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

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.

This was required for a class I was taking in college to get my EdS degree, but it was one of the best books I read in the program. This book helps people discover their own strengths and encourages them to accentuate those strengths while trying not to focus on any weaknesses. It's a great self-help book that I'm glad I had to read because it truly enhanced my life.

Fantastic book as an individual read or as a team in the work environment. Easy to read and understand and at the end you have the results of the Strengths Finder Survey and a concrete set of steps to help you begin assessing your current work and personal decisions so they "play to your Strengths" Every Manager should have their team read this and share their strengths.

Marcus Buckingham is truly an inspiring writer and this book really helps one identify their great strengths. I loved this book. Also highly recommend "Running with the Rhinos" by Christian Warren as a companion book. excellent insight in terms of leading with your strengths.

Probably the best management and personnel development tool around! Four staff members were each given a copy to read and to follow the instructions for getting an analysis. Each was asked to bring the analysis for their annual job review. They expected the typical "this is good and that is bad" comments but found that when they reviewed their positive traits they were asked "how can you apply that in your job?" Ar real morale and performance builder.

I think the subject of the book is good, however a big part of dicovering your strengths is taking the on line strength finder quiz. Unfortunatley for me the code provided on the inside of the jacket is either invalid or has been used by someone already.
So as I read this book I will be left to wonder "what are my strengths..."

[As a corporate human resources director, I often work on developing the latent talents and skills of various managers. Years ago, I taught a class where I had each participant to look into a hand-held mirror and ask the question, "Would you want to work for this person?"

This book takes this exercise to a completely different level. To discover your own inner strengths (and weakness) ensures that you will become the very best manager possible. As a fan of First, Break All the Rules, I was very satisfied that this follow-up was as timely and useful as the first book. I highly recommend you purchase a copy of this book for yourself and for all of your managers. Michael L. Gooch, SPHR Author of
[ASIN:1897326882 Wingtips with Spurs]]

Nice concept that could have been handled with a 10 page paper. Clearly authors had to have some volume to prove value so they drone on and on and on. Very tedious reading. Then at every turn they continue to try to sell other products or services. The major killer is having an online exam to evalute your strengths; however, the code is only good once - so DON'T buy a used book as your code will be invalid. If the exam is a work related exercise, you'll be forced to buy a new book just for the code. Also, DON'T let your spouse read the book. If you do, they'll want to take the exam and suprise suprise, you would need another new book just to take the test.

The book is very interesting and very effective. The internet test is very accurate. Nevertheless each strength profile should be discussed more in depth. Let's say you get an idea of who you are but you would like to get more of it. Anyway, the price is worth the stuff you find in the book!

I wish my husband could have read it and used the code. I had gone on a job interview before reading this book and one of the questions they asked me, was what strategies would I use in a certain situation. And all I thought was that is THE dumbest question ever, how am I going to answer that, it all depends, I hate that word strategy.... you get the idea. Then as I was reading through the strengths book, I thought that would be so be ironic if one of my strengths was strategic. Well, sure enough that was the number one answer on my quiz results. So I am still laughing about that. So my strategy is to read through my strengths and understand them well enough and look at where I use those strengths and then try to improve on them. I would have given this 5 stars but since my hubby has to buy his own book, I only gave it 4.

The information in the book is very helpful but do not buy the book used if you want to take full advantage of what it has to offer. A majority of the book is centered around the results of their online strength finder accessed with a code in the book jacket that can only be used once.

I have read the book and taken the test. While the concept is sound (focus and develop your strengths, do only damage control on your weaknesses), the test does not reveal anything that could be applicable to my work. Many of the 180 questions are just simply asking you where your strengths are and then telling you the same thing in the result. The applicability of the result is very low. 3 out of 5 of my strenght mean that I like to think, the 4th means that I feel everything is connected (how is that a strenght?) and the 5th is that I like to collect things (ideas, stuff). I don't feel this book and especially the test is worth the money nor the time. On the other hand I would be genuinely interested in hearing from someone who found the test useful in his/her life.

