One of my Top 5 Leadership Books is Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. Tom and Marcus Buckingham were both from the Gallup Corp. Marcus wrote the first book: Now, Discover Your Strengths, which had a survey to help a person discover their strengths in life. Tom just revised that survey for this book. The results of this survey helped me to articulate who I am (which is very difficult to do). I am an Achiever, meaning I HAVE to accomplish a lot each day or I don't feel fulfilled; Competition, meaning I love to compete for the best; Focus, meaning I love to be very efficient in my thinking and plans; Ideation, meaning I love ideas and thinking about ideas; and Relator, meaning that I develop relationships based on trust and like-minded individuals. I am a complicated guy when you put all of this together but I am a force when I am running on all cylinders. I have taken the survey 3 times in 15 years. All of my strengths have remained the same except for one. (Ideation replaced Communication.) I used the results of my survey to create my Gameplan, which I update regularly. On one side are my professional reminders to myself, and on the other side are my personal reminders (I am in the process of updating it again). I pocket laminate the Gameplan, and keep it on my desk as a constant reminder of what is important to me. As a principal, I walked the halls with it, and had conversations with students and staff about what was on it. They liked to know what was important to me and would ask about it often.
You can also view a recent presentation that I did on this topic here.
