{"id":23,"date":"2006-07-22T17:45:46","date_gmt":"2006-07-22T21:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/?p=23"},"modified":"2006-09-10T07:39:36","modified_gmt":"2006-09-10T11:39:36","slug":"now-discover-your-strengths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/2006\/07\/22\/now-discover-your-strengths\/","title":{"rendered":"Now, Discover Your Strengths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last summer at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.educause.edu\/TheEDUCAUSEInstituteManagementProgram\/1734\">EDUCAUSE Management Institute<\/a> I won a challenge the faculty gave the participants.  We had to think of five things to share about ourselves, share these observations with the group at our table, and then write up a list of everything we could remember about the others at our table.  I don&#8217;t know if it was the caffeine or my interest in the challenge, but I won.<\/p>\n<p>My prize was the book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0743201140\/\">Now, Discover Your Strengths<\/a> by Marcus Buckingham &#038; Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D.  I&#8217;d seen Buckingham speak at EDUCAUSE and was interested to read the book.  But it&#8217;s been a busy year (no director and all) so it wasn&#8217;t until this past week, while on vacation, that I got the chance to read it.<\/p>\n<p>The book is structured around Clifton&#8217;s work on positive psychology.  There are two basic premises:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Each person&#8217;s talents are enduring and unique.<\/li>\n<li>Each person&#8217;s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Most people feel that to improve, they need to build up their weaknesses; Buckingham and Clifton argue that to really excel you should develop your strengths and manage around your weaknesses.<\/p>\n<p>A central part of the book is taking the Gallup Organization&#8217;s Strengths Finder survey.  The survey identifies your top 5 strengths after you answer more than 100 Likert scale questions.<\/p>\n<p>For the curious, my strengths turn out to be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baylor.edu\/strengths\/index.php?id=25460#%20q23\">Input<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baylor.edu\/strengths\/index.php?id=25460#%20q25\">Learner<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baylor.edu\/strengths\/index.php?id=25460#%20q24\">Intellection<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baylor.edu\/strengths\/index.php?id=25460#%20q29\">Responsibility<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baylor.edu\/strengths\/index.php?id=25460#%20q1\">Achiever<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thanks to Baylor for the linked descriptions.   It&#8217;s also interesting that Baylor has given all of their employees the survey.  The book makes a recommendation that organizations consider doing such a thing, but that&#8217;s an expensive proposition and I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ve had enough of the Kool Aid to invest so much in one instrument.  Still, it might be something we could do on a smaller scale if anyone is interested&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!-- technorati tags start --><\/p>\n<p>Technorati Tags: <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/personal%20development\">personal development<\/a>, <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/reading\">reading<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!-- technorati tags end --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last summer at the EDUCAUSE Management Institute I won a challenge the faculty gave the participants. We had to think of five things to share about ourselves, share these observations with the group at our table, and then write up &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/2006\/07\/22\/now-discover-your-strengths\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}