Now, Discover Your Strengths
by Donald O. Clifton, Marcus Buckingham
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Book Reviews of Now, Discover Your Strengths
Book Review: Valuable book
Summary: 5 Stars
I've read "Now Discover Your Strengths" and "StrengthsFinder 2.0" and have taken both assessments. These books and the assessments explore what's right with people. I really enjoyed "Now Discover Your Strengths" and support the concept of leading through strength. I enjoyed reading about the various strength categories, how to manage people with different strengths, and building a strengths-based organization. When I took the original Strengthsfinder assessment which is provided with the book, it was an interesting experience, but I didn't get much additional value. The book is far more substantive.
The Strengthsfinder 2.0 book didn't provide me with me substantially more insight than this book. The assessment is a slightly more customized, and the action steps can help with implementation. I still can't figure out why one of my five strengths was not included in my original strengthfinder assessment. How could my strengths change in two days?
Discovering and employing strengths is undoubtedly worthwhile, so here's your choice. If you want the most substantive information, read this book. If you are more interested in the personalization of strengths, then take the Strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment. The Strengthsfinder 2.0 book is not nearly as impressive as this book.
If you are interested in making the most of your thinking, interactions and any situation, I absolutely recommend the Optimal Thinking Online Assessment, a brilliant supplement to the Optimal Thinking book. Because thoughts are the parents of performance, I believe this is the most powerful assessment in the marketplace.
Book Review: Test + Book = A+
Summary: 5 Stars
"Now, Disover Your Strengths", the follow up to "First Break All The Rules," is great for two reasons:1) You get to take the StrengthsFinder test online and discover what your top five patterns of strength are in your life.
2) The book will help you go deeper with your strengths and find out how the best of the best use their strengths to get better.
Too many reviews on here focus on the fact that you can only take the test once, or the book does not go deep enough. Stop trying to find out what you are not, and start finding out what you are! Most people who want to take the test over and over again do so to validate what they think they are, and not how they were created. This test is meant to be taken once, in order to measure your instinctive responses to the questions, not your thought out answers. Unlike other psychometric tests, the StrengthsFinder tells you how you respond, your initial reactions, how you are.
I work with this tool on a daily basis and have seen over 500 results of this test and done many one on one interviews to follow up and help people go deeper in their strengths. 9 out of 10 people are amazed with the results and how accurate this test is. Most of the 10% who have questions can figure it out and be happy with some counseling and deeper discovery of their strengths.
The [money] is worth the price to take the test, and the book does an adequate job of going deeper with your strengths. The whole theory of focusing on what you are good at works, I have seen it and fully endorse this book and what it brings to the field of Leadership Development and Management.
Book Review: Play to your strengths
Summary: 3 Stars
I have taken many of the various "quadrant personality tests" that evaluate your responses to the various questions and then tells you your personality type. So I didn't hold out much hope of learning a lot that was new when I picked up this volume. However, I was pleasantly surprised by a couple of things. First, there is a password assigned to each book. With that password you are able to access a web site, establish an account, and answer a questionnaire which does in fact give you your top five strengths.
But what is most useful is that armed with the survey results and this book, you are not only able to know your strengths but also how to build on those strengths. What is new here, is that the authors break the mold of "work on eliminating your weaknesses." Instead, the advise us to pay attention to building up our strengths, to always find ways to use those strengths instead of worrying so much about our weaknesses. Sure, we do have to try and mitigate any negative attributes we may have in order to work with others, but the really successful person will work to play to his or her own strengths.
You will learn why strength is defined as "consistent near perfect performance in an activity." You will see why it makes sense to "manage around your weaknesses." And you will be given clear, concise guidelines on how to manage others through their strengths and help them manage around their weaknesses. I will definitely be using many of the principles and ideas put forth in this book as I go about helping my clients shape their corporate cultures and improve their effectiveness.
Book Review: Talents, strength and weakness
Summary: 4 Stars
I read this after it was mentioned and lauded at a conference I was at, and am very glad I did. I have talked with several people about this since I've read it, and it's prompted me to sit down with one employee to review his strengths and career paths within our organization that would help him fully utilize what talents he has. While I agree that there does not seem to be a lot of specifics about exact steps to implement these ideas, frankly I've found that a lot of the time when there are exact steps they don't fit the management model we have anyway.
I have also been thinking about the implications of this book as a mother of a pre-teen daughter, and the concern I have with self-confidence issues as she enters the mysterious world of teendom. While there is a book (by another author, forward by Buckingham) coming out Feb 2008 that seems to talk directly about kids ands strengths that I will get and read, in the mean time I think that several of the lessons are very applicable to understanding and raising teens. Rather than spending time and energy - and creating frustration - by working on creating a talent that isn't there, instead as she gets older we'll work on focusing on the talents that are there and ways to work around, compensate for, etc. weaknesses. That does not mean she doesn't have to do certain homework (!), but it will mean that the way we approach studying, getting projects done, and activities at school will be focused on playing to her strengths; hopefully building these skills to support her strengths will only help her as she moves on in life.
Book Review: Strengthening your ME Inc.
Summary: 5 Stars
Arguing strongly and persuasively for the uniqueness of the individual in the face of the sameness of basic human nature, The Gallup Organization continues its assault on traditional management practices, particularly those based upon uniformity of approach and improvement by focusing on identified weaknesses. In this follow-up book to "First, Break All the Rules", the authors re-present the logic for their application of this Positive Psychology approach in the workplace and introduce their 34 themes of Talent. Although the accompanying web based assessment tool is labeled the StrengthsFinder, it is built to understand yearnings, rapid learning, and satisfactions in order to detect a person's 5 dominant Talents. Talents, while enduring and unique, are only a part of Strengths, as these must be combined with Knowledge and Skills to develop our Strengths.
As was the case with "First, Break All the Rules", this book is well researched, well written, and easy to comprehend. It superbly weaves stories and examples into the narrative to bring the points to life, making it also an enjoyable read. Although Part III is titled, Put Strengths to Work, this book is not nearly as helpful in that regard as Buckingham's more recent book, "Go Put Your Strengths to Work". And, with the upgraded version of this book, "StrengthFinder 2.0" now on the Amazon market for $11.97 (and qualifying for free shipping), one might ask, why buy this one? I can better answer that question after my copy of 2.0 arrives next week!
Dennis DeWilde, author of
"The Performance Connection"