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 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.
First, it is short and well-written, which makes the information very accessible. Next, it is actually based on "facts" - actually thousands of interveiws that the Gallup organization has conducted over several years. Finally, it was fascinating to log into their website and run the test on Strength Finder. My business partner and co-founder said that they nailed me! I would strongly recommend this book to any manager or aspiring manager.
The Gallup International Research & Education Center developed a I completed the Strengthsfinder profile and found it to be quite I recommend this book as an enjoyable and practical business and
Unfortunately, "Now, Discover Your Strengths" makes the same point but without all the loads of useful management advice. "Discover" has you take a web based quiz to find your top 5 strengths. What if you have more than 5 strengths? Too bad, for you won't be told how you scored on the other strengths. Does "Discover" help you discover that you should focus on your artistic or writing talents? NO. Your talents in this book are "Deliberative" or "Woo" or "Context". Basically, if you want to get a take on the way you approach life and work, then this book may help you and tell you how to get your manager to treat you, but it won't find your *talents*. I fully recommend reading the first book and thinking hard about what you do well at and enjoy doing. Save your money and don't buy this book. I see this book as an attempt by Gallup to position themselves as an integral part of the review process at major corporations and make money from every employee taking the quiz. This wouldn't be a bad thing for employees, but managers and you'd be better served by the first book by itself. I found the quiz a bit confusing and marked an awful lot of the questions with "no preference". After reading the book, I wanted to take the quiz again (as the book implies you can), but Gallup *refuses* to allow you to take the quiz more than once. This means that your spouse or friend that you loan the book to won't be able to take the test until they fork over money for a new copy of the book. If you get a used or a returned copy, I hope the previous owner didn't take the test and then return the book! |
If you are like me, and want to avoid the "flavor of the month" type of business book, then you will love this one.
So, people can't change their basic personalities. We've heard this before. So, build on people's strengths. We've heard this before too. If the HR people listen to this, maybe it will help the corporate world, once they understand that diversity is more than race, religion, politics, etc... The strengths test is interesting, my top five were facets that show in my personal life (the bookish little nerd liberal arts major) much more than in my professional life (hard Harvard MBA). What is missing is how to apply this insight...what the particular combination of strengths means, how to communicate with and lead people with differing strengths, etc., etc. Perhaps I am expecting too much, since I am basing my expectations on the Myers-Briggs and other personality tests with larger data and research bases.....