This is a wonderful book, but you have to buy it new! There's a code on the inside for the strengths quiz, and you cannot reuse the code. I had to buy StrengthsFinder 2.0--the new version--in order to get the quiz without repurchansing the same exact book twice.

It would have been nice to know this....

This book goes along with StrengthFinders by Rath. I enjoyed this book. I agree focusing on an employees strengths are key. In the book, Elephants Can't Change but Leopards can!!! it talks about the Now, Discover your Strengths book and how it can be implemented by Management.

There were many things I liked about this book and some that I found difficult. Buckingham's theme of focusing on one's strengths rather than weaknesses (as so many development programs and activities do) is an excellent one. He also provides a very good strategy for doing this:
1. How to distinguish your natural talents
2. Having a system to identify your dominant talents
3. Having a common language to describe your talents.

Let's start with the first - "talents". In talents, Buckingham distinguishes between what is innate and what can be acquired through practice. He categorises one's expertise into talents, knowledge and skills and makes the quite valid point that a person can improve performance in an area through practice and developing knowledge and skills. However, the extent to which overall performance (or expertise) can be enhanced is limited to the degree of innate talent. I liken this innate talent to aptitude.

The system to identify one's natural talents is based on the StrengthsFinder Profile. This profile is completed on line using a code provided with the purchase of the book. When I tried to log in using my code I was told that I had to register at one of these sites:
* StrengthsQuest
* Vital Friends
* StrengthsExplorer
* Bucket Book
* Gallup Online
As I object to having to do this, it is probably unfair of me to comment on this aspect of the book other than to say that I think the idea of a system such as a questionnaire to identify one's talents is a good one.

The final aspect a "common language" is fully outlined in the 34 themes of StrengthsFinder. Two points I would make about these. Firstly, from the text I think it would be hard to identify in others these 34 patterns. I also found the description of these to be a little light on.

On balance, this book is worthy of note for its emphasis on strengths and in awakening us to the notion of "natural talents" - worthy of a read for this point. Choose yourself whether you want to take the test.

Bob Selden, author What To Do When You Become The Boss: How new managers become successful managers

This book is the follow-on to "First, Break all the Rules." The latter targets management while this book is for the individual. If you buy your own copy of the book, you get a code with which you can take their Strengths Finder online survey. (You can now also go to the web-site and take the survey for a fee; they used to require a book purchase.) That tool gives you your top 5 strengths, in order, which is what is missing from First, Break all the Rules.

With your strengths in hand, you can now look at your career, your role in your company, and the direction of your life. In my case, I understood why I wasn't happy in the previous year with my job. I had been "promoted" to "leadership" for all of my good technical work and was no longer playing to any of my strengths. I HAD to make a change, which was to get out of the "leadership" role. Management wasn't very happy with me. I continued using the recommendations in this book and formed my own training plan that "exploited" my strengths and developed them further. Its been 5 years, and both me and my management are happy. In fact, this year was my best performance review and raise ever!

My opinion is if you have read the book(s), then take the quiz, that can skew your quiz answers. I believe the strengths it identified for me, just not sure that the order wasn't affected by my having read both books in their entirety first. Thus, consider reading this book first even though it is second in the series UNLESS you are a manager and only have time to read one of the two books. (In that case I would take the quiz using the code from this book, put the book down, and read First, Break all the Rules.)

Brilliant. Readable. Engaging. Empowering.

I was originally introduced to this work through Kristine Gunn of www.HighVelocityTraining.com.

It immediately provided hope that my inherent ideas about how to work with people to help them perform (and internally do the same) could be applied today.

An inspiring work that truly helps you find the path to your own inherent success traits. A phenomenal book, and the integrated online test and report are vital to helping you return to center when you find yourself in the weeds, wondering why you're working so hard and not having fun.

