The StrengthsFinder Marcus Buckingham Helped Launch, Then Left Behind

Most of the credit for the test that made Buckingham famous belongs to Donald O. Clifton, a psychologist who began studying what top performers do differently at the University of Nebraska in 1949. Buckingham's share is smaller but still large. He co-wrote the book that introduced the test. He also did more than anyone to turn "play to your strengths" into something managers say out loud. Gallup’s history of the assessment names Clifton as its creator. It also notes that the American Psychological Association honored him for founding strengths-based psychology, shortly before he died in 2003.

Did Marcus Buckingham create StrengthsFinder?

He helped create it, next to the man who designed it. Buckingham was a student at Cambridge when Clifton recruited him to Selection Research, Incorporated, the firm Clifton had founded in Nebraska. SRI bought the Gallup Organization in 1988 and took on its name, and Buckingham stayed for nearly two decades as a senior researcher. He worked on the strengths studies and co-wrote the launch book with Clifton. On the split of credit for StrengthsFinder, Marcus Buckingham's own camp leans generous. His Thinkers50 profile goes further and calls StrengthsFinder and StandOut "his assessments" and says they have been taken over 10 million times. That is fair about the launch. The decades of interviews that shaped the themes were mostly Clifton's.

Who created StrengthsFinder?

Don Clifton, working with a team of Gallup researchers. His method was to interview people who were excellent at their jobs and look for the habits of thought and behavior they shared. Over the years those habits were boiled down to 34 talent themes, and the test was built to sort anyone into them. Gallup dates the first online version to 1999, and the 2001 book put it in front of the public. Gallup's history page now counts more than 38 million people who have completed it. Gallup has since put Clifton's name on the tool, and today it sells as CliftonStrengths.

StrengthsFinder, Marcus Buckingham and Gallup: a timeline from 1988

Year

What happened

1988

Clifton's Nebraska firm, SRI, buys the Gallup Organization and takes the Gallup name

1999

Buckingham and Curt Coffman publish First, Break All the Rules; Gallup's online strengths test goes live

2001

Buckingham and Clifton publish Now, Discover Your Strengths, with a code for the test in every new copy

2003

Clifton dies, shortly after the American Psychological Association honors his work

2006

Buckingham leaves and founds The Marcus Buckingham Company

2007

Buckingham publishes Go Put Your Strengths to Work; Tom Rath's StrengthsFinder 2.0 arrives with a revised version of the test

2011

Buckingham releases StandOut, a strengths test of his own

2015

Gallup renames StrengthsFinder as CliftonStrengths, after Don Clifton; StandOut 2.0 follows from Harvard Business Review Press

2017

ADP buys Buckingham's company, and he takes over its people and performance research

2022

Buckingham publishes Love + Work

Today

Gallup sells the test as CliftonStrengths; a top-five report costs $24.99

Laid out in order, the story has a clear turn. The test he helped launch kept growing at Gallup after he left, while he went on to build tools of his own. His Wikipedia entry dates his company to 2006, and the sections below follow him from there.

What is Now, Discover Your Strengths about?

The book argues that most workplaces spend their effort on the wrong half of a person. Reviews, training budgets and development plans chase weaknesses. Buckingham and Clifton say the bigger gains come from building on what each person already does well without trying. They define a strength as doing something near perfectly, again and again, and say it is made of three parts: talents, knowledge and skills. Knowledge and skills can be taught. Talent is the way you naturally and repeatedly think, feel and behave. It mostly cannot be taught, so the book tells you to find yours first.

It was written as a follow-up to First, Break All the Rules, which Buckingham had co-written with Curt Coffman, and it reads like a management book. Its closing chapters turn to how a manager can place and coach people once their themes are known. The test itself was a big part of the book's appeal, though. Every new copy carried a one-time code for the online test, which returned your top five themes. A secondhand copy usually carries a spent code, which is why our guide to buying Now, Discover Your Strengths spends time on which copy to get.

What are the 34 CliftonStrengths themes?

The book introduced 34 talent themes, each a short name for a pattern. Achiever describes someone who needs to finish something every day. Woo describes someone who loves winning strangers over. Gallup later sorted the themes into four domains, and that is how a report groups them today. Executing holds the get-it-done themes, such as Discipline and Responsibility. Influencing holds the ones that move other people, such as Command and Woo. Relationship Building covers themes like Empathy and Harmony, and Strategic Thinking covers themes like Ideation and Learner. Here are all 34, by domain:

Executing

Influencing

Relationship Building

Strategic Thinking

Achiever

Activator

Adaptability

Analytical

Arranger

Command

Connectedness

Context

Belief

Communication

Developer

Futuristic

Consistency

Competition

Empathy

Ideation

Deliberative

Maximizer

Harmony

Input

Discipline

Self-Assurance

Includer

Intellection

Focus

Significance

Individualization

Learner

Responsibility

Woo

Positivity

Strategic

Restorative

Relator

Our full guide to CliftonStrengths goes theme by theme. The same 34 themes are still the backbone of the test, a quarter of a century after the book first printed them.

