Developing your unique talents and strengths – and those of the people you manage. Now, Discover Your Strengths is one of the most ground-breaking and useful business books ever written. The Gallup Organization has created a program to help readers identify their natural talents and build them into strengths. Just as we maintain health by studying disease, we have tried to develop employees and managers by reducing weaknesses. Consequently, we have not developed a clear understanding of strengths and how to build them. The authors say this is key to success in careers and organizations.
Based on open-ended interviews and psychological profiles of more than two million “excellent performers,” the authors have derived thirty-four talent themes, the meat of the book. To excel in your chosen field and to find lasting satisfaction in doing so, you will need to understand your unique patterns. You will need to become an expert at finding and describing, applying and practicing, and refining your strengths.”
“These are the two assumptions that guide the world’s best managers:
1. Each person’s talents are enduring and unique.
2. Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength.
These two assumptions are the foundation for everything they do with and for their people. These two assumptions explain why great managers are careful to look for talent in every role, why they focus people’s performances on outcomes rather than forcing them into a stylistic mold, why they disobey the Golden Rule and treat each employee differently, and why they spend the most time with their best people.”
They go through current knowledge of brain development within the womb and during our infant and toddler years to develop the theory of innate talents. Their theme throughout the book is that most organizations hire people the interviewers like and then try to train these individuals to do the work required by the organization, instead of determining the strengths of each individual and hiring the people most likely to succeed at doing the work of the organization. In other words, while everyone is trainable, greater success is based on strengths-based training rather than training to overcome weaknesses.
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