A few years back when I was running a 12 person IT department, I inherited what “Now, Discover Your Strengths” can bring to a team. My predecessor had purchased a copy for each team member and had them take the online assessment that comes with the book. (Note: You need a new copy of the book.  Used copies won’t have a fresh key allowing you to take the VERY IMPORTANT online assessment.)

The book describes 34 possible strengths areas and provides an online assessment for assessing the reader strengths. The author states that instead of working to repair our weak areas as if we were broken, we should identify areas where we are strong and make use of those strengths to perform at our best.

We were not a company that had a ton of money for expensive training and assessments so this book was a real treat. I purchased a copy for myself and for the new team members that hadn’t gone through it with my predecessor and without a huge investment we got some decent results.

I found that the insight provided by the assessment helped us better understand each other’s perspectives and why would would take the positions we took as individuals.  For example, we had several team members who were clearly “Learners.” These are folks that love to research and read and learn for the sake of learning. You could always count on these team members to become experts in whatever topic they took on.  However, sometimes these people could take forever. Because learning is was drove them, schedule and results typically took a back seat.  If left to themselves, they could become enthusiastic non-performers.

As a supervisor, I used this information to pair up “Learner” with “Achievers.” Achievers thrived on getting things done. They like meeting schedules and getting results.

When paired together “Learners” and “Achievers” complement each other well and  succeeded like they might not as individuals.

There is a “Woo” category (which is one of my strengths). These people enjoy interacting with others and get a thrill from meeting and connecting with them. Everyone clearly knew who these were on the team. It was interesting to see team members engage these folks when they needed help interacting with departments on issues that required some delicate handling. Again, here we were these very nonsense, get-things-done kind of programmers embracing what we learned about each other to leverage the traits of their fellow team members. The results were very real and practical.

Consider getting this book to help you identify your strengths, as the title implies, and the implications. I think you’ll get even more out of it in a team environment and how it helps team members learn about each other.

Feel free to ask some questions below.  I follow the comments closely and make a point of responding as quickly as I can.

Hope this helps.

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