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Ryan Healy is a recent college graduate. He is a founder of 
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The Strengths Finder 2.0 book and online test by Tom Rath is a must buy for anyone just starting out in their careers. The short introduction stresses focusing on your strengths and excelling in those areas rather than focusing on shortcomings and trying to hard to achieve things that don’t come naturally to you.
The author discusses the movie, Rudy. Rudy overcomes insurmountable odds of being too small, too slow and not smart enough to get into and later play football for Notre Dame. He overcomes the odds by practicing religiously and never giving up. Rudy is the typical American Hero, he overcame his shortcomings.
Tom Rath then puts this into perspective. He says, “After all the practice and sweat, blood and tears, Rudy made one tackle on one play in his entire career.”
It’s an achievement no doubt, but why not put all of that effort into something you have a natural ability for. Why do we put so much stock into celebrating someone who has overcome an obstacle rather than praising people who recognize their talents and excel at something that aligns with these talents?
The most important reason to buy this book is for the accompanying online questionnaire. It takes about 30 minutes to complete. When finished, you receive a Strengths Finder guide with your 5 strengths along with detailed descriptions, examples of others with the same strengths and action plans.
I highly recommend getting the book and taking the course. If you are like me, you tend to focus on areas of weakness and don’t try to improve on your strengths. Or worse, you don’t even know your strengths. Just in case anyone cares, my top 5 strengths in order are:
- Futuristic
- Analytical
- Arranger
- Restorative
- Significance
When reading the descriptions, these strengths seem right on point. Sure this may be feeding into the whole self esteem “crisis” that our generation apparently faces, but everyone needs to know what they are naturally good at if they want to pick that perfect career. Phone cards
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- 1 Pingback on Jul 9th, 2007 at 7:01 am
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I have read the version 1.0 and I totally recommend it.
The Strengths Finder book is very well written.
My top 5 strenghts are:
1. Significance
2. Command
3. Individualization
4. Arranger
5. Communication
Cya
This is a great point. One that Jim Collins makes in ‘Good to Great’. He calls this ‘finding your hedgehog’.
I went about this by asking people around me what they would say some of my best moments with them were (personally and professionally). Doing this at least yearly can give you a pretty interesting picture of who you are (not who you think you are).
I wrote an entire series on this last April. Here’s how I went about soliciting feedback.
I couldn’t agree more about focusing on your successes and not your failures. Why is it so much easier to focus on what you don’t have?
Check out FranklinCovey’s mission statement builder - it’s totally free and pretty quick and easy.
www.franklincovey.com/fc/library_and_resources/mission_statement_builder
Kristen
I would take it one step further–finding your path in life and in work depends upon how well you market yourself. This means developing a distinctive and memorable brand that sets you apart from everyone else. The competition is more intense than ever–everyone is talented, bright, attractive and accomplished–the question you must answer is how will I put myself forward so that all of my strengths and talents shine brightly on a very crowded landscape?
What is this ’self esteem crisis’ you mention? Does our generation have an abundance of it? Or is it in short supply?
Hey Justin,
According to “experts” we have way to much self esteem. Some people, like Ms. Jean Twenge have interpreted this self esteem as full blown narcissim. Check out an old post of ours for reference, www.employeeevolution.com/archives/2007/03/09/the-most-self-centered-generation-ever/
Personally, I see nothing wrong with a little self esteem. Thanks for the comment
-Ryan
My awesome workplace had a book club series on three of these books when I started at work - First, Break All The Rules, Now, Discover Your Strengths and Strengths Finder (I think). Anyway, I was very jazzed about all the things I learned about myself - and our team. My boss had all of us on the team map our strengths together to see who all was a communicator, strategic, etc. It was really great. Now I need to just find all mine - it’s been several years. I think I had Communicator, Strategic, Innovation. . I can’t remember the rest. I’ll have to dig that book out when I get to work tomorrow.
Somebody famous once said “It’s not bragging if you did it.” I forget who, but they were right.
Ryan - Excellent post on focusing on what you do best and are natural at, rather than beating yourself up all the time. We all need to find jobs for which our strengths are best suited, and avoid those where you’re doomed. However, even when there’s a near perfect match between your strengths and your job, there may still be areas where you need to improve and challenges you need to overcome. E.g., I have a friend who is a fabulous product manager - with all the analytical, organizational, and communications skills he needs to succeed brilliantly. Except one. Like a lot of people, he’s terrified of public speaking, which is occasionally required for his job. So, he’s taken courses and gotten coaching. He still doesn’t like it, but at least he can get up and do it.
As for Rudy, I’m sure he didn’t know it at the time, but he was setting himself up for non-athletic success as a motivational speaker, etc., which may well be suited to his strengths. (I really don’t know, but they may be.) So, sometimes spending time on something where you’re not a natural can pay off. We may not remember the name of anyone else on that Notre Dame team, but we sure know his.
This sounds sort of like the MBTI personality types. You could also take many of the free MBTI tests out there on the web and probably get the same insight into your unique personality.