Now, Discover Your Strengths | Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton

Now, Discover Your Strengths | Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton | A Baseline Tool to Personal Development - Now Discover Your Strengths

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Now, Discover Your...

	Now, Discover Your Strengths Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton Free Press, 2001 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 339 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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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A Baseline Tool to Personal Development - Now Discover Your Strengths

An excellent leadership tool for personal development - The online evaluation allows you to identify your five top strengths. I found this to be a great tool to establish a baseline of strengths for personal management. I still use it today - five stars. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in investing in personal growth: it's better in some ways than Myers Briggs(tm) and Strong Interest Inventory(tm). Talent identification is important for each of us and for your team: you can complete a questionnaire developed by the Gallup Organization. I have purchased both the audio and the book which I have shared with my family and friends. Frank Sowin

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Now, Discover Your Strengths

Easy read. Very positive. Good book for team building, but the downside is that you MUST buy a book for each individual person so that they can take the on-line test.

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

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