Customer Reviews

The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(65)
3 star:		(31)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I was about to graduate from high school, I did not know what I was going to do with my life or what I wanted to be. Because of my indecision, I got my share of well-intentioned advice: "Do what you're good at." "Go where the money is." "You'll figure it out later. Just get a job."

I wish I had Marcus Buckingham's "The Truth About You" back then. Buckingham's advice to success is simple: Work on your strengths. But it is his definition of "strength" that makes a world of difference. To him, strength is not something you're good at but something that excites you, something that you look forward to, something that makes you strong. The idea of focusing on how it feels when we're doing something rather than on how well we perform it has changed the way I look at my life and my work for the better. Now I don't feel embarrassed that I'm not good at math or regretful that I did not follow my teacher's advice (you're good at writing; therefore, you should be a lawyer). Instead, I give myself permission to concentrate on using what I'm good at in ways that make me feel accomplished and fulfilled. That does not necessarily mean it will translate into buckets and buckets of money. However, it sure beats waking up every morning to go to a job you do well but dread and hate.

"The Truth About You" is a very short book designed to be used in conjunction with the DVD (included with the book) where Buckingham talks about the three myths that stand in people's way to a better and more successful life and job career. The book not only expands on the material covered on the DVD but it also functions as a workbook with exercises to help the readers discover their strengths and weaknesses.

This book is obviously meant for soon-to-be-high-school graduates and college students still exploring their career options, but I would highly recommend it to older adults who are contemplating job changes or want/need to start a new career.

Marcus Buckingham is a dynamic, persuasive speaker, charming and attractive, with a delightful English accent. Watch him speak and you find yourself sitting up straighter and deciding that you CAN improve your life.

But the words that are inspirational coming out of his mouth fall flat on the page. THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU tries to harness his dynamism and persuasiveness in book format, and it's not entirely successful.

His message is a valuable and valid one: Identify your strengths, and play to them.

But passages such as "In school, you knew which subjects you were drawn to, the ones that grabbed your attention and wouldn't let it go, the ones where class time flew by and before you knew it the bell had rung and, though you wouldn't have admitted it to your friends, you almost felt like you wanted to do the class all over again," are, well, insipid, and wordy, and boring. But when he says these words into the camera, somehow it works.

The book is short: 112 pages, with the first chapter starting on page 25, widely spaced, with places to answer questions aimed at helping you identify your strengths. Inexplicably, it's awkwardly bound and can't be removed from the bulky packaging. The book itself isn't much use and the DVD is undoubtedly where Buckingham's strengths lie. I was able to view five "strength tips" but the 24-minute film itself wouldn't play on my computer.

SUMMARY: The message is good, and it works if you can imagine a tiny Marcus Buckingham dancing across the pages emoting to you (or if you watch the video while you read). But overpackaged, overpriced, overly simple writing.

"The Truth About You" is pretty much your standard self-help book but what makes this stand out is that the advice is straight forward, practical, and best of all, it isn't cheesy like most self-help books. What is special about this book is that unlike many books, this is more like a guide. It is divided up into three components; a DVD with a short video that is also a CD for your computer with some bonus tips and materials to help you along the way; secondly, the actual book; third, a (re)memo pad (which is explained in the book).

"The Truth About You" works simply because it's relatable for those who feel a bit hampered and drained by their professions and work. The guide opens with simple statements that will help you figure out what your problems at work may be. From there, the book turns into a journal/workbook where author Marcus Buckingham asks you specific questions meant to help you figure out your 'path to success'. This is what I enjoyed most about this book/kit: instead of just boring the reader with motivational speak and little tips you should follow, Buckingham took the time to create space within the book where you must fill in information specific to you and gives you ways that you can use this information to find happiness through work. Yes, some of the book is repetitive and a bit simple, which is why I don't feel like this is a five-star book, BUT unlike many self-help guides, this one actually calls for you to be engaged in diagnosing your issues and gives you something to do long after you read the book.

In all, quick read, enjoyed what I saw and learned from the DVD and what I read in the book and especially liked that it gives me something to work on in the coming weeks. Definitely worth checking out.

