The Truth About You
I love StrengthsFinder. Love the concept, love the execution, love that the people I know who’ve done the StrengthsFinder assessment have found it to both accurately confirm what they already know about themselves but also shed new light and bring about new self-awareness.
However, I haven’t found a Strenghts-based book yet that I’ve liked. Some (Now, Discover Your Strenghts) are traditional full-length prose books. A new title, The Truth About You, is a multimedia package containing a small paperback book, a DVD, and a memo pad to complete several exercises.
The DVD is probably the strongest part of the package and includes some “Strength Tip” short motivational talks and a good short film about a boy in a school orchestra who learns to follow his passion & strengths instead of just playing the role he’s assigned.
The book is decent but very short – only about 100 pages with generous margins and spacing (the same tricks I used in school to stretch an eight page term paper out to a ten page term paper).
The memo pad is split into two parts, half containing pages with the prompt, “I Loved It (I felt strong when…” and half containing pages with the prompt, “I Loathed It (I felt weak, drained, bored when…).”
The Truth About You isn’t a bad addition to the Strengths library, it’s just not a great addition either. My recommendation: start with one of the traditional Strengths books in order to get the access code to do the online evaluation, which is the most valuable piece. Then, spend a few months working on the Strenghts concepts on your own before considering trying The Truth About You.
