Great post. I like the conciseness of your takeaways. Easier to keep in your head moment to moment.

Since you are interested in Marcus Buckingham’s work, I thought you might also be interested in the work of Jenifer Fox. While it may not touch your professional practice, it may have personal resonance.

Jenifer wrote Your Child’s Strengths, (Viking 2008) with an introduction by Marcus Buckingham. She traveled with Marcus on his Go Put Your Strengths to Work Tour in 2007 to show the results a strengths approach can yield in a high school setting. Then she wrote her own book. I think the book is worth mentioning to others because it helps parent and teachers help kids discover their strengths before they get into the workplace and find themselves in jobs they hate.

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 because most adults interested in developing their own strengths know children who are also interested.

I hope you will look at this book and maybe talk about it on your website. Maybe you would like a copy. Let me know. Thanks and good luck with your work.

Good question.

If it’s important, I would improve it. What I would not do is, spend all my time working on it or neglect some strengths where I could be the world best. This is the mistake people make.

If it makes you weak when you work on your public speaking, then I would limit how much time I spend working on it.

You don’t get great by just working on your weaknesses. It’s easy to take your strengths for granted and then spend all your energy honing your weaknesses.

Most importantly, I would find a great mentor.

BTW – if you are working on your public speaking, I actually suggest voice lessons. You’ll learn how to breathe differently. This will give you a new cadence, a new confidence, and better projection. What good are your best words if they fail on the way out?

I also recommend reading Thank You for Arguing. You can learn the secrets of the world’s best orators – the Greeks.

This is my own personal weakness and I’m not sure it’s a good idea to just forget about it and only focus on the stuff I’m good at.

@Evelyn – Oh so true. That’s a great way to put it. It’s a distraction. I would hate to spend a lifetime wasting my abilities. I think sharing our gifts is one of our greatest contributions we can make on the planet.

@Stacey – I agree — what you focus on you get more of. Expanding our strengths helps snowball our success. It’s a beautiful synergy.