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Now, Discover Your Strengths
By Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton
272 pp. New York, NY
Simon & Schuster
Reviewed by Jennifer Sertl, Customer Service Alliance

In the last issue of Torch I reviewed First, Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. I want to continue the conversation by reviewing the next book from Marcus Buckingham and a new colleague Donald Clifton. While the first book was a call to managers to realize how much they play a part of employee satisfaction and ultimately loyalty, Now Discover Your Strengths offers success strategies for both managers and individual employees.

Buckingham and Clifton assert, "the best managers start with a radical assumption: Each person's greatest room for growth is in the area of his greatest strength." What is being said here is that the most effective managers work to leverage their employees strengths. At first glance this seems counterintuitive. After all, many organizations have spent thousands of dollars defining core competencies. And have also invested in the measuring and tracking of employee gaps and managing that process called employee improvement plan or individual development plan or whatever your organization happens to call that "thing" that demonstrates that you have a "learning organization."

While having a process to track and measure the progress and learning of your organization is very important, Buckingham and Clifton ask you to look at a different way to view core competencies. They suggest that you leverage your organization to acknowledge, reward, and leverage the strengths of the individuals making up your employee pool. The way they assess strength is not about personality or behavior style. Instead it is themes of work focus. Their framework is that at very young ages ( 0-5 ) individuals determine the way in which they see the world, focus their energy, and determine to take action. These themes are established so early on that it is difficult -if not impossible to change the framework of individuals. Therefore, you are more successful to align the work with the themes in a way that equals success for the individual contribution and the business success based on that contribution.

Here are the thirty- four themes outlined in Now, Discover Your Strengths:

Achiever	Connectedness	Harmony	Relator
Activator	Context	Ideation	Responsibility
Adaptability	Deliberative	Inclusiveness	Restorative
Analytical	Developer	Individualization	Self-assurance
Arranger	Discipline	Input	Significance
Belief	Empathy	Intellection	Strategic
Command	Fairness	Learner	Woo
Communication	Focus	Maximizer
Competition	Futuristic	Positivity

I believe that any tool that fosters language that enables people to recognize diversity and celebrates the many ways people contribute to organizational success to be of value. Therefore, again I am recommending Marcus Buckingham and his colleague Donald Clifton as useful resources for you and your work. Take some time now to think about your strengths (in your own terms and language) and feel good about them!