Now, Discover Your Strengths

by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D.

Fair Warning:  This book is trying to sell you something (it even gives a free sample).  On the other hand, what they are selling may well be worth buying!

Background:  This book and it's predecessor companion, First, Break All the Rules purport to present a system of assessing personal strengths developed from a statistical analysis of more than 25 years of in-depth interviews by the Gallup organization.  That research is presented as identifying 34 fundamental "talents".  Talents are defined as "any recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied."  p.48.  These are the spontaneous, top-of-the-mind approaches that an individual instinctively takes to the thousand or so small decisions that make up a day's activity.  They operate on the "T1" lines of an individual's brain and result in activity that is satisfying to the individual.  We are drawn to situations where we can operate in our talents, and our talent-supported actions are practically flawless nearly every time.  pp. 67-75. 

Deep Background: the co-author, Donald O. Clifton, is chairman of the Gallup Organization, Inc.  In 1969, he resigned as Professor of Education Psychology at the University of Nebraska and founded Selection Research, Inc. (SRI).  SRI focused on the fields of personnel selection, management research, and survey research.  SRI bought the Gallup Organization in 1988 and retained the Gallup name.  Dr. Clifton is still actively involved with public education, as evidenced by his membership on the Board of Directors of the Public Education Network.  Now and First both reflect this education background in numerous examples drawn from the education world. 

The Book:  Now is divided into three parts.  Part I "The Anatomy of a Strength" defines strengths in terms of underlying talents plus knowledge (including experience) and skills.  Examples from famous individuals such as Colin Powell help provide a handle on the concepts. 

Part II "Discover the Source of Your Strengths", talks about both experiential methods of identifying talents (yearnings, rapid learning, satisfaction from usage, etc.) and the Strengths Finder on-line assessment instrument available at www.strengthsfinder.com.  Purchase of the book includes a code that logs the owner in to the site to take the assessment and get a report on his or her top five talents.  This part ends with a chapter describing each talent theme in some depth and giving quotations from interviews with those with a strong talent in the area to help the reader hear what such a talent "sounds like."  The thirty-four strengths are:

Part III focuses on how to apply these concepts in the work world.  This includes answering what they have found to be frequently asked questions such as "Are any of the themes opposites?" or "Can I develop new themes if I don't like the ones I have?" (The short answer to both questions is, "No.")  This section also includes a section about how to manage individuals with each of the themes, and a section on how to build an organization around the understanding of strengths.

Gallup is prepared to assist in building an organization around strengths, and even has seminars, assessment tools, etc. specifically oriented to school systems.  These tools purport to help recruit, screen, hire, develop and retain the highest quality teachers and principals.  See http://education.gallup.com. 

Now, here is where the trial lawyer in me steps up.  These books are basically Gallup's testimony on direct examination.  They are Gallup's story told in Gallup's fashion.  But, as yet, I have not had the opportunity to cross-examine.  So, while I am prepared to accept the possible validity of Gallup's approach and their tools, and while my own strengths assessment through their web instrument both rang true and provided some insight into my past experiences, I reserve judgment.  (My top five are:  Ideation, Strategic, Learner, Input, and Relator.) 

In Now, Buckingham and Clifton recommend a "concurrent validity" study for any organization considering using these instruments.  To conduct such a study, the organization would have to both identify talent themes and measure the performance effectiveness of a particular category of employee in order to determine which theme patterns were significant in identifying the most effective employees.  However, I can find no information in the book or on Gallup's site about such a "concurrent validity" study with teachers.  Moreover, several things I do know about teacher effectiveness and the evaluation thereof make me cautious.

First, Tennessee's value-added analysis system (TVAAS) has demonstrated the importance of effective teachers:

• Three straight years of 5^th quintile teachers from 3^rd through 5^th grades result in math scores averaging the 85^th to 95^th percentile. Three straight years of the least effective (1^st quintile) teachers result in scores from the 35^th to 45^th percentile.  
• 4th grade students in the bottom quartile had a 62% chance of passing the math portion of our old high school competency test if they had four straight years of the most effective math teachers in grades 5-8, but only a 16% chance if they had four straight years of the least effective. 
• High achieving students gain little or nothing during years when they are with a 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd quintile teacher.  

We do not know what criteria Gallup used to identify highly-effective teachers.  If it was principal or administrator evaluations, then two cautionary notes apply.  First, checks on how TVAAS data match with administrator evaluations have been generally positive, but there are a certain number of administrators who are apparently "out-of-touch" with the effectiveness of their teachers.  Second, in Now, the authors recount the case of a large telecommunications company with 5000 customer service representatives.  Gallup did a strengths theme analysis which was tied to the companies internal customer satisfaction surveys and managers evaluations.  The managers did not give the highest ratings to the same representatives that customers rated highly.  The managers rated representatives who were high in Responsibility and Harmony (which happened to make them "easy" to manage), while the customers picked representatives who were high in themes that made them more proactive for customers, but perhaps more of a challenge for their managers.  The parallel to principals as evaluators of teachers is obvious. 

As noted, Gallup has something to sell.  It certainly seems to make sense.  My own experience with it has been positive.  But, at this point, it seems not to have been subjected to the acid test.