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StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths (精装)
by Tom Rath
| Category:
Management, Leadership, Career development, Self help |
| Market price: ¥ 230.00
MSL price:
¥ 198.00
[ Shop incentives ]
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| Stock:
In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Optimal solution for understanding yourself, your strengths as well as an awsome development tool. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 7 items |
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A. Drefahl (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
I've been a senior leader of several organizations, and consequently have been exposed to a gauntlet of industrial psychologists, personality tests, intelligence tests, leadership training, cultural orientations, yada yada.
This book/body of knowledge/tool does 2 things extremely well. By well, I mean in an optimal way measured by the degree of understanding relative to the time investment. First, for an investment of maybe an hour at minimum, and an additional few hours to explore the guidance and begin to consider the implications and choose new behaviors, etc. you get, in my opinion, the best single, and correct perspective about yourself than any combination of the other methods mentioned above, period. It is not just directionally correct, like a horoscope type paragraph that would be true for anyone who read it, but rather a set of desciptions of your strengths that just "nail it" and descibe you as you know yourself. It tells you about yourself in a way that you can understand, regardless of whether you or anyone who is around you has ever articulated it.
The second thing it does well is offer a rational and empirically validated framework that is just long overdue. It is a simple truth that has been so elusive. It addresses a major reason why leadership is so rare in business - the modern organization strangles out your ability to contribute by trying to fix what you will likely never be much good at, or hate doing even if you end up with some level of proficiency at it.
Get it, read it (25 minutes) and take the online test (35 minutes). If you are like me and the 50 people around me who've infectiosuly taken and immediately recommended this thing to their inner circle of friends and family, you will absolutley find value in it. But like anything, an idea or a tool is only as good as it is put to use. A master craftsman never blames his tools. Remember to act on it and that is something for which only you can be responsible. |
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Barry J. Quinn (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
This book, although small, represents the best thinking from Gallup and other researchers over the better part of 20 years, and it shows. The output from the online test is essential to anyone seriously trying to build out a career or life plan. You know those moments at work when you're so engaged you're almost ready to burst with excitement? Well, this book will help you identify those engagement triggers. Only one thing I would recommend - don't read the book and do the test if you don't intent to fill out the plan at the back. Oh, and this is book serves as a great exercise for any professional team to take... |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
I have used this with clients and have been impressed with how consistently on-target the assessment is. Rather than focusing on weaknesses to improve, the premise of the assessment is that one can be far more effective by recognizing their strengths and building on them. Most recently, I purchased a bulk amount of the books to issue to a client group of 12 people. (You have to purchase the book to get the "secret online code.") The group learned not only what their own strengths were (some initial surprises as the respondents had never considered some of the strengths before) but how the traits of other team members complemented the team. The individual reports generated include an action plan to build on your strengths. All in all, a good and deservedly popular tool. |
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Ronald Marlar (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
My graduate studies and professional experience include extensive work with a wide variety of tests, measurements and personal assessment instruments. I have studied, designed, constructed, taken many, some repeatedly, of standardized, classroom, adult education, personality, lifestyle and other varieties and intents. Many of them can be monkeyed with - manipulated by the taker - for varying results. This is not so with Strengths Finder 2.0, a product of The Gallup Organization.
Other strengths of Strengths Finder 2.0 include 1) its consistency of results with other similar surveys, my own and others perceptions of my strengths, 2) the brief times required for reading in the book to prepare for taking the survey and actually taking the survey, 3) interface of the book with the computer-based survey, 4) quick, easy to understand and interpret results, 5) wealth of information and uses of both the book and the computer products, and 6) the encouragement provided by having taken the survey.
Beyond those things the book and computer products are available for many, diverse self studies for as long as you care to pursue them. Thus, this is a book to buy and keep on your reading shelf. |
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Mary Spence (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
I've been using the StrengthsFinder assessment for some time with my career coaching clients. We have not encountered any technical issues in taking the assessment (as some reviewers have noted). While the book is not nearly as in depth as Buckingham's "Now, Discover Your Strengths," I don't believe it was intended to be. The real benefit is the updated and more useful reporting available with version 2.0.
Finally, I noticed that some reviewers did not believe their results were 100% accurate. We need to remember that this assessment measures TALENTS which can become strengths, if they are not already developed. Perhaps that's the case with some of those folks. |
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Gibson Scheid (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
As a career counselor I have found the work of Donald Clifton and The Gallup Organization to be a breath of fresh air. Many of my clients have been unnecessarily burdened by a focus on what they are not doing well, rather than on what they do well. This book, as the earlier edition, Now, Discover Your Strengths, reminds readers why this approach makes sense. It is a compact summary of the process complete with an updated Clifton Strengths Finder (2.0). The book flap promises, "While you can read this book in one setting, you'll use it as a reference for decades." I think it keeps its promise. |
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Robert Morris (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
You will probably find no head-snapping revelations in this book if you have already read Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman's First, Break All the Rules and/or Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton's Now, Discover Your Strengths (especially the latter). Nor does Tom Rath claim to offer any. Rather, this is a new and upgraded edition of the Gallup organization's previous online test (StrengthsFinder 1.0) that enables those who take it to identify and measure their talents relative to "more than 5,000 new personalized Strengths Insights that we have discovered in recent years."
In Rath's two previously published books, How Full Is Your Bucket? co-authored with Donald O. Clifton and Vital Friends, he shares his own reactions to an abundance of research data which reveals the importance of two separate but related forces which have profound impact on the workplace: getting strengths in alignment with work to be done and then developing them even more with strategic delegation and close supervision.
What we have in this book, Strengths Finder 2.0, is a wealth of new research material that Rath examines with exceptional precision and uncommon eloquence. I strongly encourage each reader to take full advantage of the self-diagnostic opportunities that both Rath and the Gallup organization generously offer. Of course, once various exercises are completed, a significant challenge remains: to take effective and productive action to apply what has been learned. It is helpful to be aware of what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton so aptly characterize as the "knowing-doing" and "doing-knowing" gaps. It is also helpful to recall Peter Drucker's observation more than 40 years ago: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."
Presumably Rath agrees that, more often than not, the Yoda is right: "Do or do not. There is no try." |
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1 Total 1 pages 7 items |
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