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ISBN 9780743201148 Published Jan. 2001
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Posted Jan. 12, 2009 4:05 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, Gallup Press, 266 pages, $24.95, Hardcover, January 2009, ISBN 9781595620255
Gallup has been producing great strength-centric books for the past decade. It all started with Now, Discover Your Strengths, released by Simon & Schuster in 2001, and the series continued with last year's bestselling Strengths Finder 2.0.
Up until this point, these books have been focused on the individual, whether it was learning about and focusing on your own strengths, or managers leveraging the strengths of their reports. Strengths Based Leadership shifts that focus and takes the step into the larger realm of teams, showing that they perform at their best when the group possesses a variety of strengths. Or, as the authors sum it up neatly, "Although individuals need not be well-rounded, teams should be."
Part One of the book refocuses on concentrating on your individual strengths as a leader, Part Two breaks those leadership strengths into four domains (Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking), and Part Three takes on the crucial task of understanding why people follow.
The brilliance of Gallup is their ability to look at issues from simple, yet revolutionary angles. The strengths-based approach itself is a radical departure from the more traditional approach of self-improvement that focused on improving one's weaknesses to be more effective. Similarly, Gallup ignored traditional approaches to leadership books. Rather than doing a round of interviews with successful leaders to gather their insights and impart that wisdom to the rest of us, they went directly to those who are followers and asked them what makes a good leader. By going to those who follow, they discovered four key traits great leaders inspire: Trust, Compassion, Stability and Hope.
This is a book every leader should own, and like Gallup's other strengths books, it's not done with you even when you're done with it. You're invited to take the web-based "StrengthsFinder" test again to reinvest in your strengths, and to take a new leadership version that will help you form teams and lead others based on their strengths.
The CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers Picks 10
Posted Nov. 20, 2008 7:04 a.m. by dylan
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog
Michael Hyatt, President & CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, has updated his ten favorite business books. They are:
Focus: The Future Of Your Company Depends On It by Al Ries, HarperBusiness Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, Penguin Books Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by Jim Collins, HarperCollins Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders, Three Rivers Press Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham, Free Press Slide:Ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte, O'Reilly Stress for Success by James E. Loehr & Mark McCormack, Three Rivers Press The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber, HarperCollins Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin, Portfolio You Are the Message: Getting What You Want by Being Who You Are by Roger Aisles, Doubleday
Focus, Love Is the Killer App, Now Discover Your Strengths, Slide: Ology and Tribes are new to the list. The five books bumped from his previous list, put out in January of last year, are:
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, Free Press Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Random House Jesus CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership by Laurie Beth Jones, Hyperion Secrets of Power Negotiating: Inside Secrets from a Master Negotiator by Roger Dawson, Career Press The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable by Patrick M. Lencioni, Jossey-Bass
PW 2007 Bestsellers
Posted April 22, 2008 4:43 a.m. by dylan
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog
Publishers Weekly released its bestseller list late last month. A Thousand Splendid Suns topped the fiction category, while The Secret took the top nonfiction spot. But, those books get enough love, so we thought we would list the business titles that show up on the list (they list all books that sold over 100,000 copies in calender year 2007). I will briefly note, however, that The Secret sold more than twice as many copies as A Thousand Splendid Suns.
The first business book on the list, The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, shows up at number 35. Listed below are all the business titles sold more than 100,000 copies in 2007.
- The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. Crown, (332,272 copies sold)
- Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca. Scribner (310,000 copies sold)
- Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Morrow (275,000 copies sold)
- Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. Free Press (239,966 copies sold)
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Random House (199,784 copies sold)
- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Random House (161,053 copies sold)
- Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance by Marcus Buckingham. Free Press (140,574 copies sold)
- Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work by Cathie Black. Crown Business (139,806 copies sold)
- What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter. Hyperion (123,732 copies sold)
- The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't by Robert I. Sutton. Business Plus (115,954 copies sold)
- Talent Is Never Enough: Discover the Choices That Will Take You Beyond Your Talent by John C. Maxwell. Thomas Nelson (104,971 copies sold)
I'd like to mention one other book from the list for all you fiction lovers out there as well. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao comes highly recommended from Mr. Jason Kennedy, the book-buyer at our sister company, and a man who knows his fiction. It's good to see a book by a debut novelist make the list, which it barely did at 101,164 copies sold.
Fall preview: The Art of Woo
Posted Aug. 21, 2007 7:21 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
In Marketing - 800 CEO Read Blog
When the entire office completed our StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessments, we were quite surprised by some of the strengths that emerged. We expected certain outcomes; for instance, Kate had "achiever," Todd had "futuristic." But everyone nearly fell of their seats when Jake, our former shipper and receiver and now customer service rep, told us that "woo" was one of his top five strengths.
According to StrengthsFinder*, "woo" stands for "winning others over." If you're a woo-er, "you enjoy the challenge of meeting new people and getting them to like you....Not only are you rarely at a loss for words; you actually enjoy initiating with strangers because you derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection."
Diving deeper into the description, it made sense to us that our vegan, fro-sporting mover of books possessed these qualities. It's funny--perhaps we had an old-fashioned, Austen-esque notion of "woo" in our minds, of the suave hero winning over the stubborn yet vulnerable heroine.
Given the great success of Gallup's online assessments, it's really no surprise that I received an October title called The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas, by G. Richard Shell (Bargaining for Advantage) and Mario Moussa.
Shell and Moussa define woo as:
It is a relationship-based persuasion, a strategic process for getting people's attention, pitching your ideas, and obtaining approval for your plans and projects. It is, in short, one of the most important skills in the repertoire of any entrepreneur, employee, or professional manager whose work requires them to rely on influence and persuasion rather than coercion and force.
The Art of Woo lays out a step-by-step plans for identifying and using a persuasion technique to carry out a strategic initiative. 
For instance, one way to persuade might be to "Put Your Heart into It" -- show that you truly believe in what you're saying. Or, you might "Build Bridges with Analogies and Metaphors" -- make decision-making easier by illustrating a point with a story or concept your audience is already familiar with. The authors introduce six other persuasion pathways to success.
The book also includes the authors' own stories of advising leaders, as well as stories about famous people--Nelson Mandella, John D. Rockefeller, Bono--who used the strength of woo to accomplish extraordinary feats.
*The StrengthsFinder version of "woo" actually appeared first in Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. We just happened to find out that Jake is a woo-er through the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment.
Strength(s) Training
Posted April 20, 2007 9:53 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Personal Development - 800 CEO Read Blog
There are three books right now on the Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller list dealing with strengths development.
Gallup hold a spot with their new StrengthsFinder 2.0. I talked about the book last month.
Former Gallup consultant Marcus Buckingham is doing well with Go Put Your Strengths To Work. He was on the Today Show this morning and you can watch the five minute segment handled by their new correspondent Tiki Barber. I haven't read Buckingham's book, but am now going to. I'll come back with something next week on it.
The interesting one is their shared title--the evergreen Now, Discover Your Strengths. Marcus' name is on the cover but Gallup is the one who holds the copyright.
There is clearly competition between these folks, and it is hard to say who will win. I feel like this is "the rising tide lifts all ships" scenario. Anyone who is doing work in the strengths psychology area is going to benefit from the growing conversation.
