Chances are, you don’t. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.

To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, Strengths Finder, in the 2001 management book Now, Discover Your Strengths. The book spent more than five years on the bestseller lists and ignited a global conversation, while Strengths Finder helped millions to discover their top five talents.

In its latest national bestseller, Strengths Finder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you’ll use it as a reference for decades.

Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself — and the world around you — forever.

AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY IN THE NEW & UPGRADED EDITION OF STRENGTHS FINDER 2.0
(using the unique access code included with each book)

* A new and upgraded edition of the StrengthsFinder assessment

* A personalized Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide for applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year

* A more customized version of your top five theme report

* 50 Ideas for Action (10 strategies for building on each of your top five themes)

* The more user-friendly Strengths Finder 2.0 companion website, with a strengths community area, library of downloadable discussion guides and activities, a strengths screensaver, and a program for creating display cards of your top five theme.

This book has given me a great insight to how to best approach my life. I have to get into more detail on my top 5 and try to incorporate the rules into my routine but this assessment has given me a starting point for that.

• What are your personal strengths?
• Top Ten Ways to Become a Great Salesperson!

A bold new way to tackle tough business problems—even if you draw like a second grader

When Herb Kelleher was brainstorming about how to beat the traditional hub-and-spoke airlines, he grabbed a bar napkin and a pen. Three dots to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Three arrows to show direct flights. Problem solved, and the picture made it easy to sell Southwest Airlines to investors and customers.

Used properly, a simple drawing on a humble napkin is more powerful than Excel or PowerPoint. It can help crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate in a way that people simply “get”. In this book Dan Roam argues that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can’t draw.

Drawing on twenty years of visual problem solving combined with the recent discoveries of vision science, this book shows anyone how to clarify a problem or sell an idea by visually breaking it down using a simple set of visual thinking tools - tools that take advantage of everyone’s innate ability to look, see, imagine, and show.

The Back Of The Napkin proves that thinking with pictures can help anyone discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve their ability to share their insights. This book will help readers literally see the world in a new way.

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (March 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591841992
• ISBN-13: 978-1591841999

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Timothy goes through a four step process of liberation and automation that is designed to make your life effective and not just efficient. Explaining how technology that is supposed to make your life easier really can without the hassle. There were many parts of the book that I took to heart like the chapter on elimination (Step 2) that goes over the numerous tasks most people do on a daily basis that need to be removed. I never would have thought that checking email on a regular basis was a bad thing but understanding the enormous amount of time taken by responding to every message as it comes in instead of focusing on the most important tasks made a whole lot of sense.

If you are an employee or an employer and you have not taken the time to pick up this book and read the first chapter, you are doing yourself a major disservice. The 4-Hour work Week is a book anyone looking to add value to their lives should read.

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The Tipping Point is written by Malcolm Gladwell a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine. More than a book, this is a way of looking at the world around you. From the seemingly meaningless tasks we perform on a daily basis we can change the world around us. I know. It sounds too good to be true, but as the book so eloquently illustrates over and over again, that is exactly how the world can be changed. Its not about one major event that shifts the events around us, its about the culmination of all the small things that when done consistently, they ‘tip’. The concept was first brought around with epidemic research and the spreading of disease, but the same study can be applied for just about anything as the writer explains.Gladwell goes into great detail on events around the world and how small changes in environment made big differences. While reading the book I was analyzing the world around me an seeing how all of the concepts he was discuss were actually true. By looking at some of the people around me and events in my own life, I saw how little tasks added up to the big picture. Artists do not become masters overnight, it takes a lot of work building the platform for their success and at some point ‘the tipping point’ they become known by the entire world for their works. This point is broken up between groups of people that set the fire and lay the path.

Mavens are the information leaders. They are trusted experts in a particular field, who seek to pass his or her knowledge on to others. Gizmodo is an example of a gadget maven. Gizmodo knows the items in the market and makes a point to learn everything they can about it and then shares that information with the public through his website.

Connectors are the people that bring groups of people together. These are usually excentric people that have connections across many different subcultures and easily are able to get people in touch with eachother based on whatever is needed. A great example given in the book was Paul Revere. Two men set off that night to warn the people that the British were about to invade, but Paul Revere was made famous because he was the ultimate connector and was able to spread the word to so many more people and get the militias ready.

Salesmen are the people that can get you to make the decision. Great salesmen are charismatic and extremely trusted by their contacts. They are able to make people that are on the fence about a topic, take action in their favor.

All of us know people that fit these characteristics. You are even one of these, but which one? After reading the book you will understand more about the people and events around you that will force you to see the world in a new way. I was skeptical at first myself, but even weeks after finishing the book, I see how Gladwell hit the nail on the head with the concepts he described.

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I liked the book Leadership lessons of Navy SEALS and figured I’d get another book from a special operations officer that described the parallel into the business world.

The author was a commando in the Air Force and has written numerous papers and given many lectures on business leadership.

I’ve only made it through the first few chapters, but this is a book that I’m having a hard time putting down. Between the historical events of wars and conflicts he touches on and his insights into business, he does a good job of educating the reader and providing real tools for leaders and managers to follow in a corporate environment.

Once I finish the book, I’ll give a more detailed review of what I think, but so far this is a keeper.

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