Now Discover Your Strengths

According to Gallup Management Consulting, "The best way to develop people and net the greatest return on investment in their growth is to identify their talents, then help them add the skills and knowledge that build strengths -- the ability to provide consistent, near-perfect performance."  Their findings are presented in the book Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, Free Press, 2001.  I have found the concept extremely useful in developing myself and others.

"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: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently 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

Clues to what your talents are lay in five areas (taken from a Gallup Consulting team building exercise):

• "Yearning - what kinds of activities are you naturally drawn to?
• "Rapid Learning - what kinds of activities do you seem to pick up quickly?
• "Flow - in what activities did the steps just come to you automatically?
• "Glimpses of excellence - during what activities have you had moments of subconscious excellence and wonder, "how did I do that?"
• "Satisfaction - what activities give you a kick, either while doing them or immediately after finishing them?"

Here's how to put the science of strengths development to work:

1. Buy the book and read it - at least through chapter three.
2. Go on-line using the code supplied with the book, and find out what your core talents are.
3. Read further in the book to learn how to turn your talents into strengths.
4. Tell your team about the concept, buy the book for each of them, begin to talk with each other about how to use strengths in developing the team and the business.
5. Check out the Gallup website and Marcus Buckingham's site for more information, resources and tools.

I'll end with a quick story of what happened when we put this into practice with one of my teams.  We found out that Steve was a consumate Arranger (one of the 34 talent themes).  However, he had very little need to use his Arranger talent in his normal job.  Once we realized Steve's talent, and began asking him to "arrange" major events, his energy level jumped - and our events improved tremendously.  In this case - and many others I've seen - a focus on natural talents and strengths paid big dividends.