Book Review: Find Your Strongest Life

Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


One day last summer while waiting for a girlfriend to join me for happy hour, I sent her the following text: "Retiring to back patio with Marcus and vino. C U soon."  Vino, she knew... but who is Marcus? "The only man in the world who understands me!"  And it's true... to any woman out there who is inclined to be put out because yet another man has written yet another book for women I say "This is Marcus Buckingham!  He gets it!  Plus, he has tons and tons of survey data backing up his conclusions."  The Buckingham formula is simple and delightful: there is nothing wrong with any of us that cannot be improved by what is right with any of us.  The path to great success, to highest achievement in learning or earning or living happily ever after, is across the lush green field of our unique strengths. So identify them, honor then, refine them, offer them, and employ them in every aspect of your life.  That is much more fun than wallowing in all the unfixable aspects of your personality or trying to develop a talent that just isn't there.

Like other Buckingham treasures, this one comes with an assessment tool - this time free - and this time helping us understand our strongest life roles.  It's reading the descriptors - based on comparison data with millions of other women around the world - that made me feel understood.  I know the advice is correct, too, because I have made important improvements in my life after applying the learnings from previous Buckingham books.  

BTW - my lead strength role is ADVISOR (with a MOTIVATOR back up) - so take MY advice: go get this book, do the assessment, pour yourself a glass of vino, and spend some time getting to know and appreciate the best you!

As usual, I have put together a two-summary.  Download it free by clicking here.

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Books with Tools, Part 2

Last week I wrote about the tools and exercises found in some of my favorite books.  Such tools can allow for self-assessment, create a means for solidifying learning, and point people in the direction of positive change in a way that narrative alone cannot do.  Here are some more of my favorites, perhaps a little different from what we ordinarily think of as business books. As always, I am writing about books that I highly recommend picking up and reading.  But - if you want to know more before investing the money or time, you can access a free download of a two-page summary written by me. Just click on the title of the book.



Overcoming That Pessimistic Outlook.  Too often in organizational life we can succumb to the least hopeful of the strands of thinking around us.  It seems the person with the upbeat style is the one regarded as out of touch. But Professor Martin Seligman is here to tell us in Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Change Your Life that the people with the most optimistic viewpoints are the most successful among us.  In chapter after chapter he reviews the evidence and makes the case that in sports, offices, school, politics, and families, optimism is a winning strategy.  The second half of the book is for those of us who struggle to be optimistic.  With a 48-question self-assessment, each reader can get a sense of their own starting point.  Then, by imagining our own scenarios and following Dr. Seligman's worksheets, we can gain practice at challenging our initial reactions and choosing better ones.  Over time, if we follow the formula, we can make the optimistic perspective more natural.  Then, look out world!



Overcoming a Penchant for Poverty.  What a service Barbara Stanny has done for all of us who were told as little girls that talking about money is not nice and that we should be focused on taking care of others!  The exercises and resources she packs into The Secrets of Six Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life are a great boon to all of us struggling see our value rewarded properly in the workplace.  After interviewing dozens of women who earn good incomes, she sets out to help us all understand what they have in common... and offers their wisdom to the rest of us.  I never thought about how I was contributing to my financial troubles until I took the Am I an Underearner? quiz.  And now I know... the solution to balancing my budget is on the income side. Go to work with an intent to make money, sister!  You're not selling out your soul... you are taking responsibility! 


Overcoming Motivational Barriers:  Carrots and sticks don't work.  I think most of us knew that about sticks... but carrots?  Nope... they backfire too.  Offering a kid a dollar for every A on his report card might get you a flight of A's in the short term... but in the long term you are diminishing that kid's natural desire to do well.   Well-meaning as we are, we just can't motivate others.  But, with practice, we can learn to tap the powerful internal motivations of those around us.  That's the chief lesson in Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, the last 65 pages of which is a Toolkit chock-full of ideas and strategies for awakening our internal motivators and helping others without harming them.  Well-written, charming, fun and, yes, motivational, Drive is a must-read for every leader or manager who is swimming upstream against under-performing co-workers. 


Overcoming Indecision:  Of all the "glad I read that one" books on my shelf, the one I mention in conversation most often is The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Professor Barry Schwartz.  It changed my life... and it can change yours, too.  With some little quizzes and self-tests the author guides us to an understanding of our natural tendencies toward satisfaction with the choices we make... or our proclivity to beat ourselves up after decisions.  After making the case that we often make ourselves crazy with all the options we have (straight leg or boot cut? big deductible or higher premium? 1% or skim?) Schwartz gives us a series of strategies for learning to be more sanguine about our choices.  Learn to accept that good enough is good enough and move on!  What an important concept!

Books with Tools, Part 1

Some of the best books in personal and organizational development contain assessment tools or exercises that enrich the learning experience for individuals or groups.  I have found many of these tools useful in my consulting practice, working with organizations on planning, team building, or otherwise improving their processes or operations.  Here are some of my favorites. Click on the title of any of these books to download a free two-page summary written by me.  

The Strengths Series:  One of the fastest and best ways there is to help a group of people unite as a team is to have them each take the Strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment online and then share their results with each other.  The code for the online test comes with several books, each building upon the last.  Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton (The Free Press 2001) explains the strengths theory in some detail and provides tips for managing or working with individuals who have the various signature themes of talent.   Strengths-Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie (Gallup Press 2008) breaks the signature themes into categories and shows how well-rounded teams make the most of each individual's unique talents.  Another great one by Marcus Buckingham, Go, Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance does not make use of the 34 signature themes but provides its own online tool for identifying strategies individual readers can use to offer more of their best at work.



Building Functional Teams:  The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, 2002) is a fable-style story about the most common barriers work groups most overcome if they are to be effective.  The book contains a 15-question self-assessment that I have used productively both to help client organizations determine how they might work together better and also to measure progress over the course of a team-building project. 



Understanding the Nature of Trust: When Stephen M.R. Covey and Rebecca Merrill first published The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything (Free Press, 2006) I was truly amazed at what a rich and deep subject matter the nature of trust can be.  The authors provide easy-to-understand bullets on what they call the "Four Cores of Credibility" and also the "13 Behaviors of Trust" which make a nice handout for groups wrestling with trust issues.  Because the most important action anyone can take to rebuild trust where it has been lost is to address their own trustworthiness, the authors provide two self-assessments that individuals always find eye-opening, if not disturbing. 


The Habits of Successful Organizations:  Those interested in a book that is more worksheets, checklists, and templates than actual narrative will be glad to pick up Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Businesses that Learn, Last and Lead by Gary Harpst (Synergy Books, 2007).  Harpst, the founder and CEO of an organizational development firm, provides dozens of illustrations for each of the six areas of the cycle of excellence he describes: 1) Decide What is Important, 2) Set Goals that Lead, 3) Align Systems, 4) Work the Plan, 5) Innovate Purposefully, and 6) Step Back.  There are tools for analyzing likely return on investment, for collecting stakeholder feedback on draft goals, for conducting brainstorming exercises, and hundreds more. 

There are many books such as these with tools and exercises to explore and deploy, so check back here next week for more.