Now, Discover Your Strengths: The revolutionary Gallup program that shows you how to develop your unique talents and strengths

I read a lot of books but this is among the top of the list. After "Now Discover Your Strengths" and "First Break All The Rules", I'm convinced Marcus writes books that are truly applicable to real life. A bit of testimony here. I have over 9 years of work experience mainly in the large corporate world. My corporate experience was exhilarating. However, in 1 of the 9 years, I experienced a boss from hell in a smaller organisation. He was the anti-thesis of "Now Discover Your Strengths". He sought to find my weaknesses and made me focus on "fixing" them while leaving my strengths to wither and die. It was then I discovered "Now Discover Your Strengths". How timely - other than the Bible, God's own Word, this book also helped me find balance in focusing on my strengths and talents while getting round my weaknesses (and quietly ignoring the manager above for the entire year). Since then, I bought a copy of the book each for my family, lent a copy to a senior manager, who then promptly bought his own copy! What this book says is truly real and practical. After this, I read, "First Break All The Rules" and applied its principles with my staff reporting to me. I'm now reading "The One Thing You Need To Know". Anyway, after my hell year (yes, I made decision to stay for a year to gain the experience as Marketing Manager) in the small organisation, I've moved back into the large corporate world where I find myself freedom to grow in leaps and bounds. This book is in the league of Maltz's "Psycho Cybernetics", Collins & Porras' "Built To Last" and Collins' "Good to Great". Would give it 6 stars!

As so many other reviewers have noted, the basic premise of this book is logical - identify and use your strengths, minimize time and effort applied to using and fixing your weak areas. What the title promises is to help you "discover" your strengths through the use of the online testing tool. After taking the test you receive a "report" with a rather simplistic summary description of each of your top five strengths (out of the 34 possible that they identify). As one reviewer noted, this information might be illuminating to a young person starting their career, but most self-aware adults who have been in the world of work for a while will probably find that the results either confirm what they already know about themselves or as others have noted, give every indication of being innacurate. My experience was that 4 of the top 5 essentially confirmed what I already knew and the fifth (Adaptability) was only a partial fit according to the authors' description of it. My real interest was in the whole picture of the full spectrum of my strengths and weaknesses. Do I only have 5 strengths and everything else is a weakness I should avoid? Do I have other strengths that can be used in conjunction with or support of these top 5? The website offers me the "opportunity" to learn about my strengths 6-34 but only if I plunk down $550 for a one-hour (that's $550 for ONE HOUR) long call with a "Strengths Performance Coach" for an "in-depth" consulting session. So by my math, that means approximately 2 minutes per additional item - hardly in-depth. IMHO this is an outrageous amount of money to pay on top of the price of the book simply to see the complete results of the test. Aside from that issue, the book provides superficial descriptions of the various strengths but no real content regarding what to do with the information regarding your top 5, how to map them to roles or do much of anything else with them. The only section I felt had any real practical value was about managing people with different strengths - useful if simplistic and it slightly fleshed out the profiles of the strengths previously mentioned. This would have at least some value as a means of gaining self knowledge if one could get the full results of the test (without paying an exorbitant sum for "consulting"). Ideally this would be included in the results by default but if not Gallup should at least offer this option and at a reasonable price. Without any additional information regarding where the other 29 characteristics fall in my profile, knowing the top 5 is like having a recipe with 34 ingredients, but only knowing the proper amounts for 5 of them and no direction on mixing and cooking time. This book feels more like a sales pitch for very expensive consulting services than anything from which the average person seeking self knowledge will benefit. If you are looking for some in-depth insight into your strengths and temperment, you'll get more bang for your buck by taking the Myers-Briggs, the Kiersey Temperament Sorter or working through What Color is Your Parachute.

This book provides some key insights, but is a bit thin in relevant content - especially for those looking to leverage strengths. Some of the books solid points: 1 - Focusing on strengths is a contratrian idea in many companies, and it is very important for people to know that focusing on their strong spots is up to them. 2 - The online survey is a very informative tool - perhaps the most useful diagnosis I've taken. After using it, you'll say, "Wow, that makes sense!" 3 - The book should open your mind as a manager to staffing, leadership and development opportunities. Weak spots - even if we're not supposed to focus on them :-): 1 - With the descriptions spread over so many strengths, the reader is left with a lot of fluff and unread material if they're focusing on self development. 2 - The book tends to be written as a group of large lists, with detail on each strength. A theory tying them together would be helpful for putting it into practice. The average manager is hard pressed to use such a thick catalogue. 3 - Fixating on 5 strengths seems a bit restrictive. Maybe some people have 3 or 4 or 6? It would be useful if the tool could give relative weights or scores on them as well. In summary, the book is best used as a survey for folks interested in a self assessment. More depth (a follow-up book?) is needed to put the ideas into general practice.

This is an obsolete edition and the code no longer works. Great book but a total waste of money given that the test is the main focus. Really unhappy that Amazon failed to state this upfront.

El libro es muy interesante, tanto por el contenido del mismo como por las puertas que te abre. A partir de su lectura he comenzado a trabajar con el centro haciendo cuestionarios a personas para reconocer sus fortalezas. Los cuestionarios están también en castellano así que puede hacerlos cualquiera.

Il libro in questione si basa sulla teoria che per migliorarsi nella vita occorre lavorare ed esaltare i punti di forza anzichè i punti di debolezza. E' molto facile da leggere (pur esserndo basato su concetti di psicologia) e permette l'accesso ad un test on-line che indentifica i 5 punti di forza del lettore.

Absolutely brilliant tool and well worth the investment. Helped me make sense of why I have done various things over the years. We all have at least 1 strength...find yours !

Fue muy interesante, enriquecedor. Me gusto mucho. Además de que el cuestionario que viene incluido fue muy acertado, valió la pena.