Top Three Recommended books (start here)

• Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton Gives you access to Gallup’s Strengthsfinder ® profile
• Authentic Happiness (particularly the final half of the book devoted to ‘Signature Strengths’) by Martin Seligman
• Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance by Marcus Buckingham, Contains many helpful exercises to find and clarify your unique strengths.

Books by Marcus Buckingham (strengths-based leadership specialist)

• First, Break All The Rules: What The World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
• Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton Gives you access to Gallup’s Strengthsfinder ® profile
• The One Thing You Need to Know: About Leading, Managing, and Sustained Individual Success by Marcus Buckingham
• Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance by Marcus Buckingham, Contains many helpful exercises to find and clarify your unique strengths.
• The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success by Marcus Buckingham, For high school and college students and young professionals

All of the above are available in audio form, highly recommended. Buckingham is a highly engaging speaker.

He also has a six-chapter DVD set entitled Trombone Player Wanted that gives an excellent synopsis of strengths-based material.

Websites

www.marcusbuckingham.com
www.simplystrengths.com

Books by Martin Seligman (from the Positive Psychology field)

Some are also available on CD – recommended in this order:

• Authentic Happiness (particularly the final half of the book devoted to ‘Signature Strengths’)
• Learned Optimism
• What You Can Change and What You Can’t

Books by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
• Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention
• Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (Masterminds Series)
• The Evolving Self
• Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning
• Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet by Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon

Other Strengths-based Books

• StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths by Tom Rath
• Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World's Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers by Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano
• Your Child's Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them by Jenifer Fox M.Ed.
• Teach with Your Strengths: How Great Teachers Inspire Their Students by Rosanne Liesveld, Jo Ann Miller, and Jennifer Robison
• Soar with Your Strengths by Donald O. Clifton and Paula Nelson
• A Primer in Positive Psychology by Christopher Peterson
• The Positive Psychology of Buddhism and Yoga: Paths to a Mature Happiness by Marvin Levine
• Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry by Sue Anis Hammond