Here is a great piece advice: Find something in which you have found success, something that you look forward to doing, something that makes time fly by, something that is incredibly easy for you to focus on and something that fulfills a need of yours... and then do it. Find ways to do it in your job, no matter what your job is. Find ways to incorporate that into your relationships, your free time, anywhere and everywhere. This is Marcus Buckingham's advice in "The Truth about You". This is not new advice, but it is concise and timely for nearly everyone.

I work with so many college and young career friends of mine who are constantly trying to figure out what the heck they should be doing with life. Buckingham provides some good help in "Now, Discover Your Strengths" and this book and others of his have been helpful for some of my friends and even personally."The Truth about You" is a book in the same vein, minus the testing component of the Strength Finder. But the easiest way to say it is it is dumbed-down. It is simplified. The "book" has three components. A 24-minute DVD, a 110 page book, and a memo pad to use as a tool to take notes on daily moments where you find your strengths and your weaknesses.

The book uses a large font, lots of blank pages and too much empty space on each page. I read it in one setting in about 60 minutes in depth. The DVD is really well done and Buckingham is fun to listen to. Yet he is pretty much reading the book word for word in a dramatic, motivational-presentation style voice. The memo pad is a good idea, it takes steps to really engage a whole new level of learning that simple reading cannot. Yet, instead of a spiral notepad, they could have included a 3x5 card to slip in your wallet or purse instead.

I also have to say that I didn't like the tone Buckingham uses in this book. Cocky is the word I think of. With phrases like, "[in your hands right now] you're holding that answers to these questions", and "[this is...] the best advice you will ever get". Maybe in order to make the book concise he chose to speak in absolutes on every single page. He offers little support or solid reasoning for most of his claims in this book; this is a departure from his previous work.

Unfortunately the book doesn't seem to introduce much new material and is over-packaged. It tried to make up for it by having a DVD and hip formatting, but ultimately lacks quality content.

As you can tell I was disappointed by this book. I really like his other books, but this is a step in the wrong direction. It would be a good primer for someone who is new to the idea of personal strengths or who has spent little time in personal professional development.

Although the description of this product suggests that it is "perfect" for high school, college students, young professionals, and people wanting to revitalize their career, the primary target for this workbook is definitely for a younger population. I would suggest this product is most appropriate for people between age 16 to individuals in their late 20s. Being fortyish, this DVD and workbook were really too juvenile for my taste. I was so bored with the DVD it was a real test of my patience to even finish watching it and I was never able to complete the workbook assignments. If you have kids in high school or college who are confused about their vocational abilities and skills this might be an appropriate resource for them. Older more experienced adults who are looking to "revitalize their career" should look elsewhere as they'll likely be disappointed in this product.

I'd heard of Marcus Buckingham only recently, so I jumped at the chance to review one of his newer books, The Truth About You.

In a nutshell, Marcus Buckingham is all about playing to one's strengths, encouraging readers to listen to and move in the direction of that which energizes us. First, he says, we must identify our strengths, a strength being more than just something we're good at. A strength can be any area where we feel success, are drawn to do instinctively and/or are challenged to grow. Once readers have identified strengths, he challenges us to look for roles (career and otherwise) where our strengths will be welcomed. And lastly, he explains how to mold career situations to our strengths.

The Truth About You is an easy-to-read approach to some of life's tough questions, i.e. "what am I supposed to do with my life?" This nifty little book includes an introductory DVD (which I highly recommend watching first), a neat little memo pad for jotting down strengths, and places throughout the book to record strength statements. This would make an excellent gift for a college student or recent graduate just about to enter the work force. But anyone contemplating a career change would benefit from this book. Buckingham's passion for helping people live into their strengths shines through clearly, and his engaging style (not to mention his delightful English accent) make it an easy but worthwhile read.

I recently read "The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success" by Marcus Buckingham and found the book interesting. The book comes in three pieces: a ~30-minute DVD, an actual book and a notepad, stylized as a "ReMemo" pad.

Truly, I cannot decide if I liked the DVD (which the book asks you watch before reading) or not. I have a personal preconceived notion that a charismatic guy talking about self-discovery is faking it. Mr. Buckingham seems very genuine, but for me, I had to work hard to actually listen to him. In reality, the DVD has some great basic "truths" about life--nothing groundbreaking or worthy of a call to mother to tell her you've discovered the newest nugget required for life.

