Strengths Finder 2.0

Visiting the most excellent Ian Hughes last week, I spotted a book called Strengths Finder 2.0 on a table.

Ian explained to me that the book, along with an online evaluation tool, form a program to help identify personal strengths.  This immediately resonated with me, as it intersects with a long running train of thought that I’ve had ever since reading the highly recommended Adventures of Johnny Bunko – The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need.  This is an entertainingly presented set of six rules (guidelines?) for career management, and the second rule is “Play to your strengths”.

Of course, this statement immediately raises the question of what these might be – it’s all very well being good at “stuff” but you need to identify your strengths more specifically if you want to plan your next job around them.

So, along comes Strengths Finder 2.0.  As is probably obvious, this is the second iteration of the book and online tool.  It’s based on research conducted by Gallup over a period of 40 years, which has identified what they believe to be the thirty four “most common” human talents.

The “certificate” in the picture shows the tool’s findings about which are my five top scoring talents from the list of thirty four.    Ian’s assessment seems to be bang on for him, but to be honest, I’m not entirely sure about a couple of mine.  One interpretation is that I’ve not yet converted all my innate talents into strengths, by exercising them.

The aim is to lead forward into some sort of action plan in order to start to exercise and improve the identified strengths.  I’m looking forward to doing that – perhaps I’ll publish the action plan on here in order to help gain a bit of accountability.

Recommended, I think.  To proceed, you’d need to buy the book and use the code in the back to access the tool.

Tagged as: Personal, strengths, strengths finder 2.0