Now, Discover Your Strengths

Now, Discover Your Strengths Plot Summary

Introduction

Have you ever felt like you're pushing against the current, working harder than everyone else yet achieving less? This frustration often stems from one simple truth: we're spending too much time trying to fix our weaknesses instead of maximizing our natural talents. Society has conditioned us to focus on our shortcomings, encouraging us to become well-rounded rather than exceptional. Schools identify where students fall short, workplaces highlight areas for improvement, and we internalize this approach, constantly trying to repair what's "wrong" with us. But what if this approach is fundamentally flawed? Research involving over two million professionals reveals that true excellence comes not from addressing weaknesses but from identifying and cultivating our innate talents. The most successful people in any field—from business leaders to artists, from teachers to scientists—don't achieve greatness by becoming adequate at everything. Instead, they achieve extraordinary results by understanding their unique strengths and deliberately organizing their lives around these natural talents. This book will help you discover your own signature talents, transform them into genuine strengths, and design a life that allows you to do what you naturally do best every day.

Chapter 1: Discover Your Signature Talents Using StrengthsFinder

What makes you uniquely you? This question lies at the heart of building a life around your strengths. Your talents—naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior—represent your greatest potential for excellence. Unlike skills or knowledge which can be acquired through learning, talents are innate qualities that feel effortless when you use them. They explain why certain activities energize you while others drain you, why some tasks come naturally while others feel like a constant struggle. The StrengthsFinder assessment was designed to help you identify these natural talents. When Jeanne J. completed the StrengthsFinder profile, she discovered her top themes included Significance (craving for recognized excellence), Activator (desire for action), and Command (presence to challenge others). These insights explained why she had always thrived in retail environments—from her early career at Disney Stores to leadership positions at Victoria's Secret and Banana Republic, where she led her team past the $1 billion mark in sales. Her talents weren't random; they formed a coherent pattern that predicted where she would excel. Linda H., surprisingly, shared three of the same talent themes as Jeanne. With her Significance, Activator, and Command talents, Linda carved out a successful career in law, becoming the first woman partner of a major Dallas law firm and the first woman to be shortlisted for commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Though their fields differed dramatically, both women thrived by applying similar natural talents to different domains. The StrengthsFinder assessment measures thirty-four distinct themes of talent. When you complete the assessment, you'll receive your five most dominant themes—your "Signature Themes." These aren't merely interesting insights; they're the foundation upon which you can build genuine strengths. They reveal patterns that have been present throughout your life, explaining why certain activities have always engaged and fulfilled you. Understanding your Signature Themes offers clarity about the environments where you'll naturally thrive. For example, someone with the Achiever theme will need measurable accomplishments each day, while someone with the Empathy theme will excel in roles requiring emotional understanding. The theme of Analytical will drive someone to dissect problems logically, while the Strategic theme creates a mind that naturally sees patterns and alternative paths forward. Your talents leave traces throughout your life—in your spontaneous reactions, your yearnings, the activities you learn quickly, and the work that brings you deep satisfaction. By identifying these patterns and understanding how they've shaped your past successes, you gain invaluable insight into how to create a future aligned with your natural strengths.

