Bill Cawley's Book Review: "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton

The book I'd like to introduce you to this month is "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D.

This is a companion to the book I profiled in my May newsletter -- "First, Break All the Rules," also by Marcus Buckingham, along with his co-author Curt Goffman -- and a very good book as well. As I noted last month, "First, Break All the Rules" shows how managers play an extremely crucial role in retaining and getting the most out of a company's employees. In "First, Break All The Rules" Buckingham and Coffman make use of extensive empirical research conducted by the Gallup Companies (based on over a million interviews of employees across a broad range of companies, industries, and countries) to analyze the critical role of managers with respect to a company's or organization's ultimate success and achievement. Where "Now, Discover Your Strengths" begins to differ with the previous book is that it shifts from focusing on what managers can do to develop people to helping you as an individual to identify and develop your own strengths. This is still a great book for managers, as it does speak to how managers can help develop a person's strengths, yet this book is far more focused on the individual.

At the crux of the book is the co-authors' point that we all focus too much on our weaknesses, both at work and in our personal lives. We take our strengths for granted, assuming they will always be there and improve. We let them "sit idly by," maybe making some improvements in those areas by luck or by paying some attention to them. On the flipside, we are hell bent on making improvements -- even huge improvements - in areas where we are weak. Although the book focuses primarily on developing your strengths in terms of professional development, Buckingham and Clifton provide a great example of this thinking - one that any parent can appreciate, and it's one that I can relate to personally. People who knew me as a kid knew that Math was not one of my strengths by any stretch. One of my buddies would kid me and say, "Bill, you work at a bank but you're better with shapes and colors." When I came home with my report card, you would see some B's and C's in Social Studies, English classes and so on, but probably a C -- maybe even a D -- in Math. After each report card came home, what was the area of focus from my parent's point of view? Math, Math and more Math. It's not surprising and is completely understandable, especially if you follow this book's assumptions. In their book, Buckingham and Clifton argue directly and indirectly that as a society, we focus far more on trying to develop our weaknesses at the expense of further developing and maximizing our strengths.

The co-authors have developed a tool called the StrengthsFinder Profile. This doesn't suddenly give you the strengths you want, but instead will help find you where you have the greatest potential for strength. This tool measures the 34 themes of talent that were discovered during Gallup's analysis of over one million interviews with people all of levels, in different companies and industries. After completing the profile, you'll learn your five dominant themes of talent, otherwise known as your signature themes. A talent is defined as a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be applied consistently. Some examples of these patterns include achiever, deliberative, inclusiveness, learner, relater and strategic. The co-authors then dedicate a full page to explain what defines each theme like, an achiever and gives examples of what an achiever "sounds" like by selecting achievers from different industries and letting them explain the term in their own words.

The book goes on to help show you how to put those strengths, the talents to work. Buckingham and Clifton do this by responding to the kind of questions they have received from people who have taken the StrengthsFinder profile, and this is a very effective approach. These questions include:
- Why should I focus on my strengths?
- Can I develop new themes if I don't like the ones I have?
- How can I manage around my weaknesses?
- Can the themes reveal if I am in the right career?
The book then gives you insight into how to manage a person with strong themes such as empathy, focus, fairness and futuristic - covering all 34 themes.

I liked this book and its predecessor ("First, Break All the Rules") because they challenge the generally accepted principles of the professional development field -- and to some degree also challenge the commonly held principles of the personal development movement. The co-authors urge companies to re-think two longstanding principles regarding the way they develop people - the idea that every person can learn to be competent in almost anything, and the belief that each person's greatest room for growth is in his or her areas of greatest weakness.

Now I will admit that this puts me at odds with what my gut has always told me about myself and about the potential we all have to improve (even dramatically improve) on our personal and/or professional weakness. My own personal experience always has me rooting for an underdog and enthusiastically advising people to "never give up" on anything that's important to them when it comes to their personal and professional development. I tend to follow my gut, and root for the underdog and the belief that we all have the opportunity to improve in any area we focus on - but it's hard to completely ignore the empirical data and other research. The data and research that Buckingham and Clifton present in the book doesn't get technical but does effectively makes the point that our minds are hard wired even from birth to be better at certain things than other things. The co-authors make comparisons to the use of T1 lines (broadband lines used to carry vast amounts of data and information very rapidly saying it's as if your strengths are transmitted through T1 superfast lines because they allow certain talents to come more easily to you than talents traveling over older "slower lines."

Whether you fall into the traditional school of management thinking that encourages people to improve on their weaknesses, or if you are already a firm believer in the value of focusing on your strengths with little attention to your weaknesses, you'll find many great ideas in this book. "Now, Discover Your Strengths" is informative, well written and offers a good mix of data and personal examples. "First, Break All the Rules" gave me a lot to think about as a manager who worked hard for many years to develop my people. "Now, Discover Your Strengths" has me thinking about my own personal development. I still won't let go of the idea that it's worth working on my weaknesses. I just can't do that. I do find it interesting, though, that I still suck in Math -- so maybe Buckingham and Clifton are right!

If you have any thoughts about the weaknesses vs. strengths debate, I'd love to hear from you!