Now, Discover Your Strengths: The Revolutionary Gallup Program That Shows You How to Develop Your Unique Talents and Strengths

Be careful. Although the description says the 20th anniversary edition, not all of the books are actually that edition. I got the 2001 edition, not the 2020 edition

The book's strength, to turn the tables a bit, is not in its length (less than average amount of words per page, about 250 pages), not in its style (written at a relatively low level), and not in its technical explanations (very little justification and explanation for the theories it proposes). The strength of the book is how it introduces a new vocabulary for identifying an individual's potential strengths and talents.The reader must go to a web site and take an assessment test rather early in the book. After the reader takes the test, Buckingham and Clifton work at unraveling old ways of looking at performance and standard practices. For example, they dare to suggest that the paradigm of improving a person's weaknesses as a strategy to implement optimum performance on the job or elsewhere is faulty. You may disagree, and you may find the test useless if you take it. In my instance, the test clearly verfied my areas of talent. So I gave the book five stars, because it's an amazing groundbreaking book - we now have a way to identify and talk about 34 different groups of human talents - and I don't care how Gallup, Buckingham, and Clifton arrived at the results they did if the results are clearly true, as in my case.Now, Discover Your Strengths doesn't tell you how to find a career based on your top five strengths. It's a very personal decision, and also impractical, given that about 33 million combinations of five exist. Buckingham and Clifton give examples of successful people and what they chose as careers, which utilize some combination of their strengths, and other useful suggestions, such as strategies to mitigate weaknesses.Highly recommended. I never would have known any of this had someone not suggested I read the book, and now a whole new way of looking at myself and the world is open to me. econ

"First, Break All the Rules" left my wife and me asking, "How do you learn your strengths?" While buying a copy of "First..." for my boss, I found "Now, Discover Your Strengths."The book is fascinating. The concept of locating and concentrating on using strengths (your own and your employees') rather than fixing their weaknesses is well layed out.Strengths are talents, innate or developed tendencies and abilities which have, through experience, education or training been honed to a level placing the possessor in rarified air in this regard.The book and tape give you a code which serves as a password to take an online test to discover your top 5 strengths of 34 identified by the Gallup Organization. I would guess three will not really surprise you, two will send you diving back into the book to read more about them.By the way, my wife called the number on the StrengthFinders Website and explained that I bought the book and she, too, would like to take the test. The phone representative gave her a new code, and she took the test....The Talents and Strengths share similarities to some of the elements of the "Inner Self" of "Follow your Bliss" or the "Authentic Self" of Dr. Phil McGraw's "Self Matters." When you find yourself learning a skill with remarkable ease and speed, or doing all the recommended reading in a course during the first week, these are clues. You likely have an affinity for the subject.Others might be a burning desire to please, to help, to inform, to relate and more.The business goal is to put the person with the strength in the position that uses it. Then to use the techniques of Great Managers to guide them to brilliance. I recommend both "First" and "Now."

REVIEW: While I am generally disappointed with sequels, this book didn't disappoint and stands on its own (see "First Break All the Rules"). "Now" focuses on the individual (except the last two chapters) and their inate strengths. It goes into detail on the 34 different types of talents/strengths that the authors found in their research. "Now" is based on two simple themes: (1) each person's talents are enduring and unique, and (2) each person's greatest room for growth lies in their greatest strengths (not in improving their weaknesses as so much of our society is focused on). "Now" will help you recognize strengths (yours and other) which is the first step to capitalizing on them. I now find myself regularly thinking in terms of the strengths concept when making working decisions. By the way, you don't have to read "First, Break All the Rules" before reading this book. In fact, I recommend this one first! Also, "First" focused on the manager and how he/she should think and act differently in terms of the authors discoveries on talents and strengths whereas "Now" focusses on the individual. This book was also the first book that I've read that included an on-line component. The on-line test took me about 30 min to complete and gave me my top 5 strengths. After reading the detailed descriptions in the book, I believe the test correctly hit 4 out of 5 with the 5th one a close runner-up.STRENGTHS: The book is easy to read and full of examples. I found the concepts and content very well thought out and very effective at changing my thinking.WEAKNESSES: I note some weaknesses, but they were at most annoying and not significant enough to prevent me from enjoying or highly recommending the book. First, as in the "First" book, no index. Second, while the book has lots of examples, a number seemed to be thrown in to touch popular or emotional topics rather than being solid support for the specific topic being discussed.WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK: The book is probably best suited to professionals and knowledge workers with an interest in better understanding themselves and those around them. If you're interested in increasing your own effectiveness and the effectiveness of your relationships with others this book is for you.ALSO CONSIDER: Of course, "First Break All the Rules" by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman [either before or after this book]. "The Effective Executive" by Peter F. Drucker.