The test the book launched is still running, and at heart it is still StrengthsFinder. Marcus Buckingham's book introduced it; Gallup has since given it a new name and a revised question set. Gallup’s own comparison page puts today's version at 177 paired statements, and it reports your five highest themes of the 34, grouped by the four domains. Each item puts two descriptions at the two ends of a scale. You mark how far you lean toward one side, and you get about 20 seconds before the item moves on. Plan on 30 to 35 minutes.

The clock is a design choice, and a smart one. The idea is that a fast answer sits closer to instinct than a slow one, and instinct is what a talent test is after. The paired format does similar work. Nobody can score themselves high on every item, because leaning toward one description means leaning away from the other. Both make the result harder to game.

What is the difference between StrengthsFinder and CliftonStrengths?

StrengthsFinder was the name on the 2001 test. When Tom Rath published StrengthsFinder 2.0 in 2007, it shipped with a revised version, and in 2015 Gallup renamed the whole product CliftonStrengths, after Don Clifton. The 34 themes, the paired format and the timer carried over. What a buyer notices is the packaging. You can now buy the test directly: Gallup lists $24.99 for your top five, $59.99 for all 34 in rank order, and $49.99 to upgrade from five to 34. Our breakdown of every StrengthsFinder price covers team and coaching options, and our page on the 2007 Rath book covers what 2.0 changed.

Keep one limit in mind when you read the report. Your themes are ranked against each other, so a theme at number 30 is weaker than your others, and the ranking does not compare you with anyone else. And every result comes from your own answers about yourself, which is true of StandOut too.

Both tests describe natural talent and working style. Neither measures how well you perform at a task, and neither points to a specific job. That is by design, and it decides who benefits most from each.

Is StrengthsFinder good for choosing a career?

Gallup answers this one directly. Its page on careers and CliftonStrengths starts with "No," then explains that the test is not built to prescribe a right or wrong job. It suggests looking for room to use your strengths in the job you already hold. That is sound advice for someone settled in a role. It helps less when you are thinking of moving, because a top five like Achiever, Learner, Relator, Focus and Strategic could belong to an accountant, a nurse or a founder.

StandOut has the same limit in a different shape. Its nine roles describe how you tend to add value on a team, which helps a manager hand out work. A role like Pioneer or Provider says a lot about how you work and very little about which field to work in.

So the right reader for each tool is fairly clear. StrengthsFinder suits someone who wants a detailed vocabulary for their own talents, and teams that want to use shared theme language. StandOut suits a manager who wants a quick read on a group. StrengthsFinder, StandOut and tools like them stop before the career question. If you are asking whether to change direction, you need another kind of test: one that looks past talent to what the work would cost you, then names roles that match. For a career decision, that part often matters as much as talent. Our ranking of strengths tests for career decisions compares the options built for that job.

Choosing between StrengthsFinder, StandOut and a career test comes down to one question: what do you want to know? If you want to understand your talents in depth, take CliftonStrengths, and pay for all 34 if the top five leaves you curious. If you manage a team and want something quick and easy to share, StandOut is lighter and built for that. If you are deciding on your next career move, start with a test designed to point at roles, then use either strengths report as a second lens.

Is Marcus Buckingham's StandOut better than StrengthsFinder?

Neither wins across the board. StrengthsFinder gives more detail: 34 themes against nine roles, and a longer, timed set of questions. StandOut is faster and more practical for managers, and its scenario questions ask what you would do in a situation, which some people find easier to answer honestly. Gallup's comparison page makes the case for StrengthsFinder. Marcus Buckingham's side makes the case for StandOut, as you would expect, and our StandOut vs StrengthsFinder breakdown goes further into who reads each result. If you are choosing for yourself alone, the extra depth usually makes StrengthsFinder the better buy. For a wider view, our Gallup StrengthsFinder guide and the career test guide cover the rest of the field.

Pigment starts where StrengthsFinder stops

Pigment was made for the step both strengths tests leave to you. It is career intelligence for working adults. It adds a second question to the one Clifton asked: will your talents hold up against the pace and pressure of the work, year after year? In each question you keep one option and drop the other, so nobody comes out rated high at everything. Behind the results are 82 traits. The 36-page report walks through your strengths, your blind spots and your working style. Its last section, career alignment, names roles by what they ask of you: a fast pace or a steady one, deep solo work or constant contact with people.

Picture someone whose top five reads like a founder's. They may learn that the nonstop pace of an early company would wear them out, and that a senior role in an established firm would suit them better. That is the kind of answer a talent report was never built to give.

Go Beyond StrengthsFinder: Find the Career Your Strengths Point To

Took CliftonStrengths, or the 2001 original? Your themes say how you are wired. Pigment adds which work would last for you, and closes with named roles you could move into. $79.99, one sitting, results the same day.

Take the Pigment career test