents. "Now, Discover Your Strengths", guides the reader to a web site where a 30 minute questionnaire analyzes your instinctive reactions and tells you what your five most powerful talent themes are. This survey is an excellent way to clarify who you are and where you need to focus your energy. The book is aimed at business people but the web site test would be helpful to everyone from teens up. Unfortunately, the strengths profile is only available one time to one purchaser of each book, a policy that discriminates against library readers or people who want their whole family to read the book and take the test. This policy feels mean spirited. I guess the policy makers didn't have the talent of "fairness" or "inclusiveness". Nevertheless, the test results may be worth the price of the book.
Book Review: Gallup: Discover Your Customer Dissatisfaction
Summary: 2 Stars
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 ...Book Review: Top-Notch Tool
Summary: 5 Stars
This book quite simply can change your life. Since I took the StrengthsFinder test, I have dramatically increased my effectiveness in my current job.Donald Clifton has spent twenty years monitoring and discovering patterns of strength in the best of the best. This testing and research shows in the accuracy and precision of this test.
Whether you have achiever, context, futuristic, emphathy, restorative, or whatever, this book and test is going to dramatically change the way you look at the world. I currently work in the field of Leadership Identification and Development and this test time and time again shows students and young adults ages 18-30, a new way to approach life.
If there is a weakness in this book, it is that is does not go deeper. Clifton does a great job showing how he and others developed this process over years and years of study. Personally I want to be compared against the best, and this is what the book and test do. Have you ever wondered why you always size yourself up against everyone else and if you knew you could not win you did not even play? --Competition.
The beauty of this book is that your personal combination of strengths can put you as unique as 1 in millions, and the chances of meeting someone that is your exact double is next to impossible. How great is it that we are all so unique? Does not lend much credence to the theory that we are all here by some cosmic accident.
Our society, educational systems, businesses, and so many other institutions always try to build us up where we are weak. I worked at a company in Washington, DC and was utilized as an office manager and executive assistant, a job I was clearly not wired to do. With the the themes of competition, achiever, activator and significance, how could I ever handle ordering pens and pencils and organizing a contact database? I could not! I want to change the world, and now I know why-- I was wired to do it.
Do you know instantly how people are feeling when you walk in a room? I cannot, and I know my emphathy is low or non-existent. My dreams of becoming a counselor were misguided at best. This book, and the test will help you find out how you are wired and what a perfect job for you would be.
Can you wake up and say, I am doing what I was created to do and enjoying it? If not, I suggest you read this book and meditate over the information you receive back from it. Thanks to Donald Clifton for an excellent and cutting edge work.
Book Review: See Yourself and Others in a New Way
Summary: 5 Stars
REVIEW: While I am generally disappointed with sequels, this book didn't disappoint and stands on its own (see "First Break All the Rules"). "Now" focuses on the individual (except the last two chapters) and their inate strengths. It goes into detail on the 34 different types of talents/strengths that the authors found in their research. "Now" is based on two simple themes: (1) each person's talents are enduring and unique, and (2) each person's greatest room for growth lies in their greatest strengths (not in improving their weaknesses as so much of our society is focused on). "Now" will help you recognize strengths (yours and other) which is the first step to capitalizing on them. I now find myself regularly thinking in terms of the strengths concept when making working decisions. By the way, you don't have to read "First, Break All the Rules" before reading this book. In fact, I recommend this one first! Also, "First" focused on the manager and how he/she should think and act differently in terms of the authors discoveries on talents and strengths whereas "Now" focusses on the individual. This book was also the first book that I've read that included an on-line component. The on-line test took me about 30 min to complete and gave me my top 5 strengths. After reading the detailed descriptions in the book, I believe the test correctly hit 4 out of 5 with the 5th one a close runner-up.
STRENGTHS: The book is easy to read and full of examples. I found the concepts and content very well thought out and very effective at changing my thinking.
WEAKNESSES: I note some weaknesses, but they were at most annoying and not significant enough to prevent me from enjoying or highly recommending the book. First, as in the "First" book, no index. Second, while the book has lots of examples, a number seemed to be thrown in to touch popular or emotional topics rather than being solid support for the specific topic being discussed.
WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK: The book is probably best suited to professionals and knowledge workers with an interest in better understanding themselves and those around them. If you're interested in increasing your own effectiveness and the effectiveness of your relationships with others this book is for you.
ALSO CONSIDER: Of course, "First Break All the Rules" by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman [either before or after this book]. "The Effective Executive" by Peter F. Drucker.
Book Review: Excellent tool for self-discovery
Summary: 5 Stars
There are thousands of self-help books in the management section of your local bookstore, covering a bewildering spectrum of ideas about how to bring out the best in people. Few of them are helpful, beyond trite statements about human behavior, and even fewer of them are based on more than a modicum of research. Now, Discover Your Strengths is an excellent book on both counts. The Gallup organization has studied excellence in many fields for over thirty years. This book summarizes some of that research from the perspective of identifying and bolstering people's talents.
The writers worked hard to make the book clear, precise, and readable. The book never sacrifices clarity, even when faced with complex ideas. I had to read the book twice to make sure that the straightforward writing wasn't masking conceptual problems. It wasn't. The writers lay out the main idea right away; they write that "to excel in your chosen field and to find lasting satisfaction in doing so, you will need to...become an expert at finding and describing and applying and practicing and refining your strengths." They go on to describe precisely what they mean by "strengths," then they give you a tool to discover your own strengths by taking an on-line test.
The outstanding thing about Now, Discover Your Strengths is the foundation of research that supports it. The Gallup folks are serious about their research. The claims in this book are based on reliable studies of almost 2 million employees. If you have any doubts about their research methods, the writers supply a technical report on the StrengthsFinder tool in an appendix. I almost wet my pants with glee, reading about interrater reliability, modern test theory, and "big five" personality factors. All of this is safely ignored in favor of the practical suggestion in the main sections of the book, but it makes a skeptic like me confident in recommending this book to everyone on my team.
Here are the main reasons why I recommend this book with no reservations:
1) It's based on exhaustive research
2) It comes with a free test...a similar tool would cost hundreds of dollars if you bought it from a career counselor or management consultant.
3) It is carefully written and eminently practical.
Now, go buy yourself a copy, take the test, and start a strengths revolution at your own workplace.