Wednesday 14 October 2009

A Strengths Based Portfolio Career?

In their new book, And What Do You Do? Barie Hopson and Katie Ledger offer individuals the opportunity to reflect on how they might construct a portfolio career based around thier strengths. One of the ten steps they highlight builds on Bernard Haldane's work on Motivated Skills. The central premise being that a strength is not a strength at all unless we have an appetite for using it. The website for the book provides more background material, a free look at the introduction and a whole lot more.

Articulating Strengths Together (AST)

Need to discover your strengths? Then consider doing it in a group setting rather than via a computer screen. Jearald Forster, long time colleague of Bernard Haldane and strengths 'thought leader' at the University of Washington in Seattle, shows you how in his new book called Articulating Strengths Together (AST). The purpose of the AST is to guide you and three others through a series of activities that will give each participant a list of his or her most valued personal strengths. This process was adapted from the longer Dependable Strengths Articulation Process (DSAP), which was developed by Bernard Haldane during the second half of the 20th Century. The interactive process offered in the AST follows a carefully developed sequence of activities that can be completed in about three hours.

The book also explores the possibilities of identifying objective strengths through internet-based inventories. These objective approaches are compared with the subjective approach of the AST. The advantages of the subjective approach are tied to the fact that strengths articulated through the AST are anchored to personal experiences that can be recalled because the strengths were originally identified when considering real-life experiences.