I'm a coach -- personal, business and EQ -- and I find this book to be an invaluable tool in my practice. The nomenclature for the strengths is wonderful, and makes sense. As a helping professional, I can generally see what's going on with a client, but can't see the forest for the trees, and wasn't that easily able to describe my own strengths. Taking the test myself was most illuminating and I found out, with some feedback, that I wasn't really portraying my stengths in relations with others. I immediately compared it with the profile of someone I was working with, and it made it clear to us both the one area in which we were 'clashing'. Tension eased as we saw each other for what we were, and it's been smooth sailing. It's a shortcut to understand the person you're managing, relating to, living with, or working with. No single assessment is going to explain a complex living being, but this one will put together a lot of pieces for you and for your client, employee or S.O. The book is very easy to read; clear, well written and informative. Yes, we DID need words for strengths. It's time we quit focusing on "weaknesses". Everyone has them, but everyone also has strengths, and, as the authors say, your best chance at attaining excellence is by increasing your strengths, not shoring up your weaknesses, and it's also a much surer path to contentment.

This book represents three very ambitious efforts. One, it argues for a new management paradigm that builds from the psychological make-up of each person in the workplace to create the most effective combination of people and tasks. Two, the book presents a new psychological mapping scheme to capture those areas where a person will display "consistent near perfect performance in an activity." Three, the book connects you to a self-diagnosis tool that you can use on-line to see yourself in the perspective of the new mapping scheme. Most books would settle for pursing just one these goals. My hat is off to the authors for their ambition!The concept of building companies around "desirable" pyschological profiles has been in application for some time. The Walt Disney organization uses this approach to locate people who will enjoy working in their company, and to match the person to the task they will be most focused on. More and more companies are experimenting with this approach. The evidence is that it works. So the first argument simply takes that experience one step further by formalizing it a bit. The book has many persuasive examples of how people usually do not have jobs that use their best talents. This provides another perspective on the Peter Principle. So far so good. Next, 34 patterns of mental habits are described based on millions of interviews over 25 years. These include achiever, activator, adaptability, analytical, arranger, belief, command, communication, competition, connectedness, context, deliberative, developer, discipline, empathy, fairness, focus, futuristic, harmony, ideation, inclusiveness, individualization, input, intellection, learner, maximizer, positivity, relator, responsibility, restorative, self-assurance, significance, strategic, and woo. You need to see the descriptions to understand what these patterns reflect. The argument is that these labels capture patterns of thinking habits that condition behavior in any situation. I find it difficult to relate to all of the patterns because there are so many. Also, without knowing what patterns work well in a particular job, I wasn't sure how relevant they are. Connection of patterns to success needs to be shown as cause and effect in a given company before this will be totally useful. Small companies may not be able to use this tool very well because they will never have enough people doing the same task to figure out which profile is best. Everyone working in that role may have a very inappropriate profile. You will just be picking the best of a poorly-fitting lot if you select around one of them. Then, I took the personality test on-line. There were no surprises there for me in my top 5 patterns. I also suspect that there would be no surprises for you in putting me into these categories. You would probably have pegged me as an achiever, learner, relator, focus, input person from the fact that I read so many nonfiction books, write so many boo