Chapter 2: Transform Your Talents into Genuine Strengths

Talents alone don't guarantee success. A talent is simply a naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. A strength, by contrast, is consistent near-perfect performance in an activity. The journey from talent to strength requires deliberate development—adding skills and knowledge to your natural talents until they become powerful tools for achievement. Consider the transformation of Mike K., a consultant who now makes his living giving speeches to business audiences. What makes his success remarkable is that when Mike was four years old, he developed a debilitating stammer. Every word was a potential trap. Words beginning with consonants couldn't get started, while words beginning with vowels would repeat endlessly. For years, Mike endured cruel teasing at his boarding school in England, dreading any occasion when he would be asked to speak publicly. Then something unexpected happened. As a graduating senior, Mike was required to give a reading to the entire school during morning assembly. Terrified, he shuffled toward the lectern, certain of humiliation. But as he looked out over the crowd, something shifted. Suddenly, words began flowing effortlessly. He finished his reading almost perfectly, experiencing for the first time the freedom of fluent speech. Reflecting on this moment, Mike realized he possessed natural talents for Significance and Communication—he actually enjoyed being on stage. The pressure of performing in front of hundreds, rather than freezing him, energized him. His brain worked faster, and words came more easily. He had discovered a talent, but it wasn't yet a strength. Mike transformed this talent into a strength by deliberately applying it. Whenever he spoke to someone—in the schoolyard, on the telephone—he imagined himself speaking to an audience of two hundred. This mental technique allowed him to overcome his stammer permanently. Today, his speaking skills have become so refined that businesses pay thousands to hear him present. Building a strength requires three essential ingredients: talent (your naturally recurring patterns), knowledge (facts and lessons learned), and skills (the steps of an activity). Of these three, talent is most crucial because it's innate and cannot be acquired. You can certainly gain knowledge about any subject and develop skills in any activity, but without underlying talent, you'll never achieve consistent near-perfect performance. The pathway to excellence involves identifying your dominant talents and then systematically developing them through practice, education, and real-world application. When Ralph Gonzalez, a store manager for Best Buy, discovered his talent for understanding people's unique motivations, he deliberately refined this ability until he could immediately assess whether new employees were "people persons" or "box persons"—those who enjoyed customer interaction versus those who preferred arranging merchandise. This strength allowed him to position each employee where they would naturally excel. Remember that strength-building is not instantaneous. It requires patience, self-awareness, and persistent refinement. But unlike the draining process of trying to fix weaknesses, developing strengths feels energizing because you're working with your natural wiring. Your talents provide their own motivation—they want to be expressed and developed. When you honor this internal drive, you create the foundation for extraordinary performance.

Chapter 3: Manage Around Your Weaknesses Effectively

What about your weaknesses? This question inevitably arises when discussing a strengths-based approach. First, let's define weakness properly: a weakness is anything that gets in the way of excellent performance—not simply an area where you lack proficiency. This distinction matters because we all have countless areas where we lack proficiency, but most don't affect our performance and can simply be ignored. Mary K., a manager who lacked the talent for Empathy, tried for years to develop this ability. She attended training programs, read books, and practiced techniques for understanding others' emotions. Despite her efforts, she never gained the intuitive emotional perception that comes naturally to those with the Empathy theme. Finally, she took a different approach. She gathered her team and said, "From now on I am not going to try to fake it anymore. I am never going to understand you intuitively, so if you want me to know what you are feeling, you are better off just telling me." This confession was met with relief. Her employees knew her to be a basically good person, but they had always sensed her emotional disconnect. By acknowledging her weakness and creating a workaround, Mary became a more authentic and trustworthy manager. Her weakness didn't disappear, but it no longer undermined her effectiveness. When managing weaknesses, consider these five practical strategies that successful people use: First, for baseline requirements in your role, you may need to get a little better. If communication or organization is essential in your position, some improvement might be necessary even if these aren't your natural talents. Accept that this improvement will require effort and won't lead to excellence—just adequacy. Second, design support systems to neutralize weaknesses. Kevin L., a national sales manager who lacked the Strategic theme, created a simple ritual to remind himself to consider future implications. Each morning, he imagined writing "What" on his left shoe and "If" on his right, prompting him to ask the "What if?" questions that didn't come naturally to him. Third, use your strengths to overwhelm your weaknesses. A teacher with Positivity might compensate for disorganization by creating such enthusiasm that students stay engaged despite occasional confusion. Your strongest talents can often provide alternative routes to the same outcomes. Fourth, find partners whose strengths complement your weaknesses. A trial lawyer who detested researching case law (lacking the Context theme) partnered with someone whose passion for researching legal precedent matched his own passion for presentation. Together, they built a flourishing practice by leveraging their complementary strengths. Finally, for persistent weaknesses that aren't essential to your role, sometimes the best strategy is to simply stop doing it. This isn't giving up—it's being strategic about where you invest your energy. By focusing on what you do exceptionally well and finding ways around what you don't, you create more value overall. Remember that managing weaknesses isn't about eliminating them completely but preventing them from interfering with your strengths. The goal isn't to become perfect at everything but to create a performance strategy that maximizes your natural talents while minimizing the impact of your limitations.

