In 1998, Donald A Clifton and Tom Rath, along with a team of scientists at Gallup, introduced the online StrengthsFinder Assessment. In 2001 a book, authored by Clifton with Marcus Buckingham, based on their research project, was released. The book — Now, Discover Your Strengths — went on to become a bestseller. In 2007, the team released a second edition of the program titled StrengthsFinder 2.0.
The objective of the program is to identify the most prominent human strengths and apply them in ways that will help people (as well as organizations) realize their truest potential. In the book, the authors criticized traditional organizational training and human resource systems, saying that they were flawed in making the generalized assumption that all people could be trained to be competent in anything, and that their greatest scope for growth and self-actualization lay in their greatest weakness.
The 30-year research project undertaken by the Gallup team headed by Clifton involved about 2 million interviews and sought to debunk those assumptions and replace them with a new framework. According to the team’s findings, each person is endowed with unique and enduring talents and his or her strengths offered the greatest potential for growth and self-actualization.
The authors define strength as “consistent near perfect performance in an activity.” StrengthsFinder, a web-based assessment program, allows registered users to map their individual strengths along 34 dominant “themes” (which include Adaptability, Connectedness, Discipline, Individualization, Responsibility, etc.). Each theme has multiple combinations. Registered users will be presented with 180 items, each with a pair of potential self-descriptors. Participants have 20 seconds to select their responses. At the end of the exercise, they will receive an evaluation consisting of five significant strengths. They will also receive a strength-planning guide to apply their strengths in their work.
By extension, Gallup recommends Strengthsfinder as a useful tool to build organizational strength. The researchers argue that professionals who are not operating on their strengths exhibit negative reactions to work, including dread of the workplace, negative interactions with coworkers, bad attitudes to customers, poor opinion of their organization, reduced achievement levels and creative frustration.
The authors stress that strengths development interventions can significantly and favorably improve employee engagement. In order to build a strengths-based organization, human resources departments must recruit sensibly using the required talent as a base criterion and studying the talent exhibited by the best performers in the field. Performance must be measured not by competencies but by impact on business, customers and employees. Training time should be invested in educating employees on identifying and building strengths. Career paths and ladders should be carved with strengths as the foundation and benchmarked against superlative performance.
The only way you can take the StrengthsFinder online assessment is to buy the book. Purchasers will be provided with a unique 14-digit ID that enables access to the online assessment program.
Resources:
StrengthsFinder
Buy the book on Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, or NBCIndia.com
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