Book review: Now Discover you Strengths - Marcus Buckingham & Donald O'Clifton

PS 8.5 (And another foundation block.)

Kent Blumberg suggested I'd read "Now, Discover your Strengths" (How to develop your talents and those of the people you manage), another publication by The Gallup Organisation (Kent is turning into my 'personal' librarian it seems). He also wrote a synopsis on the book himself, which is great to read (and do follow up on the suggestions Kent makes).

It was no surprise for me to find the log-in code for the StrengthFinder online test. However, the findings/result from the test startled me pretty much.

But back to the book itself. In fact it continues on one of the questions asked in "First, break all the rules" - do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

But what do you do best? Do you know what your strength is?

What is a strength? A talent? An ability? Something you can rely on you have, portrait?
I quote Buckingham and Clifton "An ability is a strength only if you can fathom yourself doing it repeatedly, happily and successful".
As in "First..." the writers state that companies/organisations manage people better when focusing on talents/strengths instead of 'fixing' the 'weakness-gap'. In this book they urge you should "Capitalise on your strengths and manage 'around' you weaknesses". This is a concept easy to grasp, but (seemingly) hard to apply, because most managements believe the 'half-truth' that fixing the weaknesses will make someone better in/for his job.

I found it a very interesting, even intriguing book to read. A real stop/start. And during some stops I realised that we don't change (i.e. our talents/strengths don't change), our knowledge about them, our awareness of them, changes.

My recommendation: buy the book, do the test and then read the book (further, the StrengthFinder test is introduced in chapter 3). First for 'self-development', then read it again as a managing tool.

Comments

[Kent Blumberg]

Karin,

Great review. And thanks for the links.

I don't think it's unusual to be a bit surprised by the result of the assessment - many folks I've worked with have gone through that stage. And then, as you note on your other blog, you realize how right the results are.

Your new blog, by the way, looks fun. I've added it to my Bloglines subscriptions.

Kent

[Karin]

Hi Kent

Thanks for the comments (and for the links, well it is you who always suggest the reading material)

To be honest, I've started my new blog because I first felt very 'confused'/startled by the result of the test. When I thought about it I truly realised what has been happening over the last few months/weeks and needed an 'outlet' for my rambling thoughts ;-)
Some 'stories' don't belong in a 'business' blog, hence the new 'pondering' blog.

[alin]

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