listen up

Tom Rath has written a short book about finding your strengths. His focus and point in the book, is to determin your strengths, then work on building them. Our world is always focusing on our weaknesses. While I do believe you can work on improving your weaknesses, Tom pointed out that no matter how hard Michael Jordan tried, baseball was not his strength, and it never would be.
A great strength is somewhat natural, and usually paired with a talent. In order to become amazing at something, you need to know that strength, and then invest in it. The theory is if you are amazing at football, and never work on it, you wont make it to the NFL. But if you are amazing at football, and work on growing that talent (strength), you will go much further.
In reading Tom Rath’s book Strengths finder 2.0, and taking his online profile test I have found the following to be my strength themes.

• Woo (Winning Others Over)
• Communication
• Responsibility
• Activator
• Positivity

As I discussed these with stephanie, we found them all to ring dead true. Scary how someone can figure me out after just 174 simple questions.
So the goal here: is to identify my strengths so I can learn to use them to my advantage, position others with different strengths around me, Know my weaknesses, but not focus on them.
So now as I continue on in my personal growth and leadership explorations, I know what I am good at, and what I can to do to use these strengths to my advantage. I also now see that I should be working harder than ever to broaden my communication skills, becoming more positive and building up others, all while continuing on a personal commitment to be a better person, husband, someday father, and a better leader for our staff.
So I ask those that know me, how true are these? and I want to encourage others to read Strength Finder 2.0 and share your strengths.
Also if you know of any online profile test sources (Myers Briggs, Disc, etc) that dont require the purchase of the book each time, I would love to know. I plan to use these types of personality assessments in my hiring process so i make sure I surround my self, and build my team with the right people.