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.
After the jump, you can explore the first few pages of the book.
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. DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/2
I happened on your blog post about Marcus Buckingham's strengths development work. Since you are interested in Marcus' work, I thought you might also be interested in the work of Jenifer Fox. It may both touch your practice as a faith leader, and have personal resonance.
Jenifer is a lifelong educator. In 2007, she wrote Your Child's Strengths, (Viking 2008) with an introduction by Marcus Buckingham. Right after finishing it, she traveled with Marcus on his Go Put Your Strengths to Work Tour to show the results a strengths approach can yield in a high school setting. Jenifer’s book describes how to get children involved in strengths discovery from an early age, not just high school. It both describes why this is important with great stories from schools, but also provides practical tools to get started. I think it is worth mentioning to someone like you because it helps parent and teachers help kids discover their God-given strengths before they get into the workplace and find themselves in jobs which don't energize them.
Since publication, Jenifer has been traveling the country and spreading her message to schools businesses and various organizations interested in strengths. I am reaching out to you as an adult interested in developing his own strengths whose work touches families and children who can also use this practice. Many churches and christian youth groups are interested in Jenifer's ideas. For example, this spring she will speak at the Willow Creek Conspire conference.
I hope you will take a look at this important book. If you would talk about it on your website, I would be happy to send you a copy. Let me know. Thanks and good luck with your work.