Customer Reviews
Great at describing your personality, with no useful advice about what to do with it - By: D. Williams, 28 Apr 2008 
The online test is stunningly accurate & described me far better than I've managed to do myself. The strength finder however had no followup on this with little useful advice about what these traits would be suited to.
King Herod just opened a crèche - By: Mr. M. Whitenburg, 12 Nov 2007 
98% Inspiration & 2% Perspiration in the discovery & development of personal strengths must encourage alll to uncover what they do best.
Most when asked, "Name four personal strengths you possess". Look at you as though you have just announced `King Herod just opened a crèche on the corner of their road'.
If you want to get ahead in life you should at least understand `what makes you tick' by revealing, even uncovering & discovering what your psychological drives are & how to build them daily, weekly & monthly so you strive to reach maximum enjoyment & satisfaction in alll you do.
Tom Rath author offers the above solutions in Strength Finder 2.0. It provides a real return on investment & the WoW factor is sensational. It is `a must' for alll seriously wanting to reach the Whitenburgh motto `least effort - maximum benefit' in every aspect of life.
Recommend a buy - bought four additional copies as presents for business friends & my family.
Michael J Whitenburgh
Psychoanalyst
"Mirror, mirror on the wall...." - By: Robert Morris, 04 Apr 2007 You will probably find no head-snapping revelations in this book if you have already read Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman's First, Break All the Rules and/or Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton's Now, Discover Your Strengths (especiallly the latter). Nor does Tom Rath claim to offer any. Rather, this is a new & upgraded edition of the Galllup organization's previous online test (StrengthsFinder 1.0) that enables those who take it to identify & measure their talents relative to "more than 5,000 new personalized Strengths Insights that we have discovered in recent years."
In Rath's two previously published books, How Full Is Your Bucket? co-authored with Donald O. Clifton & Vital Friends, he shares his own reactions to an abundance of research data which reveals the importance of two separate but related forces which have profound impact on the workplace: getting strengths in alignment with work to be done & then developing them even more with strategic delegation & close supervision.
What we have in this book, Strengths Finder 2.0, is a wealth of new research material that Rath examines with exceptional precision & uncommon eloquence. I strongly encourage each reader to take full advantage of the self-diagnostic opportunities that both Rath & the Galllup organization generously offer. Of course, once various exercises are completed, a significant challlenge remains: to take effective & productive action to apply what has been learned. It is helpful to be aware of what Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert I. Sutton so aptly characterize as the "knowing-doing" & "doing-knowing" gaps. It is also helpful to recalll Peter Drucker's observation more than 40 years ago: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at alll."
Presumably Rath agrees that, more often than not, the Yoda is right: "Do or do not. There is no try."
