Review of Gallup’s STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0

Executive Summary

Gallup’s Strengthsfinder 2.0 comes with an assessment test that helps you discover your five biggest themes of strengths out of 34 possible themes. Having discovered your five key strengths, you can read about what these strengths mean and how you should use them to be more effective and how to deal with others who may have similar or other strengths.

Introduction

I have a strong interest in personality testing and its applications in the business and corporate world. In the past one year alone, I have tested myself on Gallup’s Strengthsfinder 2.0, Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument.

Why Personality testing?

Human beings are complex bundles of emotions, feelings, strengths, potential and weeknesses. They have goals, priorities and interests and are open to contradictions, confusion, opposite goals and situational issues. Personality testing is one of the techniques to simplify the discovery of an infinitely complex maze of human potential. 

These techniques are often criticised for being too simplistic. Often these are used to justify rather than discover. These are valid arguments. However, these techniques can be effectively used to select the right people to do a job or to put the right people in business and management succession.

I believe that used correctly, these techniques do have potential to help managers discover the right candidates for filling jobs, help boards plan succession of their key executives, and help people – both employees and business owners - to discover their innate strengths to build upon and be more effective.

Strengthsfinder 2.0

Let me discuss today one of these programmes - Strengthsfinder 2.0, which is an upgraded edition of the online test from Gallup and has a companion book by Tom Rath. 

The book explains each of the 34 themes of strengths that one may have. It quotes people having each of the strengths relate what the the theme sounds like, ideas for action and workihng with others who have that strength.

Why Strengthsfinder 2.0?

For one, Strengthsfinder 2.0 methodology is very robust and is based upon tests administered upon thousands of people that this research organization comes in contact with, resulting in very fine-tuned results of its assessment.

Second, it is based upon  the philosophy of discovering your strengths and investing your scarce time in developing your strengths rather than the conventional view of investing efforts in working on your weaknesses. In today’s world of hyper-specialisation and outsourcing, I think developing your strengths is much more important than removing weeknesses. The author says, the maxim “You can be anything you want to be, if you just hard enough” is misguided. Instead he argues, “You cannot be anything you want to be, but you can be a lot more of what you already are”.

What are the 34 themes of strengths: The 34 themes touch upon all possible areas of strengths - analytical, synethsis, people orientation, creativity and so on. A few of the themes are Adaptability, Command, Communication, Developer, Empathy, Futuristic and others.

How does it work?

When you buy Strengthsfinder 2.0, you get an access code to register and complete an online assessment. Make sure you that you get the code when you buy the book. If you buy second hand, then ensure that the code has not been used already because each access code is valid ofr one user only. Register, complete the assessment and view your strengths. Then, read the book or the report to learn the specific meaning of your five strengths.

How can you use it?

Discover and develop the strengths and learn how to work with people who have the same or other strengths – What are their expectations and how they differ from you. Hiring managers can use this test to find the candidate’s strengths and conceptualise specific programmes to further develop these strengths. An inventory of strengths can also help you place people in the right roles.

Buy the bookfrom Amazon and check out your strengths.

Share your strengths

Write your own experience in the Comments below. 

After you have taken the test, wouldn’t you like to let me and other blog readers know about your strengths?

How accurate has this test been in determining your strengths? Are these five the same as what you thought were your strengths? Let us know your thoughts?

Buy this book from Amazon or from your local bookstore. Ensure that you receive your access code to take the assessment test.