Clifton, Donald O., & Anderson, Edward. (2002). Strengths Quest: Discover and Develop Your Strengths in Academics, Career, and Beyond. Reviewed by Neil Mercurius, Jurupa Unified School District, Riverside, California

Clifton, Donald O., & Anderson, Edward. (2002). Strengths Quest: Discover and Develop Your Strengths in Academics, Career, and Beyond. Washington, DC: Gallup Organization Pp. x + 302 ISBN 0-9722637-0-5     $35.00 Reviewed by Neil Mercurius Jurupa Unified School District, Riverside, California July 13, 2005 In Strengths Quest: Discover and Develop Your Strengths in Academics, Career, and Beyond, Clifton and Anderson vowed to ignite a revolution in the approach to student achievement. These authors assert that the self-discovery of personal strengths and talents, coupled with their systematic application, propel individuals toward achievement at all levels of excellence. They offer a collection of tools, examples, and strategies to guide students in the development of working plans toward success. Strengths Quest: Discover and Develop Your Strengths in Academics, Career, and Beyond was written to aid college students through the turbulent university years and beyond. However, the benefits of the content are not limited to college students, but all individuals can apply their personal strengths more effectively toward greater success in the choices they make and the goals to which they aspire in their daily lives. For example, classroom teachers, who are typically mindful of their own strengths, are empowered by this publication to more readily recognize the strengths of their students and, ultimately, move them to higher levels of learning more expediently. Students with a greater understanding of their own strengths are better able to strategize their plans toward academic success. This book serves as a textbook, manual, and workbook. As a textbook, sections of chapters can be assigned for effective information gathering. Each chapter is constructed in a manual format with step-by-step procedures related to implementing personal strengths in a manner that will achieve academic success. Finally, this publication serves as a useful workbook for building strength and resilience in students as they move through the entire college experience. What is strength, talent, and ability? Meticulously, Clifton and Anderson clearly distinguish between these pivotal characteristics. Strength is the specific quality that enables and empowers individuals to perform certain functions extremely well. It is the ability to provide consistent, near-perfect performance in a given activity (p. 8). The key to building strength is to identify dominant themes of personal talent and subsequently refine them with related knowledge and skills. According to Clifton and Anderson, “A talent is a naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. . . . A talent represents a capacity to do something” (p. 6). All people are gifted with particular talents, which among other things, contribute to defining our unique natures. Talents form the basis of strength due to their naturally occurring patterns that are automatically applied to the task at hand, and applied repeatedly in various situations to ultimately generate success. As Clifton and Anderson stated, The great value in your talents is not merely that they help you achieve, but that they help you achieve at levels of excellence. Your greatest talents are inextricably linked to your top achievements and to what you do best. Your talents make you exceptional. Therefore, coming to know, understand, and value your talents is directly linked to achieving in classes, careers, and throughout your life. (p. 7) While talents are automatic patterns representing the capacity to perform a given function, ability encompasses “what a person can specifically do” (p. 7). Therefore, as mentioned earlier, strengths are the qualities that enable an individual to perform specific actions extremely well. The notion that strengths and talents only apply to athletic or artistic abilities, and not to skills such as reading or math, is the mind-set these authors set out to change. The Strengths Finders Inventory (SFI) developed by The Gallup Organization presents 34 themes of talents. These talents or strengths are categorized into the following four quadrants: relating, impacting, striving, and thinking. (See Figure 1.) In Quadrant I—relating—the six themes are associated with interpersonal bonding and connecting. Quadrant II presents themes that are interpersonal in nature with a tendency to impact or influence lives. Quadrant III —striving—includes themes that are motivational and that generate energy, and Quadrant IV presents thinking themes that tend to be informational and perceptual. From the 34 themes of talents included in the inventory, only the top five are viewed as the “epicenter” upon which strengths are built. Of course, strengths are not naturally distributed by quadrants; that is, individuals can exhibit strengths from a single quadrant, distributed among all four quadrants, or any combination of quadrants. Relating (I) Impacting (II) Communication Command Empathy Competition Harmony Developer Includer Maximizer Individualization Positivity Relator Woo Responsibility Striving (III) Thinking (IV) Achiever Analytical Activator Arranger Adaptability Connectedness Belief Consistency Discipline Context Focus Deliberative Restorative Futuristic Self-Assurance Ideation Significance Input Intellection Learner Strategic Figure 1. Themes of talents from the Strengths Finders Inventory. Strengths Quest: Discover and Develop Your Strengths in Academics, Career, and Beyond offers a variety of added features. For example, it can also be reviewed in an e-book format (i.e., a personal version of the book online) with interactive features. Because the SFI is also provided online, users can access their personal assessments at any time. The Web site also provides a learning center that allows users to explore the 34 themes in an interactive manner and create a personalized action plan based upon their five unique talents within the themes. Finally, there is an online community of participants who can communicate with each other as further enhancement to the strengths-based resources. This book would be effective with students beginning in their freshman year of high school, teachers, employees, and school administrators. Corporations could implement the SFI to benefit team production. Once employees are willing to accept and utilize the strengths of others within their team, increased productivity will result. However, the greatest benefit of this publication is its strength as a resource while personal and professional goals and plans are created and rejuvenated. This book can be continually revisited to build self-confidence. All people must become intimately aware of their strengths and how to apply those strengths effectively and efficiently to enhance their lives through the achievement of personal and professional goals. It is all within you . . . and within all people. About the Reviewer Neil Mercurius, Ed.D., has served as the Director of Information/Education Technology and Assessment for the Jurupa Unified School District in Riverside, California. E-Mail: neilmerc@yahoo.com Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.