Book Price Comparisons
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 Now, Discover Your Strengths Really...a breath of fresh air. I found it so valuable that I began using this book's assessment with another assessment I have for my clients. The one-two punch provides a great basis by which a person can begin to see and capitalize on their strengths and thoughts that support them and make the change they want and need in other areas.  Now, Discover a Limited Number of Your Strengths - and prepare to pay BIG dollars to learn about the rest.... As so many other reviewers have noted, the basic premise of this book is logical - identify and use your strengths, minimize time and effort applied to using and fixing your weak areas. What the title promises is to help you "discover" your strengths through the use of the online testing tool. After taking the test you receive a "report" with a rather simplistic summary description of each of your top five strengths (out of the 34 possible that they identify). As one reviewer noted, this information might be illuminating to a young person starting their career, but most self-aware adults who have been in the world of work for a while will probably find that the results either confirm what they already know about themselves or as others have noted, give every indication of being innacurate. My experience was that 4 of the top 5 essentially confirmed what I already knew and the fifth (Adaptability) was only a partial fit according to the authors' description of it. My real interest was in the whole picture of the full spectrum of my strengths and weaknesses. Do I only have 5 strengths and everything else is a weakness I should avoid? Do I have other strengths that can be used in conjunction with or support of these top 5? The website offers me the "opportunity" to learn about my strengths 6-34 but only if I plunk down $550 for a one-hour (that's $550 for ONE HOUR) long call with a "Strengths Performance Coach" for an "in-depth" consulting session. So by my math, that means approximately 2 minutes per additional item - hardly in-depth. IMHO this is an outrageous amount of money to pay on top of the price of the book simply to see the complete results of the test. Aside from that issue, the book provides superficial descriptions of the various strengths but no real content regarding what to do with the information regarding your top 5, how to map them to roles or do much of anything else with them. The only section I felt had any real practical value was about managing people with different strengths - useful if simplistic and it slightly fleshed out the profiles of the strengths previously mentioned. This would have at least some value as a means of gaining self knowledge if one could get the full results of the test (without paying an exorbitant sum for "consulting"). Ideally this would be included in the results by default but if not Gallup should at least offer this option and at a reasonable price. Without any additional information regarding where the other 29 characteristics fall in my profile, knowing the top 5 is like having a recipe with 34 ingredients, but only knowing the proper amounts for 5 of them and no direction on mixing and cooking time. This book feels more like a sales pitch for very expensive consulting services than anything from which the average person seeking self knowledge will benefit. If you are looking for some in-depth insight into your strengths and temperment, you'll get more bang for your buck by taking the Myers-Briggs, the Kiersey Temperament Sorter or working through What Color is Your Parachute. Now, Discover Your Strengths This is an excellent book for all levels of managers. I am reading the book and reviewing it with the managers in my portfolio. Not only has it been helpful to me to learn their strengths it has been a real eye opener to them to realize how their strengths effect their work and how they have been successful in the work they do. I think it has also given them confidence in knowing they don't have to fix their weakness but grow their strengths. They are all very eager to learn the strengths of the people on their teams. I would highly recommend this book. Positively Positive I came into this book series backwards. Started with "Now, Discover Your Strengths" and read this one second. Probably not the best way for most people, but works for me.I like the positive/strengths better than culture's negative/weaknesses approach. I see a connection between my Gallup strengths and my Meyers-Briggs personality strengths. I'm not a manager, supervisor or leader type, so I'm using the information only on a personal level. Reading and understanding both "go" and "now" has helped me stop wasting energy trying to be a "better person". Intuitively I knew that focusing on my weaknesses is futile. But it's always nice to have research to back us up and feel that we're not alone in our thinking. | |||||||||||||
