Customer Reviews

Living Your Strengths - Discover Your God-given Talents And Inspire Your Community

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

We have just begun to use this text and accompanying workbook and video at our church for a seven-week study to determine our God given talents and calling. Apparently this material is also used in business for the same purpose. The initial process is to go online and take a strength finder assessment (approx. 30-40) minutes. This assessment then provides the user with a ranking of their top five strengths. Note: Each book has a unique code that can be used only once to take the assessment. The results from that assessment is then the basis for the remainder of the study, e.g., six weeks in the workbook. I have not read through the entire book. Most of the content is concerned with describing the thirty-four "themes" (e.g., strenghts). I would not recommend purchasing the book without the accompanying "Journey" workbook - and I would think that doing this on your own (with the book and workbook) would be valuable but not as vaulable as doing it in a small group.

Are you on the right track? Do you wonder about why you love doing certain things and dislike others? Do you wonder why you react in certain ways? Are your looking for a better way to make right decisions, enjoy peace of mind, and live in harmony with others. This may be the book for you.

The Catholic edition of "Living Your Strengths" is an extension of "strengths" research begun more than forty years ago by Dr. Donald Clifton of the Gallup Organization. Clifton researched the natural patterns of thought, feeling, and action of two million people in more than 25 countries. The result is the Clifton StrengthsFinder, a tool that reveals a person's top five themes of talent - one's Signature Themes.

The Signature Themes are unique to the individual. According to Gallup, the chance of finding someone with your Signature Themes, in the same order, is 1 in 33 million and the chance of finding someone with your top ten themes of talent is 1 in 3 trillion. Finding one's themes and understanding their uniqueness should help one to gain a better appreciation of how special they are and how special the people around them are - deeper self-respect, deeper mutual respect.

The book is organized around the use of the StrengthsFinder (provided with the purchase of the book) to assess and affirm our talents, and how to use our talents for growth and service. There are thirty four identified talents ranging from achiever, maximizer, ideation, individualization, and significance to woo.

This edition of "Living Your Strengths" is aimed at Catholic parishes and parishioners and incorporates language familiar to Catholic audiences. The authors believe it will unravel the adventure we have been on since we were born - the adventure God gave us - and will help us realize our potential as God intended.

Participants have three reactions to taking the StrengthsFinder:
* Amazement at its accuracy
* Genuine surprise - "perceived weaknesses are really valuable talents"
* Gratitude

Most of us generally are not harnessing the power of our innate gifts. We are not fulfilling God's purpose...and we do not even know it! "Living Your Strengths" provides a tool so we can assess these God-given talents and harness them in the betterment of ourselves, our families, and the various communities we participate in.

I was very excited to receive this book, as I had recently been to a workshop at a conference singing the praises of the Gallup-developed strength finder system. I was able to use the code in the book jacket with no problem and it was great to get the results, but I was a little disappointed with the rest of the book from that point. The bulk of the book is just descriptions of the strengths, so of the 30-some-odd most folks will only need to read their five. The rest of the book was pretty much five-point checklists with some ways to be in ministry, which, while nice for the layperson, wasn't the meaty stuff I was hoping for since I am in a church vocation. I am interested in perhaps getting the original (Now, Discover Your Strengths) hoping that it will go into greater detail about how to use the strengths, not just identify them. I'll probably flip through it at a bookstore first, just to be sure. I found the online survey very enlightening and want many folks I know and work closely with to take it! That part was very satisfying.

Are you on the right track? Do you wonder about why you love doing certain things and dislike others? Do you wonder why you react in certain ways? Are you looking for a better way to make right decisions, enjoy peace of mind, and live in harmony with others. This may be the book for you.

"Living Your Strengths" is an extension of "strengths" research begun more than forty years ago by Dr. Donald Clifton of the Gallup Organization. Clifton researched the natural patterns of thought, feeling, and action of two million people in more than 25 countries. The result is the Clifton "StrengthsFinder," a tool that reveals a person's top five themes of talent - one's "Signature Themes."

A "Strength" is the ability to provide consistent, near-perfect performance in a given activity. This ability is a powerful, productive combination of talent, skill, and knowledge. Talents are naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. Unlike skills and knowledge, talents exist within you and cannot be acquired. We must first need to identify, affirm, and apply our unique mix of talents then apply them.

Clifton's research highlights folly of the widely used "weakness prevention" model - to be successful, we must "fix" our weaknesses. This thinking is wrong. Building a life around one's greatest natural abilities rather than trying to repair weaknesses is the path to success.

The book is organized around the use of the StrengthsFinder (provided with the purchase of the book) to identify, assess and affirm our Signature Themes (talents), and how to apply them for growth and life success. There are thirty four identified talents ranging from achiever, maximizer, ideation, individualization, and significance to woo.

The Signature Themes are unique to the individual. According to Gallup, the chance of finding someone with your Signature Themes, in the same order, is 1 in 33 million and the chance of finding someone with your top ten themes of talent is 1 in 3 trillion. Finding one's themes and understanding their uniqueness should help one to gain a better appreciation of how special they are and how special the people around them are - deeper self-respect, deeper mutual respect.

Most of us generally are not harnessing the power of our innate gifts. We are not fulfilling our purpose...we do not even know it! "Living Your Strengths" provides a tool so we can assess our talents and harness them in the betterment of ourselves, our families, and the various communities we participate in.

Well I'm not sure if it was written in the book description or not, but the web-based assessment that this book is tied to, requires the purchase of a NEW book. Once the code is used to register at the website it is void, and codes cannot be purchased independently. Anyone buying this book used is not getting the complete purchase and unless you purchase another product allowing you access, a used book is relatively uninspired. Oh well, lesson learned.

The thing I like about this book is its practical and positive orientation about giving voice to one's own set of talents and how this contributes towards community building. The whole orientation of its philosophy is so commonsensical one gets struck that one never thought about talents and skills that way. Nonetheless, this positive orientation seems to take a one-sided approach that diminishes the totally real reality of weakness and failures (or probably that's just me being rather cynical!). Also, the online-assessment is a very good one, although the fact that one has to buy a book to get a one-time, one person access code seems to be motivated more by marketing ideals, rather than pure good intention of helping out people discover themselves. All in all, it's a must read for serious community builders and church leaders.

I had to get this book for a class and ordered it used. Unknown to me, this book has an associated online assessment that has an access code. Each book has a unique access code and can only be used once. I was unable to take the quiz and that is a large part of what this book is about. Buy this book new if you want to get the full benefits.

This book is the "spiritual/Christian" version of the renowned and completely accurate Strengthsfinder assessment. It has the same strengthsfinder assessment that you would find in any other of the Gallup books; however, this book focuses on Christians and how we can use our God-given talents to draw nearer to him, discover who God has made us to be, and begin to inspire others.

I completely recommend it as an individual who has taught and is continuing to teach this course at my church.

Blessings on your discovery to discover your calling in Christ as you discover who he has innately created you to be.

We used this book on a church staff retreat because it was suggested by our resource leader. Everyone was provided a copy and did the assessment on their own. It was a quick, and enjoyable read and gave us good information to both discover each other's talents and how we can work together as a team. We plan to keep an extra copy on hand for new staff as they are hired.

Once the access code from the inside jacket is used, it can never be used again. This means that you cannot buy this book used, borrow a copy from a friend, or even share it with a spouse. It seems like a marketing scheme to sell more books. We keep having to buy new copies for each member of our family. Owning 4 of these books is ridiculous!