Product Description

"Most Americans do not know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare, or they respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer."

-- Peter Drucker

Unfortunately, most of us have little sense of our talents and strengths. Instead, guided by our parents, our teachers, our managers and 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.

At the heart of Now, Discover Your Strengths, 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.

This audiobook 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 themes. Once you know which themes you lead with, you can leverage them for powerful results for personal development, for management success, and for the success of the organization.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #707846 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-01
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Audio Cassette

Amazon.com Review
Effectively managing personnel--as well as one's own behavior--is an extraordinarily complex task that, not surprisingly, has been the subject of countless books touting what each claims is the true path to success. That said, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton's Now, Discover Your Strengths does indeed propose a unique approach: focusing on enhancing people's strengths rather than eliminating their weaknesses. Following up on the coauthors' popular previous book, First, Break All the Rules, it fully describes 34 positive personality themes the two have formulated (such as Achiever, Developer, Learner, and Maximizer) and explains how to build a "strengths-based organization" by capitalizing on the fact that such traits are already present among those within it.

Most original and potentially most revealing, however, is a Web-based interactive component that allows readers to complete a questionnaire developed by the Gallup Organization and instantly discover their own top-five inborn talents. This device provides a personalized window into the authors' management philosophy which, coupled with subsequent advice, places their suggestions into the kind of practical context that's missing from most similar tomes. "You can't lead a strengths revolution if you don't know how to find, name and develop your own," write Buckingham and Clifton. Their book encourages such introspection while providing knowledgeable guidance for applying its lessons. --Howard Rothman

From Library Journal
The premise of this new management study, a follow-up to Buckingham's First, Break All the Rules (S. & S., 1999), is that the most effective method for motivating people is to build on their strengths rather than correcting their weaknesses. The authors, researchers at the Gallup Organization, have analyzed results of interviews conducted by Gallup of over 1.7 million employees from 101 companies and representing 63 countries. When asked, only 20 percent of these employees stated that they were using their strengths everyday. So that they can take a test revealing their strengths, readers are given access to the StrengthsFinder web site and a special ID number; once they learn their profile, they can read the analysis in the book. A description of each type is included, together with case studies, and managers are shown how to handle various types. This book offers a unique perspective on successful management strategy and developing employees' strengths. Recommended especially for public libraries, which should also consider Buckingham's First, Break All the Rules; students of business administration may also wish to consult this book.DLucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Mike MorrisonDean, University of ToyotaThe 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!

Martin E.P. SeligmanFox Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Director, Positive Psychology Network, Author of Learned Optimism 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.

Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiC. S. and D. J. Davidson Professor of Psychology, Peter Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University, Author of FlowNow, 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.

Ed Diener, Ph.D.,Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois 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.

Dr. Frank SchmidtRalph 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.

Mike PucciVice President, Glaxo WellcomeNow, Discover Your Strengths is the logical, practical application of the theories uncovered in First, Break All The Rules. We have rewritten our management development curriculum as a result of this important and defining research in leadership.

Customer Reviews

Find your strengths and put them to work for you!
In an ocean full of bigger fish it can be difficult to stop living on the offense and consider our own strengths. How will you stand out amongst the other 200 people at that job interview if you yourself have no idea what your strengths are? And if you don't know what you are good at, are you applying for the best job for yourself in the first place?

`Now Discover Your Strengths' is the follow up to Buckingham's previous book `Break all the Rules'. This book focused on identifying and using your natural talents. Rather than working on overcoming weakness, which serves to create focus on what we are not good at, `Now Discover Your Strengths' teaches us to work on our strengths. In fact, to build our lives around them.
Once your strengths are identified it becomes much easier to find a fulfilling career that will continue to last - after all, you'll be doing something you're good at!

Danny Iny
Author of the free eBook "Forget Everything You Know About Looking For a Job... And Actually Find One!"
HuntingToHired, www.HuntingToHired.com

How do you want to spend the rest of your life?
This a good book if you want to rethink what you are doing with your life. Stephen Covey integrates some of this kind of thinking in the Eight Habits.

Share this with your kids in high school, and definitely before they head off to college.

Dave

Marketing Tool
I bought this book NEW at a bookstore that was going out of business.

I was really enjoying reading it until I got to Chapter 3, which directs you to go online and take their StrengthsFinder test using the "unique" code on the jacket of the book.

I was disgusted to learn that someone has already used the code (or so I am told by the FAQ on the site). Then I realized that this entire book, which reads remarkably fast and could probably be condensed down to 50 pages, is just a tool to get people to go to the site and "upgrade" to the latest version of the online test. How can you do that? Can you buy access separately? Nope. You HAVE to buy a book to get a code. And of course, when you get your book there's no way to ensure that someone hasn't already peeked inside the jacket and grabbed the code.

At least I paid a discount price for the book, but I'm not really interested in reading any further, nor in buying their latest "upgraded" book.

What a fantastic marketing tool to ensure that lending or selling the book is useless. When I say "marketing tool," I'm referring to the person behind this debacle.