The book is an "interactive book", which I wasn't sure what that meant when I started reading it. I expected the book and the DVD to work in tandem with each other, to be weaved into use more. After watching the DVD before reading the book, the DVD is referenced but not used again. An interactive book, in this case, means the book, while mostly text to read, does include various prompts with space for you to write a response.

My biggest critique is that the book seems to just repeat what the DVD already said. Sure, there's a bit more depth and reading it gives you a chance to think about it in a different way, but I had the urge to skip paragraphs because of the "I've already heard this from him" line of thought.

That being said, I think the book still has a great market--groups. While individually, I think the book was good--not great--as a self-discovery tool, the book has great potential to be used as part of a group to help individual members discover more about their strengths and weaknesses. Whether you're a corporation, a prayer group or whatever else, using this DVD/book/notepad set as a guided practice to help individuals discover and discuss the results would be quite fruitful. As an individual, I wanted to "skip ahead to the good stuff", but the good stuff about this book is what my mind naturally wanted me to skip. In a group setting, I would have been "called out" early for this and been able to more deeply enjoy the book's strengths.

In short, if you're really yearning to discover more about your strengths or weaknesses, give this book a try. If you feel alright about what you already know, find a group of folks who are like-minded or are yearning and experience this book together.

Disclaimer: I was given this book by the publisher, Thomas Nelson, as part of a program for book reviewers, but given no direction to follow nor compensation for this review.

Every now and then I come across a really cool book. This is one of them.

he best part of it is that it gives you a whole different way of understanding strengths and weaknesses. Strengths are not necessarily those things you do well, and weaknesses are not necessarily those things you're not good at. Sometimes your biggest greatest weakness appears to be a strength.

For example, I am really good at organizing. I can come into a room, see what's out of place, and figure out how to organize that room into something that functions smoothly. I can also organize people, events, schedules, whatever. You can show me total chaos, and I will create order quickly, and set up a system for maintaining it.

However, I HATE to do it. When I look at a situation that needs that kind of management, I can feel myself actually "deflate". It takes real effort for me to dive in and do the work. I can delegate it well, or draw up a plan to have others do it, and that's fine, but to do it myself? Yikes. This is why my house isn't exactly a poster home for Martha Stewart.

There are other things that really light my fire - like knitting, believe it or not - that I'm really bad at. However, I love the rhythm of knitting, and the fact that you can see progress really quickly (well, others can. I take it out just as often as I knit it up).

The book shows you things you can do to avoid the areas of your weakness as much as possible, and live your life mostly in your strengths. It's written mostly to teenagers, but I got a lot out of it, and wish I had read it when I was MUCH younger. It comes with a DVD and a special notepad to help you get started.

My own fault, I should've researched it a bit more...but the book was way to expensive for what it's worth. Like I said, my own fault but I didn't realize I'd be paying in US dollars. Ended up costing me twice as much as I could afford.
Not worth that much.

Marcus Buckingham is an English stud of a thinker and performance coach who has risen to world-wide recognition due greatly to his "strengths-based" ideals. Buckingham was the first guru I ever heard effectively distill the tension between strengths and weaknesses to draw actionable axioms that span workplace, ministry team, home/parental and even personal contexts. His latest installment, The Truth About You, is really a continuation of his conceptual stream of consciousness.

Frankly, this publication offers little in the way of distinctively new ideas or vantage points. What it instead seems to achieve is a process-promoting package whereby readers are encouraged to engage in an introspective journey using the book, DVD and even a quaint memo pad to delve into their own make-up. In that sense, it takes his previous works and puts some sticky tape to the key points. If you are new to Buckingham, then this is probably a great entry point into the body of his works. If you're a veteran, this may seem a bit redundant due to the overlapping nature of content. Certainly it's a great reminder to free up the energy associated with maximizing core strengths over belaboring intrinsic weaknesses or deficiencies (morals and spiritual fruits aside, of course!). The illustrations, battle-cries to operate out of objective principles ("first figure out the what then the how") and encouragement to see individuality as an asset versus hindrance are refreshingly witty.