Chapter 4: Create a Strengths-Based Career Path

Traditional career paths often lead people away from their strengths. Organizations typically reward excellent performance by promoting people into management, regardless of whether they possess the talents for leading others. This well-intentioned approach frequently results in miscast employees and frustrated organizations—what management expert Peter Drucker called "the Peter Principle," where people rise to their level of incompetence. Victoria runs a successful $7 million London-based public relations firm specializing in hotel chains such as Four Seasons and Swissôtel. Though she's the founder and leader, Victoria deliberately avoids the strategic planning aspects of the business, delegating those to her ex-banker partner. Instead, she focuses on managing operations—selecting associates, positioning them on appropriate accounts, and nurturing their development. Her top five themes include Empathy, Developer, Restorative, Context, and Consistency, making her naturally talented at understanding and developing people. Meanwhile, Steve S. runs an Internet company called Icebox that produces and distributes cartoon shorts on the Web. His strengths lie in Competition, Analytical, Strategic, Ideation, and Futuristic—a completely different profile from Victoria's. While Victoria excels at nurturing people, Steve's genius is in persuading film directors and venture capitalists to believe in his vision of the future. He's assembled a team of competent executors and people managers, leaving him free to focus on what he does best. Both are successful entrepreneurs, but they've carved entirely different paths based on their unique strengths. Neither tries to be well-rounded; instead, they've designed their roles to maximize their natural talents. To create your own strengths-based career path, first identify the activities that engage and energize you. When do you feel most productive and fulfilled? Which tasks seem to flow naturally? These moments offer clues to where your talents lie. Then examine how these activities align with your Signature Themes. For instance, if Learner is among your dominant themes, you'll thrive in roles requiring continuous education and mastery of new information. Next, consider how to craft your current role to better match your strengths. This might involve negotiating with your manager to take on more projects that leverage your talents or finding a complementary partner who can handle the aspects of your job that drain you. Sometimes the perfect role already exists within your organization but in a different department or division. Don't assume that career growth must mean climbing the traditional ladder. Sometimes the most fulfilling path moves laterally into roles that better match your strengths, rather than upward into management. John F., an airline pilot with the themes Consistency, Harmony, Context, Developer, and Relator, found his ideal role not as a senior executive but as a Captain Check Airman, Instructor Type—essentially a teacher who trains crews in operating new aircraft. This role perfectly utilized his talent for using stories from the past to help others learn. Remember that building a strengths-based career isn't about finding the perfect job overnight. It's about making incremental shifts that gradually align your work with your natural talents. Each step toward better alignment increases both your performance and your satisfaction, creating a virtuous cycle that leads to long-term success.

Chapter 5: Build Partnerships That Amplify Your Strengths

No one possesses all the talents needed for complete self-sufficiency. Even the most talented individuals have significant gaps in their abilities. The most successful people recognize this reality and deliberately build partnerships that complement their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. A senior executive we interviewed understood the concept that each of his direct reports was different, but he realized he lacked the talent (the theme Individualization) to identify exactly how each person was different. Rather than pretending to understand their unique qualities, he hired a human resources professional whose primary role was to help him understand each person's idiosyncrasies. Together, they created an exceptionally effective leadership approach. Similarly, a trial lawyer who delivered compelling arguments in the courtroom detested researching case law in the library (lacking the theme Context). As he built his practice, he knew his most important recruit would be someone whose passion for researching legal precedent matched his own passion for presentation. He quickly found someone whose eyes lit up at the prospect of long days reading small print, and together they built a flourishing practice. These complementary partnerships create what might be called "strength teams"—combinations of people whose talents fit together like puzzle pieces, creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The Beatles exemplified this principle. John Lennon provided the raw creative energy and challenging lyrics (showing strengths in Ideation and Significance), while Paul McCartney contributed melodic structure and accessibility (demonstrating Communication and Harmony). George Harrison added spiritual depth and musical innovation (Connectedness and Learner), while Ringo Starr provided the steady foundation and good humor that kept the group grounded (Consistency and Positivity). To build your own strength partnerships, start by honestly assessing your limitations. Which aspects of your work drain your energy? Where do you consistently struggle despite your best efforts? These areas represent opportunities for complementary partnerships. Next, identify people whose talents naturally fill these gaps. Look for individuals who seem energized by precisely the activities you find difficult. The key to successful strength partnerships is mutual appreciation. Both parties must recognize the value the other brings. This requires openly discussing your respective strengths and weaknesses, acknowledging your interdependence, and expressing gratitude for each other's contributions. When both partners feel valued for their unique talents, the relationship becomes sustainable and productive. Remember that strength partnerships can exist at many levels—with colleagues, teammates, mentors, or even service providers. The flight attendant with strong Positivity but weak Command who finds a colleague willing to handle difficult passenger interactions is practicing the same principle as the CEO who partners with a detail-oriented COO to implement her visionary ideas. By deliberately building these partnerships, you create a network that amplifies your strengths while mitigating your weaknesses. This approach allows you to focus your energy on what you do best while ensuring that all necessary functions are performed excellently—not by requiring everyone to be good at everything, but by leveraging the natural diversity of human talents.

