I saw that the leadership group in my company is reading StrengthsFinder 2.0, so I figured I would see what it was all about.  Was it yet another weak attempt at telling people how they should run their work lives to achieve maximum output where there was only one right way to do things?  Much to my happy surprise, it is not.  In fact, it is the opposite.  It denounces those types of methods and basically states that everyone needs to find their own talents, turn them into strengths, and use and rely on them.  It also discusses the benefits of working on strengths and not weaknesses as people often do.  I personally believe that the only time I really need to work on a weakness is if it is preventing me from doing something I need or want to do or if I am actively causing harm to myself, my family, or my organizations.

Both books have a similar layout:  The introduction section of how the book works; the assessment (included in the cost of the book) which helps you find your top five talents (the book calls them themes); and then a section that explains each of the thirty-four listed themes, each giving a description, quotes from people who have that theme as one of their top five, action items on how to turn a talent in that theme into a strength or to make it stronger, and then some brief ideas on how to work with others who have primary talents in that theme.

Strengths Based Leadership has some extra sections.  One that groups the themes into four domains of leadership strength: executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking.  Another that has brief interviews with four successful persons representative of each domain.  The book also discusses maximizing teams and why people follow which is really key in executing positive leadership.

Reading the introduction section of each book only took 30 minutes.  I then went to the book’s website and completed the assessment which took about thirty minutes.  In the end, you get a custom report.  The results were dead-on for me, though I did not think so at first for some of them.  The assessments for both books are the same, so you only need to take it once.  You can then plug-in the results to the other book and get that report as well.

I took some time to read through each theme listed in StrengthsFinder 2.0 and I made a list of eight themes that were not on my top five list which I thought could be primary.  When thinking about if they were really primary themes that perhaps the assessment was wrong, as I read the statements by people for whom a theme was their primary, I thought to myself, “Wow, that is not me.  That’s way over the top.”  Meaning that to me, having that theme push me in such a way would seem excessive, but when I looked at my top five list and read the statements for those themes, I thought, “That is normal.  I get that.  I do that.”  The other question I asked myself is, “Does that theme drive me?  Do I use it as a source of motivation?  Does time disappear when I use a talent from that theme?”  For my primary / top five themes, the answer is yes.  For the ones on the list I made, the answer is sometimes, or not so much.

Although the results always give the top five strongest themes, I know people won’t necessarily have five strong themes.  They may have three, they may have six.  For me, even in my top five, I see three that really stand out – I use them constantly in all parts of my life – and the other two are secondary to those, but still serve as a driving force in many situations.  I call my top three my primary themes, the other two my secondary themes, and my list of eight my tertiary themes.  More than likely one or two of those tertiary themes are actually secondary.  I will find out over time.

Everything listed above is the easy part of the book.  Were it to end there, I would better understand myself, but I would not be turning those talents into strengths or making them stronger than they are today.  In fact, how do I make them stronger?  Thankfully the book includes a decent list of ideas for action items for each theme, ways that I can improve my talents.  This is where the work comes in.  I will be choosing one action item from my top three primary themes and setting goals to complete them.  If there is ever a time where I need to improve talents from one of my other primary, secondary, or tertiary themes due to life’s demands, I can always go to this book as a reference and pick an action item and do it.

The last part I like is the short explanations of ideas for working with people who have certain themes as their strengths.  I am looking forward to using that information in my work and family life.

Strengths Based Leadership is much of the same as StrengthsFinder 2.0, except the theme lists are geared towards leading people by providing for your followers their basic needs using your talents, and therefore the action items are for serving others instead of for individual growth.

Having read a few leadership and self-improvement books in my lifetime, and almost always being left with the feeling of failure or that the book was just not for me, I highly recommend StrengthsFinder 2.0 for individual development and Strength Based Leadership for those who wish to lead.

One last note on leadership.  One does not have to be in a management or lead role to lead.  Leadership is just exerting one’s influence on others, hopefully in a positive way, in order to achieve something.  One can lead from the side or even from behind.  I  see myself as leading from the side at times and the only thing I presently manage is my own work load.  When I am on a team, and we all need to get something done, I envision a cart in front of us with a long handle – long enough for all of us to take hold of it and push, side-by-side.  I see that if I just grab a hold of it and “go” in my own way, that others will do the same in their own way, giving them support whenever they need it to keep them going.

P.S.  My top five themes are Learner, Intellection, Input, Context, and Ideation.  Learner, Intellection, & Ideation fit me to a T.  Input and Context mostly do.  Interestingly, all five of my top themes fall under the Strategic Thinking domain of leadership.  From the tertiary list of eight themes that I made, seven of the eight fall under the Executing domain.