To your greatest success and most fulfilling work.
Mark Alan Effinger,
RichContent.com
ThoughtOffice.com

Easy read. Very positive. Good book for team building, but the downside is that you MUST buy a book for each individual person so that they can take the on-line test.

The title implies that it will help YOU discover and use YOUR strengths, but it is actually more of a management/hiring book- it helps you place other people to use THEIR strengths effectively. Since I am in sales, (and only have one assistant who doesn't need much managing) it wasn't much of a help. The personality test wasn't even helpful. The book recommends that you use it to "hone your strengths" and then it doesn't tell you how to go about doing that. If I were managing 20 or so employees and had to make a lot of hiring decisions it might have been helpful- it did discuss how to match people with different talents to appropriate jobs. Since I am not- it was a total waste of time and money.

An excellent leadership tool for personal development - The online evaluation allows you to identify your five top strengths. I found this to be a great tool to establish a baseline of strengths for personal management. I still use it today - five stars. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in investing in personal growth: it's better in some ways than Myers Briggs(tm) and Strong Interest Inventory(tm). Talent identification is important for each of us and for your team: you can complete a questionnaire developed by the Gallup Organization. I have purchased both the audio and the book which I have shared with my family and friends. Frank Sowin

Do your self a favor... read this book and take the online assessment (probably not the right term). I've used a lot of what I got out of each in conversation with my boss about a few things including a letter of recommendation from him, and I have used the findings as a major point of reference during an incredible interview for grad school.

Combined with the access to the on-line test, this book can help provide insights both to yourself and others. The first half of the book is very interesting and provides a solid foundation for you to understand some basics about human development. The test is well done and easy to move through. The test results and the explanation of the strengths in the book can really change the way you see yourself.

A key value and purpose of this book is to link you to a web site to take the StrengthFinder survey. The code in the back cover can only be used once, so if you buy a used copy, that has probably already been consumed.

This is the most important book I've read about developing people. With the inclusion of the internet-based Strengths Finder Profile, the reader gets much more than a book. This is an interactive tool that will help the reader understand how his talents are best used when playing to strengths, a powerful motivator for self-improvement. The book is easy to read and well-organized so the reader can get right at the most important elements right away.

Tight times, job changes, they are frightening.
Knowing your strengths is a major 'coping' tool.
It really helps writing job-getting resumes.
This is a 'must have' book.
Mine is on loan about 70% time.

This a great book that will help you identify your signature themes. THe book is an easy read and will definitely keep your attention. Worth the purchase alone, just to have access to the StrengthsFinder poll.

This book suggests working on your strength rather than your weaknesses. With help from the on-line resource, you are able to identify your top 5 strengths.

Ever wanted to be a professional athlete when you grew up? And with each year passing, your skills stayed behind regardless of how much work you put in. When you arrive at the end of your teen years, you decide to go to college and pursue a career.
This may actually be a true story to most of us, as we lack skills, talent or health to reach the goals we dream of as a child. Live with it.

Now get real and reflect on your own life. Ok, you couldn't hit a ball but can you make an absolute smashing sales pitch? Or is your life so organized you have spare time? With this book you will learn to make the best of the talents you have, and not slightly improve the talents you lack.

Being a business owner this book was of great help managing personnel and putting together teams that complement on each other's strength. This makes some people valuable as a team member where they lack qualities as an individual. In sports this term is also complemented with the word 'chemistry' which is actually a direct result of a balanced and complementing team.

For anyone interested in self-improvement or having to work with teams, this book shares a wealth of knowledge and puts you behind the wheel of improvement within your life.

My issue with the book is nothing to do with codes or upselling to other products. It's the basic premise that I have a problem with and its lack of reality in the real world.

To a large extent I'm always slightly wary of books by people who have merely studied others and haven't really been out there at the coal face of human achievement but the hype for Mr Buckingham is huge so I thought I'd give it a go. It reads very much to me like a wonderful and highly marketable theory that could only really work in a large company. Most small enterprises would be ludicrously stifled if all their staff went around "only working to their strengths". Sometimes to really make a difference and to really get things done you have to bully your way through your weaknesses too. I doubt there is an entrepreneur on the planet who wouldn't agree with that.

