StandOut: The Groundbreaking New Strengths Assessment from the Leader of the Strengths Revolution

Now, if you're familiar with the author you'll know he's already come out with a similar book, titled "Now, Discover Your Strengths." What's different about this new book is that it goes a step further than the earlier one.

With its self assessment test, you learn about your top two strengths in great detail. And the book provides a lot of practical advice on what you can do to make the most of your strengths once you know what they are.

Another key difference is that "StandOut" also focuses on how others see our strengths in certain situations, and particularly, at work. And the more we get to know our strengths, and use them effectively, the more the people around us will take notice.

This information, if you take it to heart, has the potential to transform how you work, and how you lead a team. It helps you identify areas where you can make the greatest impact at work. This is your edge over your competition.

"StandOut" is a book that contains valuable lessons for any reader. But it's going to be most useful for those people working in a business setting, especially in a management role, since a lot of the advice is tailored to this audience.

Marcus Buckingham spent 20 years working at the Gallup Organization, studying what drives exceptional performance. He then launched the training and development firm, TMBC, to help managers discover their own strengths, and those of their team, to improve performance. He's also the author of several best-selling books, including "Now, Discover Your Strengths."

So, keep listening to find out what you'll discover about yourself in the self-assessment, how one retail manager transformed his store using whistles, and how strengths can also be weaknesses in some situations.

"StandOut" is around 200 pages, so it's not a long book by any means. And there are only five chapters. Chapter one talks about the importance of knowing your strengths, and using those strengths to innovate.

Chapter two talks about the assessment itself: how it was developed, how it works, and how to take it – which is only online. You'll get a code, either in the book itself or through email if you buy the e-book, which allows you to access the assessment website.

Most of the book is devoted to analyzing the nine strengths identified by the test. Framed as character types, these are: Advisor, Connector, Creator, Equalizer, Influencer, Pioneer, Provider, Stimulator, and Teacher. You'll likely end up skimming over most of these and focusing on your own top two. If you're in a management role, you can read over them to see where your own team members fall. This could help you assign tasks more effectively in the future.

The fourth chapter covers how to build your strengths at work. And, chapter five is focused on technical information. It has more detailed information on the data they used to develop the test.

Before we dive into the assessment test, which is the foundation for the entire book, we wanted to share an important story that illustrates why knowing your strengths is so important. And, what can go wrong in organizations when those strengths are mishandled.

Several years ago, the author interviewed Ralph Gonzalez, a top-performing manager at the retail chain, Best Buy. Ralph had successfully turned his low-performing store into one of the best in the company. On just about every metric, from sales to employee engagement, he went to the top.

When asked how he did it, Ralph said he played up his likeness to a young Fidel Castro. This wasn't his strength, of course. His strength was his ability to rally his team around creative ideas. He renamed his store "La Revolucion", and even made the other managers wear army fatigues. Then, he gave everyone on his team a whistle.

The whistle was for one thing only. If an employee or manager saw someone else doing something great, they blew the whistle. Loud. Ralph wanted to show the team that great things were already happening in their store. And, the trick worked. Those whistles energized the entire team, and even the customers loved them.

It's a great story. But here's where the problems come in. The organization was so impressed with the whistle story that they started to create a process to implement it company-wide. Then rules were born. Managers had green whistles, supervisors had white ones, and regular employees had silver. Then, the top executives came up with twelve conditions when the whistles could be blown, and 20 conditions when they could not be blown.

If you're smiling at this, then it's a story that probably sounds familiar. In short, the bureaucracy of the organization turned a wonderful, vibrant innovation into a mutated practice that wouldn't have worked at other stores. Fortunately it never went any further, because the top executives eventually realized that they were doing this all wrong.

So, what does this have to do with finding your strengths? Well, the story shows how Ralph used his strengths and creativity to transform his store into something special, one that outperformed the rest. And it shows the power, and the problem, of using those strengths to innovate.

The innovation only truly works if it's passed on to a person with the same strengths as you. Without that alignment, an innovation like the whistle can look fake or foolish.

We thought this was a great story, with a valuable lesson, that sets the tone for the rest of the book. If you're in a management role, using your strengths to innovate with your team will work for you. But forcing that innovation onto someone else, or another team, could fail disastrously.

There are several other real-life stories the author shares in the early part of the book to prove this point. These go by quickly, and are an inspiration to read.

Now, most of you will likely want to read through chapters one and two and then take the online self-assessment test. Getting logged in is easy. You simply go to the website, enter the code that comes with your purchase, and begin the timed test.

Each question consists of one or two sentences depicting a fictional scenario. Such as, "Your employee has filed a false report against you. What do you do?" Or, "You've just finished up one of your best presentations to a key client. However, she says your service is a bit out of her budget. How do you handle this?"

