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

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

Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance
Available from Amazon
Price: $14.94
Updated on 6-28-2008.

Features

Audio CD: 6 pages

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio; Unabridged edition (March 6, 2007)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0743566696

ISBN-13: 978-0743566698

Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches

Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces ()

From AudioFile
Its refreshing to hear the British-born author read his latest book on how to become more happily productive at work. An authentic speaker with an inviting and natural voice, he sounds immensely comfortable with his writing, which is often poetic but never melodramatic. Dont worry about your weaknesses, he says. Put all your energy into clarifying your strengths, freeing them from restrictions, speaking up about them, and developing strong work habits. This potent lesson on developing ones strongest traits and making them relevant at work is delivered in the authors consistently caring voice. The program refers to PDF files and a code one can use for online personal testing, but these were not found in the audio package, a library case. T.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Buckingham, an authority on workplace issues, provides a road map for managers to learn for themselves and then teach their employees how to approach their work by emphasizing their strengths rather than weaknesses. He offers a six-step plan for six weeks of reading and habit-forming action for discerning strengths, along with optional tools to enhance the process such as online questions for measuring strengths and downloaded films (two of which are free). The steps of his plan are belief that the best way to compete is capitalizing on your strengths, identifying your strengths and weaknesses, volunteering your strengths at work, lessening the impact of your weaknesses on your team, effectively communicating the value of your strengths while limiting work utilizing weaknesses, and building habits and pushing activities that play to strength. Although everyone will not agree with all the elements of Buckingham's approach, he offers valuable insight into maximizing employees' strengths rather than the more common focus on weaknesses and failure. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance (Hardcover) Reading this book should be a priority for any professional who wants to be more successful on the job. The first part of the book lays out the evidence for why "playing to your strengths" instead of improving your weak points is the way to succeed. I am familiar with the author's other work and that of Martin Seligman which says essentially the same thing. I thought I had removed any lingering notions about prioritizing improving weaknesses over improving strengths. I was wrong. Reading this book and thinking deeply about my beliefs and experiences showed me that the ideal of the "well-rounded" person is deeply ingrained in our collective psyche and a book like this is desparately needed to help both employees and managers understand what really drives success. The only reason I gave this book four stars instead of five is because it could have been easily 70 pages shorter. There is an aburd amount of repitition; several stories could be cut out and put on the website instead. There is a story about someone named Heidi threaded throughout the book. I guess it is meant to make us understand the real-world application of the concepts. It didn't work for me. I found the exercises a much better way of making this book applicable. Exceptionally eye-opening are the questions the author asks you regarding the following three myths: Myth 1: As you grow, your personality changes Myth 2: You will grow the most in your areas of greatest weakness Myth 3: A good team member does whatever it takes to help the team The last myth is especially powerful. By showing you how these myths are false the book prepares your mind to accept and understand the evidence showing that playing to your strengths is crucial to success. Buckingham presents a very clear and easy-to-understand method for discovering what your strengths actually are. It is not necessarily easy to do but this book does make it easy to understand. Once you have a better idea of your strengths you can start devoting more time to work that is suited to your strengths. Of course, how do you do that when your boss or work environment may not be initially supportive. Fortunately, the book covers this implementation in some detail and is very realistic about it. If you are familiar with "Now, Discover Your Strengths" it is important to realize that the results from the personality test associated with that book are NOT your strengths, but rather personality traits that are only one component of your strengths. These traits change little if at all over your lifetime, whereas your strengths actually change because they are dependent on your skills and knowledge as well as your personality. Read the book to find out more about how these concepts interrelate and how devoting more time to your strengths AND less time to your weaknesses has been shown to improve your work performance. The research Buckingham discusses can be applied to one's personal life as well; however, the book does not really touch on that. I am suspecting that this might be the subject of a future book. If so, I eagerly anticipate its release and will buy it as soon as it comes out. To summarize, Buckingham offers solid evidence showing that shifting your time to tasks that are suited to your strengths is a key component of professional success. In addition, the book provides you with a very realistic way to identify your strengths. To top it off, there is even an extensive description of how to actually get your co-workers and management to support your efforts at focusing on your strengths. This is not pie-in-the-sky theorizing. There are actionable steps here ready to be used by anyone who is looking to achieve outstanding professional performance. Also, each book has a code that allows you to access the website, so if you are considering buying make sure you buy it new. Comments (3) | Permalink | (Report this)

Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance
Available from Amazon
Price: $14.94
Updated on 6-28-2008.