Access Management Journal - March 2009 - (Page 26) Book Review “Now, Discover Your Strengths” By Tony Lovett Learn how to evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses, and those of your team, to achieve excellence as a business. If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly faced with the task of finding, training, and developing your team. We all search for strong, smart, motivated people to help us run our departments, seeking employees who work hard while providing excellent customer service. This process starts during the interview and continues throughout the employer-employee relationship. Continually we ask questions during interviews or performance appraisals that evaluate an individual’s strengths and weaknesses. A manager focuses on developing strengths while expending a lot of energy to mitigate the weaknesses of herself, her team, and of the departmental performance. According to Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, Ph.D., authors of Now, Discover Your Strengths, we are wasting our time in trying overcome weaknesses. The authors are part of the Gallup organization, renowned for their polling operations, a wide array of management and human resources consulting services, and employee assessment tools. The authors discovered that most organizations don’t work up to their potential because they are too focused on their employees’ weaknesses, failing to use or further develop the staff ’s strengths and talents. The book doesn’t stop at pointing out how businesses fail to assess, use, and sharpen employees’ strengths. The authors also developed a questionnaire that determines what strengths we actually possess. I found this tool, as well as the content of the book, to be extremely insightful and interesting. However, beware—Now, Discover Your Strengths is a one-shot deal. If family, friends or co-workers wish to take the questionnaire, the only way possible is through purchasing another book, the pinnacle of marketing at its finest. Nevertheless, I highly encourage all Patient Access Managers to take in Clifton and Buckingham’s insights. The fact is, we all understand our weaknesses, but we may not know strengths and potential as professionals. This could be as big an eye opener for you and your staff as it was for me. l Tony Lovett, MBA, CHAM, has worked in the healthcare industry for 14 years. Currently he serves as Patient Access Director at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center, a part of the Tenet Healthcare family of hospitals in the Houston, Texas area. Tenet Healthcare operates 15,894 beds within 63 acute care hospitals in 12 states. 26 Access Management Journal
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