Chapter 6: Design Your Environment to Support Your Talents

Your environment—physical space, daily routines, tools, and surrounding people—profoundly influences how effectively you can apply your talents. The most successful individuals don't just identify their strengths; they deliberately create environments that support and amplify these natural abilities. Sarah P., a finance executive with the Arranger theme, thrives on organizing complex situations with many moving parts. When faced with projects involving thirty variables, she instinctively sees the three most important options, enabling her to make decisions quickly while others become paralyzed by complexity. Sarah has designed her environment to support this talent by maintaining an open office layout where she can physically see the various components of her projects. She uses visual management tools—whiteboards, color-coded files, and digital dashboards—that allow her to literally "arrange" information in ways that reveal patterns and priorities. Environment design involves more than physical space. It includes establishing routines that channel your energy toward your strengths. Bill Gates, known for his "Think Weeks," would retreat twice yearly to a secluded cabin where he could read, think, and envision Microsoft's future. This practice perfectly supported his Futuristic and Strategic themes, providing the uninterrupted time needed for these talents to flourish. Similarly, Warren Buffett, with his practical mind and patient nature, created an environment in Omaha deliberately removed from Wall Street's frantic pace, allowing him to make investment decisions based on long-term fundamentals rather than short-term market movements. Your environment also includes the information you consume. If Input is one of your Signature Themes, you need regular exposure to stimulating ideas through books, articles, conversations, or online content. Someone with the Learner theme might create an environment rich in educational opportunities—courses, workshops, mentorships. For those with the Context theme, historical information provides essential perspective, while those with Futuristic thrive on exposure to emerging trends and technologies. The people surrounding you constitute perhaps the most crucial aspect of your environment. Individuals with the Positivity theme will find their talents diminished in the company of cynics and complainers, while those with Harmony suffer in highly confrontational settings. Consider Marshall G., a marketing executive whose theme of Maximizer led him to excel at building team spirit and establishing focus. His boss recognized this strength and deliberately partnered him with colleagues who provided the strategic thinking Marshall lacked. This human environment allowed Marshall to thrive while ensuring all necessary functions were covered. To design your ideal environment, first analyze when and where your talents naturally emerge. When do you lose track of time? When do you feel most energized and productive? Then identify the environmental factors present during these peak experiences—the physical setup, the tools available, the people involved, the information flowing. Finally, deliberately recreate these conditions in your daily work and life. Remember that environment design often requires negotiation. You may need to request specific work arrangements, explain your needs to colleagues, or establish boundaries that protect your optimal conditions. The effort is worthwhile because when your environment aligns with your talents, you dramatically increase your potential for consistent excellence.

Chapter 7: Turn Your Organization into a Strengths-Based Community

Creating an organizational culture that truly capitalizes on each employee's strengths represents the ultimate competitive advantage. Yet research shows that only 20 percent of employees strongly agree that they have an opportunity to do what they do best every day. Imagine the increased productivity and profitability if you could double or triple this number. Mary Garey, a Best Buy store manager in Boca Raton, Florida, has created an environment where an astonishing 70 percent of her employees feel perfectly cast in their roles. This means seventy of her one hundred employees—most engaged in customer service, loading/unloading, or shelf-stocking—strongly agree they have an opportunity to do what they do best every day. How did she achieve this? By building an organization founded on two core assumptions: each person's talents are enduring and unique, and each person's greatest room for growth is in areas of their greatest strength. These assumptions lead to four fundamental practices that any organization can implement. First, invest time and money in selecting people properly. Since each person's talents are enduring, finding the right fit initially is crucial. This means building selection systems around objective instruments that measure talent, studying your best performers to identify the talents that drive success in each role, and teaching managers the language of talent to make informed hiring decisions. Second, focus performance by legislating outcomes rather than procedures. Since each person's talents are unique, prescribing a standardized approach undermines performance. Instead, clearly define desired results—impact on business outcomes, customer satisfaction, and team culture—but allow individuals flexibility in how they achieve these results. This enables employees to apply their natural talents to reach objectives. Third, invest training resources in educating employees about their strengths rather than remediating weaknesses. Since the greatest potential for growth lies in areas of strength, traditional "gap-filling" approaches waste resources. Instead, ensure every manager has a strengths discussion with each employee, exploring their dominant themes and how to leverage them for performance. Regular one-on-one meetings focused on applying strengths to achieve objectives yield far better results than generic training programs. Finally, create multiple career paths that allow growth without necessarily promoting people away from their strengths. Define progressive levels of excellence within each role—good, great, superb—with corresponding increases in recognition, compensation, and prestige. This allows employees to advance by becoming increasingly exceptional at what they naturally do well, rather than moving into roles that don't match their talents. Organizations that implement these practices see dramatic improvements in all performance metrics. Gallup's research involving 198,000 employees in 7,939 business units found that when employees strongly agree they have opportunities to use their strengths daily, they are 50 percent more likely to work in business units with lower turnover, 38 percent more likely to work in more productive units, and 44 percent more likely to work in units with higher customer satisfaction. Building a strengths-based organization isn't just good for performance—it's good for people. Employees who use their strengths daily report lower stress, fewer physical ailments, and greater overall wellbeing. By aligning organizational practices with human nature, you create an environment where people can truly excel while finding fulfillment in their work.

