Review: Buckingham's "Truth About You"

Marcus Buckingham is an English stud of a thinker and performance coach who has risen to world-wide recognition due greatly to his "strengths-based" ideals. Buckingham was the first guru I ever heard effectively distill the tension between strengths and weaknesses to draw actionable axioms that span workplace, ministry team, home/parental and even personal contexts. His latest installment, The Truth About You, is really a continuation of his conceptual stream of consciousness.

Frankly, this publication offers little in the way of distinctively new ideas or vantage points. What it instead seems to achieve is a process-promoting package whereby readers are encouraged to engage in an introspective journey using the book, DVD and even a quaint memo pad to delve into their own make-up. In that sense, it takes his previous works and puts some sticky tape to the key points. If you are new to Buckingham, then this is probably a great entry point into the body of his works. If you're a veteran, this may seem a bit redundant due to the overlapping nature of content. Certainly it's a great reminder to free up the energy associated with maximizing core strengths over belaboring intrinsic weaknesses or deficiencies (morals and spiritual fruits aside, of course!). The illustrations, battle-cries to operate out of objective principles ("first figure out the what then the how") and encouragement to see individuality as an asset versus hindrance are refreshingly witty.