WatTF? - Jim Murphy

Its ingrained in our culture that you can be whatever you want to be if you just try hard enough. Schools and employee evaluations look at meeting standardized levels of ability, focusing on areas where we underperform. The everyday notion of self improvement implies that we should shore up our weaknesses to enhance our lives and the lives of those around us. Laudable but maybe we have the wrong perspective.

StrengthsFinder 2.0, a book, website and survey by Gallup Press leverages research of over 10 million people looking specifically at happy and successful people. Instead of looking at weakness, find your innate talents and guard against your “anti-talents”.

“People have several times more potential for growth when they invest energy in developing their strengths instead of correcting their deficiencies”

I can’t help but recognize the negative focus on weakness as part of an overly industrialized approach to human development. Its as if there is a “one best way” for people to be. This point of view is so at odds with creative endeavors that I’m excited to recommend to anyone: buy the book, take the survey, find you talents and play to your strengths.

From the StrengthFinder 2.0 34 talent themes my Top 5 are:

• Command
• Competition
• Activator
• Input
• Self-Assurance

If you’re interested to know what those mean or what the output looks like download my personal Strengths Discovery Report. Though I imagine its much more interesting when its about you. I should add that the survey is more than just getting binned into these categories and getting a horoscope at the end. Your specific answers are cross-tabbed with over 5000 insights that give specific ideas on how to take action.

Thanks Larry for the recommendation.  You were right.