Perhaps I'm viewing it from too entrepreneurial a perspective but I also take great solace in the fact that Tiger Woods regards one of his key skills as being his ability to work on his weaknesses. At the time of writing Tiger looks like being the world's first sports billionaire and has just won seven tournaments in a row. That's somebody whose advice I would take.

There have been several books on personality profiling. This one brings all together new perspective to it. Most importantly, it explains why every person is different and still very good at something or other. There is scientific explanation as well as easy to understand practical perspective.

What is not there is an easy way for person to make use of the knowledge. I am guessing that it's covered in this book from the same author. Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance

Remember: Please by new book to have your own profile composed. There is a code in the book which can be used only once.

This was an eyeopener. It helped me to realize what I have always felt: Focus on your strengths - not your weaknesses. It seems obvious, but all too often we spend time focusing on our weakness and trying to bring them up to our strengths. Forget about it. You are never going to be strong in an area that you are naturally weak. You can get to a certain level of competency - enough to get by. But, you cannot expect more than that.

Find your strengths. Find a career that allows you to excel and become the best that you can.

As CEO Coach, Poet and author of a leadership book that helps leaders unleash their genis, the genius of teams and the genius of corporations, I have found the teachings of this book considtant and in support of my work. Expanding and integating your strengths has a much higher return on investment in time than working on life long weaknesses. Paul David Walker Unleashing Genius: Leading Yourself, Teams and Corporations

If you really want to identify your strengths and unlearn what you have learned about making yourself "better," this book is a must. At first, I was taken aback by the author's concept of not really working on your weaknesses, but really training your strengths to overcome them. This concept is quite liberating and is REALLY want is used by those who succeed in their respective fields.

This book helped me identify the key strengths that make me good at what I do. It's a nice change from focussing on your weaknesses as most of us do. I recommend this to anyone who is thinking about a carreer change and wants to know what transferrable skills he/she has. This is also good to prepare for interviews.

The site for the 1.0 version is down until the 25'the of February. I also bought the 2.0 book, but was unable to put in a good password, so both books are useless if you want to actually take the test to discover your strengths.

This book and self-test focus on an individual's best and most useful personality traits. It is a great tool for self evaluation and gives a great insight into one's most beneficial abilities. Use your strengths and succeed in life, personally and otherwise.

Hallo,I bought this book in the first place to improve my english through the sinfull environment,but this book also extends human comprehensions and is helpfull,although everybody doesn't think to solve thus their problems.

As a student in high school, I was assigned this book to read as extra credit over Winter Break. When I first began to read I wondered how the book could relate to my life right now. I don't work at an office and I certainly don't hire employees. As I began to read, I enjoyed the knowledge that the book shared with me. It was an interesting way to view life, especially focusing on an individual's strengths. My favorite part was the StrengthsFinder. It was very helpful in letting me see what talents a program thought I expressed. After reading the book and taking the online survey, my confidence grew and I was able to focus on my strengths more. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, in any career, at any age.

I find the Strengths Finder very useful for me to put words to my strengths. I appreciate the positive attitude of working in my strengths rather than working on deficits.

I've read "Now Discover Your Strengths" and "StrengthsFinder 2.0" and have taken both assessments. These books and the assessments explore what's right with people. I really enjoyed "Now Discover Your Strengths" and support the concept of leading through strength. I enjoyed reading about the various strength categories, how to manage people with different strengths, and building a strengths-based organization. When I took the original Strengthsfinder assessment which is provided with the book, it was an interesting experience, but I didn't get much additional value. The book is far more substantive.

The Strengthsfinder 2.0 book didn't provide me with me substantially more insight than this book. The assessment is a slightly more customized, and the action steps can help with implementation. I still can't figure out why one of my five strengths was not included in my original strengthfinder assessment. How could my strengths change in two days?

