The book

The book starts with arguments on why it is important to focus on your strengths versus your weaknesses. The author points out that for way too long industries are trying to “fix” people, and it has some benefits, but empowering people in areas they are best at produces significantly greater results. “We found that if your manager focuses on your strengths, your chances of being actively disengaged go down to one in one hundred. However, if your manager primarily focuses on your weaknesses, your chances of being actively disengaged are 22%, and if your manager ignores you, that percentage rises to 40%.”

“StrengthsFinder 2.0” then continues with introducing 34 different talents/strengths. The book provides brief description, a few examples of how person with this quality could sound like, and then proceeds with recommendations for individual and leader who manages person with this strength.

It makes sense to take an assessment before reading through these to know which ones to pay more attention to (though you are likely to just feel when it is about you).

The assessment

Do you know those online personality assessments where they ask you 10-20 questions and then give you a result, which says “You are 75.99% leader” or something. I am very skeptical of most of such assessment, even though, people, including me, like to take those. When I opened questionnaire that comes with the book “StrengthsFinder 2.0” I was positively surprised. It is a set of 177 questions and each of them is where you need to choose between two unrelated aspects of your personality within 20 seconds. So, from the first look, it was clear that it is superior to most of other. The book is based on 40 years of research and the assessment is taken by millions of people, so there is foundation for the assessment to be good.

Result of this assessment is 5 strengths that characterize you. You get results in a form of a document that with a description, example of how person possessing each strength would sound like, and 10 ideas for action for each strength. I was shocked by how strongly those 5 resonated with my personality, so I decided to embed few of such ideas into my own growth plan.

The assessment is available only if you buy a book (I listened to it on audiable.com) or if you purchase the access code. Link to assessment: https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/

My results

I keep these mostly for my own record, but what surprised me about the results was how unexpected some of those were. For instance, I never think of myself as competitive person. Though when reading through qualities of a competitive person and analyzing my own behaviour, I started to agree. This explains why I was so happy to win programming competitions, or hackathon in the past, but also why I avoid taking part in competitions where my chances are slim. Competitors don’t play to participate, they play to win.

1. Competition. People who are especially talented in the Competition theme measure their progress against the performance of others. They strive to win first place and revel in contests.
2. Focus. People who are especially talented in the Focus theme can take a direction, follow through, and make the corrections necessary to stay on track. They prioritize, then act.
3. Achiever. People who are especially talented in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.
4. Analytical. People who are especially talented in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They have the ability to think about all the factors that might affect a situation.
5. Significance. People who are especially talented in the Significance theme want to be very important in the eyes of others. They are independent and want to be recognized.