BOOK REVIEW : Go Put Your Strengths to Work: Six Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance

Go Put Your Strengths to Work: Six Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance By Marcus Buckingham (Free Press, 2007)

In 2001, Marcus Buckingham’s, Now, Discover Your Strengths, stormed the shelves of bookstores far and wide, proclaiming a strengths-based revolution on its way to becoming an international bestseller. The book advertised the approach of leveraging strengths rather than fixing weaknesses. As part of Buckingham’s efforts to spark a strength-based revolution, everyone who purchased the book was given access to the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment in order to identify their dominant strength themes.

In the years since its release, two million people have taken the Clifton Strengths Finder. Yet, to Buckingham’s dismay, research has not shown any signs of a strength-based revolution. In fact, in the years since Now Discover Your Strengths, the percentage of employees who claim to regularly tap into their strengths has not increased at all—it remains a mere 17%.

In writing Go Put Your Strengths to Work, Buckingham hopes to transfer the intellectual popularity of strength-based living into actual practice. Whereas Now, Discover Your Strengths familiarized readers with a language to dialog about strengths, Go Put Your Strengths to Work gives readers action steps to apply their strengths day-to-day on the job.

In the second chapter of Go Put Your Strengths to Work, Buckingham walks readers through the important process of capturing, clarifying, and confirming their strengths. Sharing his own experiences, Buckingham helps readers to define, with specificity, the activities in which they feel the strongest. As part of the exercises within the chapter, readers are challenged to create “strength statements” to verbalize the precise nature of their strengths.

In Chapter Five, entitled “Speak Up,” Buckingham gives advice to readers on initiating strength-based conversations in the workplace. He offers tactful, non-threatening tactics whereby readers can effectively voice their strengths and weaknesses to managers or co-workers. The chapter is immensely beneficial for the person who has a firm self-awareness of strengths, but is uncertain how to express them within the confines of job responsibilities.

Buckingham invites buyers of his book not only to read about strengths, but also to participate in applying them. Go Put Your Strengths to Work is a highly interactive book complete with codes for downloading inspiring narrative videos (from the DVD, Trombone Player Wanted). Readers can also take an online survey to measure their level of strengths engagement. Inside the back cover of the book are journal pages designed to help readers capture the activities which significantly strengthen or weaken them.

Marcus Buckingham is easily one of the most influential authors in today’s business world. His latest book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, is an impressive attempt to aid readers in applying their strengths on the job. Readers will find themselves the beneficiaries of carefully crafted tools which will lead them into their sweet spot at work.

THE QUEST FOR IMPERFECTION

We are imperfect people leading imperfect lives in an imperfect world.

We see evidence of this imperfection everyday in the mirror: whether it’s a receding hairline, wrinkles on our face, or the five pounds we’ve wanted to lose.

We are reminded of this imperfection periodically on the roadways: we get a flat tire, our car breaks down, or we are rear-ended.

We are taught this imperfection occasionally by nature: a tsunami wrecks a village, a tornado tears apart a town, or a hurricane decimates a city.

Even though we experience imperfection and accept it all around us, we still fall victim to our own perfectionist streaks from time to time. In her column for Yahoo! Finance, Penelope Trunk spots the dangers of perfectionism and advises readers to break the perfection habit.

The Debilitating Drawbacks of Perfectionism

A Hypercritical Attitude

Perfectionists suffer from an almost neurotic adherence to absurdly high standards. They agonize over the simplest of details, and they are intolerant with the slightest of errors.

Even worse, perfectionists may impose their exacting standards on others. For persons reporting to a perfectionist, the inability to match their manager’s lofty expectations can be intensely frustrating. Sensing their work will be judged as too slow or too sloppy (no matter much effort they put in), workers may be tempted to quit trying.

Paralysis by Analysis

Perfectionists may freeze up in the face of a project because they refuse to start until they see a chance of attaining perfection. Endlessly deliberating, they neglect action. By over-thinking, they rob themselves of initiative, and they may begin procrastinating.

Fear of Failure

Perfections have an irrational fear of failing. Instead of taking healthy risks, perfectionists focus all of their energy on maintaining a veneer of flawless performance. They are apt to squander time minimizing or hiding imperfections rather than capitalizing on their strengths.

Insights on Attaining Imperfection

Discern between Essentials and Non-essentials

A typo on the front page headline of the New York Times—essential. A typo on the agenda of an internal team meeting—non-essential. For those with the perfectionist bent, a healthy balance comes by recognizing which tasks require top-notch excellence and which tasks simply need to be completed adequately.

Cut Yourself (and Others) Some Slack

Mistakes are a natural part of life. Try as hard as we’d like, we still fail from time to time. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice gives us an outlet for mistakes, and mistakes teach us how to be better.

Embrace Uncertainty

Perfectionists are prone to delay decisions until every last piece of information has been gathered and scrutinized. For those paralyzed by perfectionism, progress comes by making room for uncertainty. Decisions will always be accompanied by a degree of the unknown, and, as such, it is vitally important for a leader to be comfortable taking action.

Perfection is a destination no one will ever reach. Excellence is a journey open to all. Strive to do your best, and realize the reality of imperfection.

To peruse the full text of Penelope Trunk’s article “Breaking the Perfection Habit,” visit Yahoo Finance! online: http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/careerist/30301