The book “Now, Discover Your Strengths” was written by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, and published in 2001. The book’s message is to focus on building your strengths (talents) rather than focusing on your weaknesses. After interviewing 1.7 million professionals from varying fields, and quantifying the different traits of the people they interviewed, the authors defined 34 distinct patterns, what they call “talent themes”, that best describe the range of human uniqueness observed during their research:
- Achiever – one with a constant drive for accomplishing tasks
- Activator – one who acts to start things in motion
- Adaptability – one who is especially adept at accommodating to changes in direction/plan
- Analytical – one who requires data and/or proof to make sense of their circumstances
- Arranger – one who enjoys orchestrating many tasks and variables to a successful outcome
- Belief – one who strives to find some ultimate meaning behind everything they do
- Command – one who steps up to positions of leadership without fear of confrontation
- Communication – one who uses words to inspire action and education
- Competition – one who thrives on comparison and competition to be successful
- Connectedness – one who seeks to unite others through commonality
- Consistency – one who believes in treating everyone the same to avoid unfair advantage
- Context – one who is able to use the past to make better decisions in the present
- Deliberative – one who proceeds with caution, seeking to always have a plan and know all of the details
- Developer – one who sees the untapped potential in others
- Discipline – one who seeks to make sense of the world by imposition of order
- Empathy – one who is especially in tune with the emotions of others
- Focus – one who requires a clear sense of direction to be successful
- Futuristic – one who has a keen sense of using an eye towards the future to drive today’s success
- Harmony – one who seeks to avoid conflict and achieve success through consensus
- Ideation – one who is adept at seeing underlying concepts that unite disparate ideas
- Includer – one who instinctively works to include everyone
- Individualization – one who draws upon the uniqueness of individuals to create successful teams
- Input – one who is constantly collecting information or objects for future use
- Intellection – one who enjoys thinking and thought-provoking conversation often for its own sake, and also can data compress complex concepts into simplified models
- Learner – one who must constantly be challenged and learning new things to feel successful
- Maximizer – one who seeks to take people and projects from great to excellent
- Positivity – one who has a knack for bring the light-side to any situation
- Relator – one who is most comfortable with fewer, deeper relationships
- Responsibility – one who, inexplicably, must follow through on commitments
- Restorative – one who thrives on solving difficult problems
- Self-Assurance – one who stays true to their beliefs, judgments and is confident of his/her ability
- Significance – one who seeks to be seen as significant by others
- Strategic – one who is able to see a clear direction through the complexity of a situation
- Woo – one who is able to easily persuade (short for “Winning Others Over”)
The author’s ultimately define a person by their top five talent themes.
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