Discovering and employing strengths is undoubtedly worthwhile, so here's your choice. If you want the most substantive information, read this book. If you are more interested in the personalization of strengths, then take the Strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment. The Strengthsfinder 2.0 book is not nearly as impressive as this book.

If you are interested in making the most of your thinking, interactions and any situation, I absolutely recommend the Optimal Thinking Online Assessment, a brilliant supplement to the Optimal Thinking book. Because thoughts are the parents of performance, I believe this is the most powerful assessment in the marketplace.

The idea of the book is to help you find your talents, build your strengths, which will in turn, improve your performance.

Building your strengths is indeed somthing that is often overlooked, as most of the time we seek to improve our weaknesses- that's a point well taken- and a good reason to buy the book. However two more things also need to be mentioned. First, why can't we work on building both our strengths AND our weaknesses? In other words, why do we have to necessarily pick just one? I feel that many weaknesses can be improved upon.

Secondly, discovering your talents and doing what you're good at may not necessarily improve your performance. Why? Because there are lots of things we're good at, but still hate to do nonetheless. For instance, I'm really good at cleaning houses and debating, but I don't like to really do either one. People really perform well when its something that they know how to do AND when there's something meaningful/important in it for them. Anyway, just some food for thought. Readers may also be interested in Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance.

The idea of the book is to help you find your talents, build your strengths, which will in turn, improve your performance.

Building your strengths is indeed somthing that is often overlooked, as most of the time we seek to improve our weaknesses- that's a point well taken- and a good reason to buy the book. However two more things also need to be mentioned. First, why can't we work on building both our strengths AND our weaknesses? In other words, why do we have to necessarily pick just one?

Secondly, discovering your talents and doing what you're good at may not necessarily improve your performance or your motivation. Why? Because there are lots of things we're good at, but still hate to do nonetheless. For instance, I'm really good at cleaning houses and debating, but I don't like to really do either one. People only get motivated to something when they know how to do a job AND there's something meaningful in it for them- that's how you motivate people. Readers who like this book might also be interested in Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance.

Now, Discover Your Strengths is a book based on the premise that the traditional model of becoming better by fixing your weaknesses is incorrect. Instead you would be better off finding out your greatest strengths and developing those to improve your performance. And lucky you, the authors provide an online quiz meant to help you discover your personal strengths.

The book begins discussing successful individuals and what they have in common. Generally people who make it to the top enjoy what they do, and they work in roles that emphasis their strengths rather than their weaknesses. One example is Warren Buffet, who thrives on investing in simple, boring companies. When tech companies were the top performers, he chose not to join in, since the complex products and aggressive accounting techniques were not his forte.

The authors introduce three requirements to develop strengths, which are covered through the book:
* Distinguishing natural talent from knowledge and skills. Knowledge comes in two flavors, factual and experimental, which can both be learned. Skill is what organizes experimental knowledge, allowing you to make use of it. Natural talent is what drives performance, but cannot be learned. The main focus of the book is to discover and define your talents.
* Identify your dominant talents. What activities do you pick up quickly? What do you enjoy doing, and do you excel at? The book continuously promotes the strengths finder profile, an online test that narrows down your five dominant talents.
* Find the proper language to describe your talents. Language is focused on the negatives, rather than positives. The book provides some excellent examples of how language leans to the negative. People who are meticulous and orderly are called anal; people who can't wait to act are impatient or impulsive. The strength finder profile turns this around by naming each strength, defining it, and giving an example of someone that exhibits it.

Later chapters go on to discuss how to use the results of the strength finder, covering both individuals who would like to develop themselves, and managers who would like to use the results to build a better team. Techniques for creating a strengths-based organization include finding ways to reward employees while keeping them in the roles that they excel in, as well as focusing on the results of a goal rather than the means used to get there. Employees should be encouraged to use their talents to achieve goals, rather than forcing them to follow rigid routines.

