Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance

Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance | Marcus Buckingham | Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance

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Go Put Your Streng...

	Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance Marcus Buckingham Free Press, 2007 - 270 pages average customer review:based on 54 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Put Your Strengths to Work

This is an excellent work on how to identify and apply your strengths.
The author asks that we do the following:
- bust myths
- be clear
- free your strengths
- overcome weaknesses and proclivities toward the same
- speak up
- build strong habits

Eudaimonia asks that you give the best where you have the best to
give. A good team member volunteers strengths to the team often.

Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance

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The best of the lot so far

Marcus Buckingham has written several books that deal with the same issues in essentially the same way. What's he's got to say is good and it's based on research. The books are all well written. But there's not a lot that's new in any one of them.

If you haven't read any of Buckingham's strengths books, read this one. The idea of identifying your strengths and building on them is a good one. You are likely to have a more successful and satisfying life if you follow it. And this book is the best one so far to help you do that.

If you have read any of Buckingham's books on strengths, there are two things that make this book the best of the pack even if most of the book will seem familiar. They may make it worth buying for you.

First, this book has examples of using strengths to put teams together. This is the big content addition and it's a good one. If you want to learn how to use people's strengths when they're part of a team you're responsible for, this is the book for you.

And, Buckingham finally did something in this book that I've wanted him to do. Previously I had trouble applying the idea of building on strength, because I found that I had things that I do well but didn't like to do. They seemed to meet the common definition of "strengths" and people told me I was good at them. But just the prospect of spending time doing them made me tired.

In this book, Buckingham tells us how to identify a strength to build on. You identify things that 1) you're good at and 2) give you energy when you do them. Other people can help you identify what you're good at. You are the judge of whether an activity gives you energy or not.

Bottom line: if you want to read a book about how to identify your strengths and the strengths of your team or if you haven't read any of Buckingham's books on the subject before, pick up a copy of this book. On the other hand, if you're read his earlier books and you don't need the specific content points I've mentioned, give it a pass.

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Using strengths

Now Discover Your Strengths is the prequel to this title. It isn't necessary to have read this book to obtain insights from this text but I believe having read it enhances what I've learned in this book. I enjoy Buckingham's practical tips and techniquesin this edition of learning about myself and the art of managing others by using my strengths. By focusing on each person's strengths, greater productivity is an end result.

From reading Now Discover Your Strengths, you are provided with a website that allows one to take an assesment of your strengths. Once you know your strengths, you have an understanding of what areas to build up and focus on in your professional and personal life. Buckingham provides another website to help the reader discover how well they are using their strenghts in their work life presently. You have the opportunity to take this assessment three times: once at the onset of reading the book, once as you work through the 6 recommended statges of improvement and a third time either at the end of the book or later as you continue implementing the 6 strategies discovered in the book.

The reader is advised to take 6 weeks to read and work through the 6 steps toward using your strengths everyday at work. Each week you work on one step through specific tasks for each of the 6 steps. As you work through each task you find out what is getting in your way of using your strengths. Then you learn how to clarify your strengths and bring them to the surface for use everyday. Then you are directed to create 3 strength statements that will help you keep your strengths in mind as you work each day.

The next step addresses your weaknesses. You accept this part of yourself and learn techniques to cut out your weaknesses in your daily work. Steps 5 and 6 help you learn to speak up and share your success and your strengths while you continue building strong habits.

I enjoyed this book immensely. No only do you learn about yourself but you become more aware of other people's strengths. Throughout the book, you meet others who have worked through the 6 steps over the six week period of learning and growing. Each step requires a complete week to finish each set of tasks for the step. I would recommend the book to my team mates at work. I think this would be an excellent book for employees and leaders to work through together to create a strong unified work group but an individual can gain equally.

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Find Your Strengths and Use Them

I must be honest and state that I did not use all of the tools that come in the back of this book on how to discover my strengths and weaknesses. Like many people, I generally knew what my strengths are and know what I enjoy doing. This book was useful, however, in helping me focus on what my specific strengths are and in what situation I might be able to employ them more efficiently. Be aware that this book focuses exclusively on putting your strengths to better use in the workplace and leaves out personal, family, or any other useful context, although the skills and techniques are arguably interchangeable. Overall I thought that the advice in this book was solid, but found the chapter on how to approach your boss/supervisor/manager in performance reviews a little bit unrealistic. Blended throughout the book's chapters are the stories of a few ambitious employees who used the techniques Buckingham describes, and although I felt that he over relied on them to make his point, the book is still a valuable book in the self-help, business genre.

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