Summary

The most profound insight from decades of research into human excellence is surprisingly simple: we grow most where we're already strong. The path to extraordinary performance isn't fixing weaknesses or becoming well-rounded—it's identifying your natural talents and transforming them into genuine strengths through focused practice, knowledge, and application. As the book states, "The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn't have enough strengths, it's that we fail to use the ones we have." Your journey toward living a strength-based life begins with a single step: identify one activity where you consistently excel and feel energized, then deliberately find ways to do more of it every day. Don't wait for permission or the perfect opportunity. Instead, start crafting your current role to incorporate more of your strengths, build partnerships that complement your talents, and design your environment to support your natural abilities. When you organize your life around what you naturally do best, you don't just achieve more—you become who you were always meant to be.

About Author

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Marcus Buckingham

In a world where efficiency and competency rule the workplace, where do personal strengths fit in? It's a complex question, one that intrigued Cambridge-educated Marcus Buckingham so greatly, he set out to answer it by challenging years of social theory and utilizing his nearly two decades of research experience as a Sr. Researcher at Gallup Organization to break through the preconceptions about achievements and get to the core of what drives success. The result of his persistence, and arguably the definitive answer to the strengths question can be found in Buckingham's four best-selling books First, Break All the Rules (coauthored with Curt Coffman, Simon & Schuster, 1999); Now, Discover Your Strengths (coauthored with Donald O. Clifton, The Free Press, 2001); The One Thing You Need to Know (The Free Press, 2005) and Go Put Your Strengths To Work (The Free Press, 2007). The author gives important insights to maximizing strengths, understanding the crucial differences between leadership and management, and fulfilling the quest for long-lasting personal success. In his most recent book, Buckingham offers ways to apply your strengths for maximum success at work.What would happen if men and women spent more than 75% of each day on the job using their strongest skills and engaged in their favorite tasks, basically doing exactly what they wanted to do? According to Marcus Buckingham (who spent years interviewing thousands of employees at every career stage and who is widely considered one of the world's leading authorities on employee productivity and the practices of leading and managing), companies that focus on cultivating employees' strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success. If such a theory sounds revolutionary, that's because it is. Marcus Buckingham calls it the “strengths revolution.” As he addresses more than 250,000 people around the globe each year, Buckingham touts this strengths revolution as the key to finding the most effective route to personal success and the missing link to the efficiency, competency, and success for which many companies constantly strive.To kick-start the strengths revolution, Buckingham and Gallup developed the StrengthsFinder exam (StrengthsFinder.com), which identifies signature themes that help employees quantify their personal strengths in the workplace and at home. Since the StrengthsFinder debuted in 2001, more than 1 million people have discovered their strengths with this useful and important tool. In his role as author, independent consultant and speaker, Marcus Buckingham has been the subject of in-depth profiles in The New York Times, Fortune, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal and is routinely lauded by such corporations as Toyota, Coca-Cola, Master Foods, Wells Fargo, Yahoo and Disney as an invaluable resource in informing, challenging, mentoring and inspiring people to find their strengths and obtain and sustain long-lasting personal success. A wonderful resource for leaders, managers, and educators, Buckingham challenges conventional wisdom and shows the link between engaged employees and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and the rate of turnover. Buckingham graduated from Cambridge University in 1987 with a master's degree in Social and Political Science.

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