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Go Put Your Strengths to Work

Discuss "Go Put Your Strengths to Work" here.

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Permalink Reply by Linda Rowley on March 13, 2012 at 2:46am

Go Put Your Strengths to Work was my first foray into Marcu's strengths philosophy. I read it on the 1st January 2009, sitting with the summer sun peaking over my shoulder at a Buddhist retreat. It resonated with me on such a deep level, it set the tone for the remainder of my year. Returning home from the retreat, I devoured all I could on strengths, purchasing copies of the other books and eating up the words on the page. It changed my life. Inspired, I made contact with TMBC and flew to the US (from my home town in rural Australia) later that year to be among the first independent consultants to be trained in Simply Strengths. To this day, it still inspires me, guides my work and fuels my passion for life.

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Permalink Reply by Judith Onton on March 20, 2012 at 9:30pm

I am starting the Go book with my team this week. I got the Trombome Player Wanted videos. I am doing it with local team and use WebEx to include one staff member in Canada. I have other team members around the world- 2 in China, 1 in Taiwan and 1 in India. Do you have any suggestions for including them in our discussions? The time difference makes it really hard for us to get together all at once.

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Permalink Reply by John Leptien on July 22, 2012 at 4:09pm

Try an open IM so everyone can use the "Chat" feature to discuss at different times.

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Permalink Reply by Val Baguios III on May 23, 2012 at 8:03am

In the book, it mentions that the personality of a person can both be influenced by NATURE and NURTURE (almost 50-50..)

Marcus mentioned that, indeed 40-50% is NATURE. But the remaining influence doesn't fall on NURTURE- quoting the book:

"How you were raised has absolutely no impact on your personality at all."

However, further on page 58 he quoted Judith Rich Harris book stating that it is these 2 major things:

chance
peers

Isn't this somehow "nurture" ? Specially "peers" because peers can be the people at home and how they relate to you in a daily basis.

Then while I was thinking about this, a few paragraphs below says:

"peers in the sense that your peers are the most reliable sources of information about you and, in particular, about what your true strengths are..."

I kinda' lost my thoughts there, I thought the book was talking about the things that influence your personality and not the things that can tell you what your personality are.

Can anyone clarify this?

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Permalink Reply by Bruce on September 11, 2012 at 1:34am

My take is that "peers" refers to you people in your same age group, or in a work context, your contemporaries--people in the same field as you (e.g. fellow doctors; fellow accountants; etc).

I think "nurture" usually means how you were raised, or the environment you grew up in.

With studies, context is important. I bet the one Marcus refers to involved studying people who went to school or work early in their life (which is fair). In that context, fellow school students or fellow employees would be your peers. But if you were home-schooled in a rural community with few other children and spent most of your time with your family, things would be different since they'd be your peers.

The idea, I think, is that fitting in with your peers or effectively navigating that situation when you are young has an impact on your personality. [Which is not necessarily something I believe; I'm just clarifying the idea that was shared and sharing my interpretation of it.]

But this is all very theoretical. Interesting, but theoretical.

My focus is usually on "Does this work for me? Does this resonate with me?" And sometimes, "Does this work for other people?"

For me, that's what matters.

If you want to then begin sharing ideas that something you use is based on with other people, then communicating the ideas in integrity (and vetting ideas more closely) becomes more relevant. But then, if you practice what you share, your own life experience will often be the best example--research and theories just support it.

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Hart on June 1, 2012 at 8:30am

Excellent resource. I am finding that this method of strengths assessment is much more practical than only taking an online test. Just as Marcus says, "No one can tell you that you are wrong" when it comes to the activities you truly love. Taking those top strength activities and finding out how to use them more than your weaknesses is a great exercise.

Has anyone here used the big box of curriculum in your organization? (http://tmbc.com/index.php/tools/strengths-essentials). I am interested in using this in the future along with StandOut.

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Permalink Reply by Bharath Gopalan on December 1, 2012 at 12:15am

Go Put Your Strengths To Work - impelled me into action even before I finished reading it. I have been instigating my teammates to read the book so as to trigger conversations on their strengths. My idea is to have all the members to work on their strong week plans and then once they have the strength statements, I want to draw up the complete Strength pool of our team, based on which I would like to reallocate activities and accountabilities to individuals. I am just thinking loud on this possibility of turning work into fun without compromising on the results.

I would like to learn from your examples where you have turned the ideas discussed in the book into an organisational intervention. Can you share any?