Two Million Interviews

“Whom did Gallup interview to learn about human strengths?”

Imagine what you might learn if you could interview two million people about their strengths. Imagine interviewing the world’s best teachers and asking them how they keep children so interested in what might otherwise be dry subject matter. Imagine asking them how they build such trusting relationships with so many different children. Imagine asking them how they balance fun and discipline in the classroom. Imagine asking them about all the things they do that make them so very good at what they do.

And then imagine what you could learn if you did the same with the world’s best doctors and salespeople and lawyers (yes, they can be found) and professional basketball players and stockbrokers and accountants and hotel housekeepers and leaders and soldiers and nurses and pastors and systems engineers and chief executives. Imagine all those questions and, more important, all those vivid answers.

Over the last thirty years The Gallup Organization has conducted a systematic study of excellence wherever we could find it. This wasn’t some mammoth poll. Each of those interviews (a little over two million at the last count, of which the eighty thousand managers from First, Break All the Rules were a small part) consisted of open-ended questions like the ones mentioned above. We wanted to hear these excellent performers describe in their own words exactly what they were doing.

In all these different professions we found a tremendous diversity of knowledge, skill, and talent. But as you might suspect, we soon began to detect patterns. We kept looking and listening, and gradually we extracted from this wealth of testimony thirty-four patterns, or “themes,” as we have called them. These thirty-four are the most prevalent themes of human talent. Our research tells us that these thirty-four, in their many combinations, can do the best job of explaining the broadest possible range of excellent performance.

These thirty-four do not capture every single human idiosyncrasy — individuals are too infinitely varied for that kind of claim. So think of these thirty-four as akin to the eighty-eight keys on a piano. The eighty-eight keys cannot play every single note that can possibly be played, but in their many combinations they can capture everything from classic Mozart to classic Madonna. The same applies to these thirty-four themes. Used with insight and understanding they can help capture the unique themes playing in each person’s life.

To be most helpful we offer you a way to measure yourself on these thirty-four themes. We ask you to pause after reading Chapter 3 and take a profile called StrengthsFinder that is available on the Internet. It will immediately reveal your five dominant themes of talent, your Signature Themes. These Signature Themes are your most powerful sources of strength. If you want to learn about the themes of your employees or family or friends, you can read Chapter 4 and learn about each of the thirty-four. But initially our main focus is you. By identifying and refining these Signature Themes you will be in the best possible position to play out your own strengths to the fullest.

As you study these five themes and consider ways to apply what you have learned, keep this thought in mind: The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn’t have enough strengths, it’s that we fail to use the ones we have. Benjamin Franklin called wasted strengths “sundials in the shade.” As you can see, the impetus of this book is that too many organizations, too many teams, and too many individuals unknowingly hide their “sundials in the shade.”

We want this book and your experiences while reading it to cast a light and thereby put your strengths to work.