{"id":7227,"date":"2013-07-04T19:20:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T00:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=7227"},"modified":"2013-07-04T19:20:18","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T00:20:18","slug":"book-review-now-discover-your-strengths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=7227","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Now, Discover Your Strengths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Discover-Your-Strengths-Marcus-Buckingham\/dp\/0743201140\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1372983196&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=now+discover+your+strengths\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7229\" title=\"now-discover-your-strengths\" src=\"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/now-discover-your-strengths.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"332\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/now-discover-your-strengths.jpg 332w, https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/now-discover-your-strengths-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 332px) 100vw, 332px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What are your really awesome at?\u00a0 What would those around you identify as your strengths?\u00a0 Have you ever considered asking those closest to you to help you choose 5 areas that are your greatest strengths?\u00a0 Do you spend more time working on your strengths or weaknesses?<\/p>\n<p>I would recommend that all leaders go through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Discover-Your-Strengths-Marcus-Buckingham\/dp\/0743201140\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1372983196&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=now+discover+your+strengths\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Now, Discover Your Strengths<\/em><\/a> by Marcus Buckingham and Dr. Donald Clifton.\u00a0 In addition to reading the book, you should also go online and take the StrengthsFinder assessment.\u00a0 This is a great tool to find out more about your own strengths so that you can really lean into what you are good at&#8230;rather than wasting a lot of time working on areas that might always be weaknesses.\u00a0 This is a minor time commitment&#8230;I read the book in 2 hours and completed the assessment in just over 20 minutes.\u00a0 However, I walked away from the process with a much better understanding of why I am good at what I&#8217;m good at&#8230;and just as valuable, why the others around me are so good at what they are good at.\u00a0 I look forward to utilizing this info to continue growing as a leader and investing in those around me.<\/p>\n<p>My five greatest strengths were identified as: learner, achiever, belief, responsibility, and discipline<\/p>\n<p>Here are several things that I highlighted while reading&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>At the heart of this revolution is a simple decree: The great organization must not only accommodate the fact that each employee is different, it must capitalize on these differences.<\/li>\n<li>Each person&#8217;s talents are enduring and unique.<\/li>\n<li>Each person&#8217;s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength.<\/li>\n<li>The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn&#8217;t have enough strengths, it&#8217;s that we fail to use the ones we have.\u00a0 Benjamin Franklin called wasted strengths &#8220;sundials in the shade.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>The definition of a strength that we will use throughout this book is quite specific: consistent near perfect performance in an activity.<\/li>\n<li>For an activity to be a strength you must be able to do it consistently.<\/li>\n<li>You do not have to have strength in ever aspect of your role in order to excel.<\/li>\n<li>You will excel only by maximizing your strengths, never by fixing your weaknesses.<\/li>\n<li>The first revolutionary tool is understanding how to distinguish your natural talents from things you can learn.<\/li>\n<li>The key to building a bona fide strength is to identify your dominant talents and then refine them with knowledge and skills.<\/li>\n<li>The second revolutionary tool is a system to identify your dominant talents.<\/li>\n<li>The third revolutionary tool is a common language to describe your talents.<\/li>\n<li>There are two types of knowledge: content and experience.<\/li>\n<li>Skills bring structure to experiential knowledge.<\/li>\n<li>Talent is any recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied.<\/li>\n<li>If you want to reveal your talents, monitor your spontaneous, top-of-mind reactions to the situations you encounter.<\/li>\n<li>By focusing on your distinct themes, you will gain the self-confidence to appreciate the themes of other people.<\/li>\n<li>A system that stops your worrying about a weakness is freeing up time that can be better spent figuring out how to refine a strength.<\/li>\n<li>You will be most successful when you craft your role to play to your signature talents most of the time.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;At work, do I have an opportunity to do what I do best every day?&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Build your selection system around an instrument for measuring talent.<\/li>\n<li>Calibrate your instrument by studying your best performers in each key role.<\/li>\n<li>Teach the talent language throughout the organization.<\/li>\n<li>Build a theme profile of your entire company.<\/li>\n<li>Study the links between measured talent and subsequent performance.<\/li>\n<li>Many kinds of prestige should be made available to reflect the different near perfect performances the organization wants to encourage.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; What are your really awesome at?\u00a0 What would those around you identify as your strengths?\u00a0 Have you ever considered asking those closest to you to help you choose 5 areas that are your greatest strengths?\u00a0 Do you spend more time working on your strengths or weaknesses? I would recommend that all leaders go through [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,35,25,16,23,28,17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-creative","category-education","category-family","category-generosity","category-integrity","category-leadership","category-north-cobb-christian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}