Tom Rath

This glossary of personality traits builds a language to sell yourself and understand others. It's part of a motivational theory gaining traction in the corporate world: Instead of critiquing workers' faults, build on their natural talents -- and take some of the pain out of the annual employee review.

Fair warning: This book's a Trojan horse for a 20-minute online psychological test. The speed's one way it taps into your gut instincts. The book is a companion piece that interprets the Gallup show more Organization workplace test. Its taxonomy of traits suggests how how to harness your own strengths or deal with co-workers.

It works surprisingly well. I'm a communications strategist, but my core strengths lie beyond presentation or planning: I’m a good listener and adviser, I can organize information and see connections in data, I'm a quick study of new technology or unfamiliar terrain, I coach team members based on their individual skills, and I keep at an issue till I see results. There's a label for each of these soft skills, and a checklist of ways to capitalize on them.

I'm usually reading fiction and nonfiction simultaneously, and this book make a curious complement to Alice Munro's "Dear Life." Her characters are all at least a bit clueless. They leave things to chance or don't quite grasp their situation. Events tests their self-awareness. A pop quiz might have done them some good. show less

As other reviews have said: great premise, lousy execution. The idea is that our strengths are based on temperament, which does not really change much even with tremendous work, so we should focus on developing our true strengths. (This is, in my opinion, absolutely true.) And the test you take is supposed to tell you what those strengths are. This is where it gets very shaky. The 34 strengths were developed by reviewing apparently immense data from Gallup surveys from successful people, but show more they really could have used a lot more editing. I found there was a lot of overlap in mine and nothing really to distinguish one particular strength from another similar strength. Also, the book contains the descriptions of all the strengths, but the test code you get with the book will only give you your top five strengths, not your rating in all 34 - to get that you have to buy the super expensive version, apparently. I did find some utility in the development plan suggestions, but mostly they were things I already knew. (The utility is enough to get this 2 stars instead of 1.) On the whole, there are much better temperament sorters that will give you much better insight into your strengths and weaknesses. Such as this one: [b:Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence|104190|Please Understand Me II Temperament, Character, Intelligence|David Keirsey|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348283521s/104190.jpg|100461] show less

Far too often someone seeking a career or life change will pick up books like StrengthsFinder 2.0 and expect it to reveal all sorts of concrete truths, effectively wanting life's hard decisions mapped out like an instruction manual. "Just tell me what to do!" —this is the sentiment I frequently hear, and while I empathize with the frustration, it misses the point.

StrengthsFinder, and other similar self-assessments, are merely primers. Use them to connect previously unexplored parts of your show more life experience, and then use that information to discover new future possibilities. Don't expect a fortune teller, or worse, some paint-by-numbers roadmap to your next job, career, whatever. Your life is too unique to allow some test results to dictate the outcomes. To paraphrase a quote I'm fond of, "Write your own script. Don't let others write it for you." show less

I've got mixed feelings about personality tests, in that I love categories and systematization, and I believe the whole process is psuedoscientific bullshit of the highest order, one step removed from searching for portents in sheep entrails. Are you seriously telling me that a survey of white Americans made during WW2 contains the 16 archetypical personalities?

Can't find my good Myers-Briggs meme showing all the types as the kind of malicious person they are, so have a meme of MBTI show more Wojaks

Strengths Finders is a little more developed than the MBTI, based on the Strengths Psychology approach of Don Clifton. There are 34 qualities which a person can have, and based on answer a 200 question survey of the form "Would you rather X or Y", the test figures out how to order your strengths. Not surprisingly, I scored a bunch of intellectual and analytical traits, but I also scored very high on relationships, like because I answered that I'd rather be with a small group of friends rather in any other social situation. This may have skewed the results.

The reason why this is three stars is that for your $40 you get a short book with a brief description of each strength and how they approach different workplace situations, and a one use code to take the Gallup Strength Finder test. I "borrowed" this book from my mom, who got it as part of an executive search for a non-profit, and it was moderately interesting, but is it worth your $40? An ordinary person doesn't need this, a good manager already knows it, and a bad manager is going to ignore it. show less