Do you have $13.47, 35 minutes, and the desire to succeed at anything? Here’s a quick guide to investing those resources in learning your strengths. The payoff will last a lifetime.
- Buy the Kindle version of Strengths-Based Leadership.*
- Don’t read the book. (Yet.)
- Use the code you’ll receive from Amazon to take the StrengthsFinder online assessment. Allow 35 minutes of uninterrupted time. It’s easy.**
- Don’t read the book. (Still.)
- Instead, read the 12-page custom report you’ll receive by email, listing your five strengths (cool), describing them (even cooler), and giving you strategies for developing them (stupendously amazing).
- Find a trusted friend who knows her or his strengths and compare notes.
- Now read the book.
Why invest in learning your strengths? Because people are “able to gain far more when they expend effort to build on their greatest talents than when they spend a comparable amount of effort to remediate their weaknesses.”*** Or, as General Wesley K. Clark said, “Iʼve never met an effective leader who wasnʼt aware of his talents and working to sharpen them.”
Are you a board leader? You can learn strengths-based board leadership to take your social sector organization from good to great at my Board Responsibilities, Strengths and Impact Workshop on Feb. 15. Register at brsiworkshopfeb12.eventbrite.com. Tickets cost as little as $10 and get you a tasty lunch and leftover Valentine’s Day candy.
* Sorry, locally owned bookstores. I love ya, especially Indigo Bridge. But to get people to see past the urgent and unimportant to the non-urgent and important (that is, investing in their own development), I’ve got to make the first step as easy as possible. Full disclosure: That’s an affiliate link up there, meaning I get a few cents if you buy the book through that link.
** The assessment presents a bunch of paired statements. You click buttons to indicate which statement comes closer to describing you. There’s no time to over-think the choice, because you get just a few seconds for each pair.
*** Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, Strengths-Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and
Why People Follow (Gallup Press, 2009). For more, see the underlying research in Clifton, D.O., & Harter, J.K. (2003). Strengths investment. In K.S. Cameron, J.E. Dutton, & R.E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship. (pp. 111-121). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
and 
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—which you should drop everything, including this blog post, to buy and read. Right. Now.
