Now, Discover Your Strengths
by Donald O. Clifton, Marcus Buckingham
|
List Price: Our Price: $11.40 You Save: $18.60 (62%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Now, Discover Your Strengths
Book Review: Innovative, useful, but not a panacea
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a very useful book especially for people who are thinking about changing careers or people starting their careers. It is also a useful guideline for managers and employees in understanding people with different talents and raising awareness around how to manage them.
The web-based test is detailed and the information useful and thought provoking. It serves as an excellent springboard for deeper inquiry or discussion. It will also help you to make better decisions that serve your real needs and help you align your talents with your work.
I think capitalizing on a person's strength's is a wise direction to take in general. However, to say addressing deficiencies or not exploring other potential areas of creativity that might be untapped isn't very useful doesn't make sense to me. In other words, this seems like an extreme position to take and I think a more balanced approach is in order.
Perhaps there are undiscovered fulfilling areas that have not been developed in all of us that are in our best interests to unearth. For example, my understanding is that Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team, but my guess is someone saw something in him that was undeveloped and nurtured it to fruition. We certainly don't want to be missing the business equivalent of these kinds of buried talents!
It also seems like the authors minimize the significance of training and oversimplify how these ideas could be applied fairly in a large organization. While there are many useful ideas in the book, I don't think the solutions are as simple as the authors make them sound.
I also don't like that you need to buy additional copies of the book to take the test more than once. Perhaps the publishers could give people 3-5 test taking opportunities given the cost of the book. Also with respect to cost, I think the authors could have put more information in the same space or wrote a shorter book.
Book Review: Great coaching tool-without hiring a coach
Summary: 5 Stars
Proactive people who want to make positive changes in their lives will like this book. By focusing on a person's individual talents--and emphasizing the uniqueness of that combination of talents--the authors have given readers a forward-looking, personal development tool.
Coaches love this book because it gives them a cheap and easy diagnostic tool to use with their clients. Many coaches (including me) combine the StrengthFinders data with other objective feedback from other diagnostic sources when working with clients. However, clients seem to respond to the StrengthFinders feedback in particular, perhaps because it is so positive. It really celebrates the best in a person.
I have observed how much clients (lawyers) enjoy looking at their individual feedback and applying that information to their current careers. Many have enhanced their current law practices by emphasizing their natural strengths; for example, lawyers who score high in "Winning Over Others" or "WOO" ensure that their client development/rainmaking efforts include lots of person to person contact (as opposed to indirect client development by writing articles etc...)
The StrengthFinders data can validate someone's natural talents--talents which the person might have sensed but never articulated. I've seen unhappy lawyers who were thrilled to get their StrengthFinders feedback because it confirmed what they had always sensed: their natural strengths were different than those required by their particular jobs. In some cases, this has helped lawyers to tweak their jobs to make them more satisfying--and in others, to leave law practice entirely.
Other previous reviews have described the book's weaknesses. It is clearly not perfect as a management tool. However, as a tool for quick, easy and inexpensive feedback-which feedback appears to be accurate-it's quite worth the price.
Book Review: At last, a book that makes sense!
Summary: 5 Stars
How many of us, well into our careers, still live with the mistaken idea that the purpose of most of our activities is to work on those weaknesses and somehow turn them into strengths? I would venture to say, the majority of us, certainly those of us who grew up with post war parents who themselves believed that success in working life and achievement can be measured by the extent to which his has been accomplished.
In the meantime, strengths, natural aptitudes, and in most cases the activities that enhance our well being are almost ignored, simply because so much energy goes into working on those weaknesses.
When put this simply, none of us should be surprised at the level of unhappiness sustained by a lot of people in their jobs.
So, in the face of this general discontent, Marcus Buckingham comes along to shake us up and wake us up. With the help of his, dare I say it, easy to understand theory, we can turn our professional and personal lives around.
What you need to do, is rediscover the strengths that are an integral part of your own personality, and by strengths he means, not only the things you excel at but that also give a sense of satisfaction and contentment. Then to increase well being it is essential to take these discoveries seriously and ensure they can be put to use to either help you choose a new career path or to improve your situation in your current job.
Bosses, he says, must be aware of the natural strengths of employees and work on finding ways of utilising these instead of regularly planning training programmes to help them identify weaknesses that subsequently should be worked on to transform them into strengths because that just isn't about to happen. It takes much more energy and investment to work on weaknesses than it does to enhance strengths.
Simple, yet it took Marcus Buckingham to point it out. A definite eye opener. I recommend it to bosses and employees alike.
Book Review: pretty good
Summary: 4 Stars
The message that the author tries to convey is that people make the mistake of becoming so preoccupied with overcoming their weaknesses that they spend too little time focusing on their strengths. There is much more room for growth where we are strong instead of areas where we are weak so he argues. He goes on to explain that we should just learn to manage our weaknesses just enough and concentrate on our strengths.
This is a hard concept for me to wrap my head around. Growing up Mom and Dad always said things like "you can do anything you want if you just put your mind to it" or "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" and that sort of thing. The idea that you just not waste your time on an area that youre having problems with seems so backwards. Frankly I like making major accomplishments in areas I'm weak, it makes me feel more comfortable about my job performance.
The book also has a test you can take online that will tell you your strengths. Frankly I didn't put much faith into this. I thought it would be sort of like a psychic reading where the results were either so vague that they could apply to anyone or offer a personality description so pleasant that most people would naturally want to say it applies to them, so I took the test with much suspicion.
The results were surprisingly accurate, one of the themes it associated with me was input. People strong in input love information and love to archive information. This is pretty darn accurate, I love to read anything non-fiction, I love information and especially statistics. The other themes seemed to fairly describe me well also. I was impressed
Overall this is a good book that tries to explain how to capitalize on your strenghts to make you more productive at work and home. It's not going to change my life but it certainly provided plenty of food for thought.
Book Review: Discover an Excellent Starting Point
Summary: 5 Stars
Now, Discover Your Strengths is a provacative and extremely practical book with a gem of an on-line survey instrument. Do you want to know your strengths? This is a book + survey instrument that will help you. Well worth the investment. One of the big nuggets of value in this book is the amount of research that Gallup conducted to back up the on-line strength surveying mechanism.
The survey is uniquely focused on identifying your strengths. This is not a test like Myers Briggs (that focuses more on personality traits). The test takes 30-40 minutes on-line and the results are tabulated instantly with summary and full-text interpretation reports. Your customized report is printable or viewable (at a later date) on-line. (You must purchase the book to get the secret password to take the test.)
I asked for an additional code for a family member to be able to take the test and the on-line customer service rep agreed and sent me a new code within a couple hours - very courteous. I imagine that the survey will be available without the book at some point, but the book adds important information that helps readers understand other people.
The authors are credible and the Gallup organization adds deep practical underpinning. This book will appeal to the pragmatic reader. Educators and theorists will appreciate the inclusion of the appendix/technical report describing the testing theory and apparatus.
The book is not focused so much on the application of talents as it is the discovery of talents. The author chose not to draw a stronger correlation between strengths and possible career fit. (Richard Bolles does a great job with career matching in his books: What Color is Your Parachute and The Three Boxes of Life.)
In closing: the survey very accurately identified and articulated my key strengths. It probably will help you, too.