Gallup’s StrengthsFinder 2.0 has sold one million copies and stayed on the bestseller lists of USA TODAY, BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal every week since it was published three years ago.
The one-million milestone was hit during February 2010, according to a Gallup press release.
“In the 2001 New York Times bestseller Now, Discover Your Strengths, Gallup ignited a global conversation about the idea that success is built on identifying and developing the things you do best rather than shoring up your weaknesses,” the release states.
StrengthsFinder 2.0, written by Tom Rath, comes with access to an online assessment with 177 questions that identify a person’s top five strengths and how to best use them. These strengths are broken down into 34 of the most common talents, including analytical, communication and input.
Close to five million people have experienced the StrengthsFinder books and programs. Having been translated into 22 languages, companies in 50 countries have now used the strengths assessment.
“StrengthsFinder is an important tool in creating and retaining high levels of engaged employees — a goal of most companies today,” said executive publisher Larry Emond in the release.
“That it has found a wider audience in the general public shows the wide appeal for each of us as individuals to find what we do best and then to do it every day at work.”
Strengths Based Leadership, authored by Rath and Barrie Conchie, was published in January 2009, offering a leadership version of the StrengthsFinder program.
“Focusing on strengths right now is an extremely important thing for leaders to do,” Conchie previously told Axiom News.
Workplace culture correlates with a focus on strengths at work. The chances of being engaged at work are three in four (73 per cent) in an organization that focuses on employees’ strengths compared to one in 11 (nine per cent) at workplaces that do not.
“There is a massive effect on people’s physiological well-being, on people’s level of positivity, on people’s level of commitment to the organization, entirely dependent on whether the leaders in the organization are focusing on their strengths,” said Conchie.
Gallup’s versions of strengths assessments for younger people include StrengthsQuest for high school and college students and StrengthsExplorer for ages 10 to 14.
Click here to learn more about Gallup’s strengths books.
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