Now Discover Your Strengths or Working

Now, Discover Your Strengths

Author: Marcus Buckingham

Unfortunately, most of us have little sense of our talents and strengths, much less the ability to build our lives around them. Instead, guided by our parents, by our teachers, by our managers, and by psychology's fascination with pathology, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected.

Marcus Buckingham, coauthor of the national bestseller First, Break All the Rules, and Donald O. Clifton, Chair of the Gallup International Research & Education Center, have created a revolutionary program to help readers identify their talents, build them into strengths, and enjoy consistent, near-perfect performance. At the heart of the book is the Internet-based StrengthsFinder® Profile, the product of a 25-year, multimillion-dollar effort to identify the most prevalent human strengths. The program introduces 34 dominant "themes" with thousands of possible combinations, and reveals how they can best be translated into personal and career success. In developing this program, Gallup has conducted psychological profiles with more than two million individuals to help readers learn how to focus and perfect these themes.

So how does it work? This book contains a unique identification number that allows you access to the StrengthsFinder Profile on the Internet. This Web-based interview analyzes your instinctive reactions and immediately presents you with your five most powerful signature themes. Once you know which of the 34 themes -- such as Achiever, Activator, Empathy, Futuristic, or Strategic -- you lead with, the book will show you how to leverage them for powerful results at three levels: foryour own development, for your success as a manager, and for the success of your organization.

With accessible and profound insights on how to turn talents into strengths, and with the immediate on-line feedback of StrengthsFinder at its core, Now, Discover Your Strengths is one of the most groundbreaking and useful business books ever written.

What People Are Saying

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Now, Discover Your Strengths, based on years of research by The Gallup Organization, is a refreshingly sensible and user-friendly way to assess your psychological assets and build on them a successful and satisfying life.

Mike Morrison
The code for managing has been broken and the secrets for success are here in this book! We know this from first-hand experience — with over 2,000 Gallup 'strengths' program graduates (and growing) — we will never look at our jobs, or our lives for that matter, the same way again. To achieve our greatest potential, this is by far the most important investment an individual or organization can make!

Ed Diener
A brilliant book that will help readers to discover and capitalize on their specific strengths, as well as assist managers in supervising people with varying strengths.

Frank Schmidt
Ralph L. Sheets Professor of Human Resources, Department of Management and Organization, College of Business, University of Iowa This book is built around a unique vision of the high-performing individual and the high-performing organization — and that vision is built on a recognition of individual differences and the unique strengths of each person. A truly important book.

Martin E.P. Seligman
The keystone of high achievement and happiness is exercising your strengths, not correcting your weaknesses. The first step is knowing which strengths you own, and this superb book gives you a powerful and accurate way to find out.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction: The Strengths Revolution at Work
	The Revolution	5
	Two Million Interviews	11
I.	The Anatomy of a Strength
Chapter 1.	Strong Lives
	The Investor, the Director, the Skin Doctor, and the Editor	19
	Tiger Woods, Bill Gates, and Cole Porter	25
	Three Revolutionary Tools	28
Chapter 2.	Strength Building
	Is He Always This Good?	39
	Knowledge and Skills	41
	Talent	48
II.	Discover the Source of Your Strengths
Chapter 3.	StrengthsFinder
	The Traces of Talent	67
	The StrengthsFinder Profile	76
Chapter 4.	The Thirty-four Themes of StrengthsFinder
	Achiever	83
	Activator	84
	Adaptability	85
	Analytical	86
	Arranger	87
	Belief	88
	Command	89
	Communication	90
	Competition	91
	Connectedness	92
	Context	93
	Deliberative	94
	Developer	95
	Discipline	96
	Empathy	97
	Fairness	98
	Focus	99
	Futuristic	100
	Harmony	101
	Ideation	102
	Inclusiveness	103
	Individualization	104
	Input	105
	Intellection	106
	Learner	107
	Maximizer	108
	Positivity	109
	Relator	110
	Responsibility	111
	Restorative	112
	Self-assurance	113
	Significance	114
	Strategic	115
	Woo	116
III.	Put Strengths to Work
Chapter 5.	The Questions You're Asking
	Are there any obstacles to building my strengths?	121
	Why should I focus on my signature themes?	131
	Is there any significance to the order of my signature themes?	134
	Not all of the phrases in the theme description apply to me. Why?	136
	Why am I different from other people with whom I share some of the same themes?	137
	Are any of the themes "opposites"?	139
	Can I develop new themes if I don't like the ones I have?	141
	Will I become too narrow if I focus on my signature themes?	144
	How can I manage around my weaknesses?	148
	Can my themes reveal whether I am in the right career?	160
Chapter 6.	Managing Strengths
	"Fidel," Sam Mendes, and Phil Jackson	171
	One By One	176
Chapter 7.	Building a Strengths-based Organization
	The Full Story	213
	The Practical Guide	218
	Appendix
	A Technical Report on StrengthsFinder	247

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An enormous amount of exciting material. . . . An incredible abundance of marvelous beings. . . . A very special electricity and emotional power. (The New York Times Book Review)