Strengths Finder 2.0

Only valuable if you can take the online test... but the test was cool and I'm excited to leverage the results with the help of my mentor at work. I also love the idea of flexing your strengths vs funneling all your energy into trying to overcome weaknesses, which I have spent my career hitherto doing.

We had a workshop on this during our In-service; it was enlightening to see how our team works together!

An interesting book my boss bought me.
This whole strengths-based approach to self improvement is definitely worth investigating. Nevertheless, there is a bit of a problem with “focusing on your strengths and seeking help / avoiding your weaknesses”. This book does not help you find your weaknesses, so how will you know what to seek help for? Maybe the author intends for the reader to have already identified their weaknesses, but I still need more help finding mine.
There is another problem: The book only gives your Top 5 strengths. This is largely insufficient. It ignores that fact that you may be in the top percentile for 100s of intelligences compared to your peers. As such, I would have liked to have known all that information. For example, assume that your Top 10 intelligences are all very close in number but your real passions are strengths 6-10. You will miss out by only having a subset of the information. The approach the book takes ignores that we are competing with other agents (people). After reading, I am left with more questions than answers.

Post script: Ignore all the online materials. They are not extra reading, only digital versions of the book.

If I had enough money, I would buy this book for all of my friends because of how helpful it was for me. The best part of this book is the code inside that will allow you to access the Strengths Finder online assessment, identifying your top 5 strengths/talents. The premise this book is based on really is quite simple but by no means does this diminish the importance of what is being presented to the reader - in essence, while we have grown up all of our lives being told that we can be anything we want to be as long as we try hard enough, that is not true. The author of this book proffers that in fact, we can actually become better versions of ourselves and this can be done by focusing on what it is that rejuvenates you, stirs up passion within you or makes you feel strong. These are areas that should be focused on and developed as well as serve as the lens through which we view those areas that do not have the same effect.

So worth the $12 or so I paid for this book on Amazon - everyone should read it and take the online assessment!!