While I enjoyed the book and felt that the premise was interesting, there is one problem that I feel overcomes the positives. The only way to access the profile test is to use a code present in the book. I borrowed the book from a friend, so the code had already been used. Without taking the strengths finder profile online, I was unable to accurately narrow down what my strengths are, making the later parts of the book less interesting. If I really wanted to take the test I would have to purchase my own copy of the book. I don't know if this was an oversight by the authors, or a scheme to sell more books.

Furthermore, there is an entire chapter covering strengths based management, which assumes every employee takes the strengths finder profile. This of course would require every single one of them to buy the book.

Recommendation:

If you don't know your strengths, and would like to find out more about yourself, this is an excellent place to start. This would also be a good book for managers. Even without requiring employees to take the profile test, there are enough suggestions for improving effectiveness and increasing morale that it could be a useful tool for some, although some of the topics are broad and very generalized.

For non-managers who are already familiar with their strengths it may be less useful. I feel like there is something missing, like examples on how to actually build on your strengths. It might be that this information is covered in other books in the series, and eventually I would like to look into those too.

The major feature of this book is that you can go online and take a test to identify your strengths. This is key to reading this book. If you purchase this book used,(as I did) this will not be an option for you. There is a one-time use code inside the book that will not be valid if you purchase this item used. LET THE BUYER BE INFORMED THAT USED BOOKS ARE USELESS.

I bought this book from Amazon and I guess that it was used. The value of this book is an on-line strenghts assessment that is good for one user only. I contacted the company and told them I was not able to log on. They told me that the password they gave me was already used and I was not eligible to take the assessment. They could not help me since I didn't do enough due diligence before buying the book. "Buyer beware."

This book has very little information without the on-line assessment and becomes worthless to anyone other than the original purchaser.

I would be very wary about buying anything by marcus buckingham.

This book is excellent. It motivates the reader to want to exercise those things that the reader already does well. It stimulates that person to learn how to produce an excellent performance consistently.

Buckingham and Clifton have done an excellent job of identifying the strengths of individuals according to their research. The book is well written and allows you to delve into each personality type and to understand how strengths when harnessed can become the secret to a top performing team. The questions asked are also exactly what I was thinking - what can I do with the information I have now discovered from the previous book "First, break all the Rules". I really believe you need to buy both books to really understand how the Gallup Survey has been conducted to understand the analysis. I would highly recommend this book and particularly so, if your organisation has used this methodology to rate their managers.

Arguing strongly and persuasively for the uniqueness of the individual in the face of the sameness of basic human nature, The Gallup Organization continues its assault on traditional management practices, particularly those based upon uniformity of approach and improvement by focusing on identified weaknesses. In this follow-up book to "First, Break All the Rules", the authors re-present the logic for their application of this Positive Psychology approach in the workplace and introduce their 34 themes of Talent. Although the accompanying web based assessment tool is labeled the StrengthsFinder, it is built to understand yearnings, rapid learning, and satisfactions in order to detect a person's 5 dominant Talents. Talents, while enduring and unique, are only a part of Strengths, as these must be combined with Knowledge and Skills to develop our Strengths.

As was the case with "First, Break All the Rules", this book is well researched, well written, and easy to comprehend. It superbly weaves stories and examples into the narrative to bring the points to life, making it also an enjoyable read. Although Part III is titled, Put Strengths to Work, this book is not nearly as helpful in that regard as Buckingham's more recent book, "Go Put Your Strengths to Work". And, with the upgraded version of this book, "StrengthFinder 2.0" now on the Amazon market for $11.97 (and qualifying for free shipping), one might ask, why buy this one? I can better answer that question after my copy of 2.0 arrives next week!

Dennis DeWilde, author of
"The Performance Connection"

After studying this book extensively during my Masters degree in counseling, I have given it to several new high school graduates. It is a great tool for focusing on one's strengths and I have had lots of positive feedback from the recipients. It provides a direction to the oft-repeated question, "So, now what do you want to do?" Enjoy! Bethany Lawson