You then get four options, and have 35 seconds to choose one before moving on. Most people will get the test done in 15-20 minutes at most.

Your results are tallied almost instantly when you're done with the test, and you then get a complete profile on your top two strengths. You also get a comprehensive profile listing, in order of how you rated on the other seven strengths.

We took the test ourselves, and were surprised at how accurate and insightful it was.

There are some other really useful and insightful tools that come along with your online results. For instance, your top two strengths are laid out in a sort of "dashboard," which gives access to several other pages.

One of our favorite pages is titled "How to Make an Immediate Impact." Here, you'll find tips that are customized to your top two strengths, and advice on how to start using those strengths immediately at work. There is one of these pages for each of your top two strengths.

Another useful page is titled "Next Level." This page is full of tips, tailored specifically to your results, on how you can take your top two strengths to the next level and keep building on them.

One of the most insightful pages on your dashboard is titled "Watch Out For." This page is full of tips that address how your strengths can be seen as weaknesses, especially in the eyes of others.

Reading through the tips in your dashboard is a quick way to get acquainted with your top two strengths. But, the book contains all of this information, and much more.

One key section in the book that you won't find on the website is called "How to Win as a Leader." This section details how you can use your strengths in a management role. It's valuable insight that's relevant for any manager, or anyone who wants to be in a leadership position someday.

Here's an example of what you'll see in the book. Imagine you've taken the online test and discovered your top strength category is Pioneer. You'll first get a complete description of what it means to be a Pioneer.

So as a Pioneer you're by nature an explorer. You're not afraid of risk or uncertainty. You're actually more engaged when you're doing something new, even if it's something you're not skilled at.

Next, there's a section titled "You At Your Most Powerful." This section illustrates what you do when you're on point and in flow. As a Pioneer, you're at your best when you see the world as a friendly place where good things generally happen. You're optimistic, but not naive. You love beginning things, and you're always moving forward, even when the path is unclear. And, there's a great deal more here!

After this there's a section titled "How to Describe Yourself," full of I statements that detail your actions and personality from your own point of view. These are useful for job interviews and performance reviews, because they help put your strengths into statements you can use in these situations.

The most valuable sections are next, and these are the ones you can see in your online dashboard. You may remember that the first in this series is "How to Make an Immediate Impact." Pioneers excel in their lack of fear of change and uncertainty, so you'll make a big impact if you throw yourself into the middle of these situations.

Pioneers are also curious first, and critical second. You'll do best leading with this open-mindedness. When someone brings you a plan, help them run with it, with the curiosity and good questioning you have when you think about the future.

The next insightful section is titled "How to Take Your Performance to the Next Level." One of the ways Pioneers can do this is to work out a formula that captures your natural instincts for handling uncertainty. If you can turn that instinct into a process that other, less risk-oriented people can follow, you can rally and focus those around you.

The last section is titled "What to Watch Out For." Here, Pioneers get tips on how their strengths can actually hold them back, especially with their team.

For instance, Pioneers find it really easy to hit the "clear" button and move on from mistakes. But, others don't have this ability. They often struggle with past mistakes, and may even dwell on them. It's important that Pioneers learn to be patient with people who need to look back before they can look forward. Allow them time to reflect before pushing them to move on.

As you can see, there's a lot of really valuable information here, and we only covered a tiny portion of what's in the book about this particular strength. And, each section is like this. No matter which two strengths apply to you, you're going to get a lot of in-depth analysis on how to use them more effectively at work.

So, what's our last word on "StandOut"?

We enjoyed the book, and there's no doubt it's going to be valuable for readers. The online self-test is eerily accurate, at least for us. And, the insight and tools you get when your results are calculated are more than worth the price of the book.

Is "StandOut" more effective than the author's last book, Now, Discover Your Strengths? Well, yes and no.

In the earlier book, the author breaks down our strengths into 32 categories. In this book, there are only nine.

In a way, this is a good thing. It's less overwhelming than the first book, while the analysis of the strengths is, we felt, just as good. But, some readers may prefer to get a broader picture of their strengths. If this is the case with you, you might want to begin with "Now, Discover Your Strengths."

The value in this new book is the insight and tips you get with your results. These are more in-depth, and more applicable, than in the first book. The author did a great job breaking down all these tips into what you can do right now with your strengths to make an impact, what you should do to build on them in the future, and what you need to watch out for. It's in this additional analysis that the book really proves its worth.

All in all, we have no trouble recommending this book.

"StandOut," by Marcus Buckingham, is published by One Thing Productions.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Click here to buy the book from Amazon. Thanks for listening.