The lifetimes of the 2 + 1 and 4 + 1 states of 208 Po were measured in the α-transfer reaction 204 Pb( 12 C, 8 Be) 208 Po by γ-ray spectroscopy utilizing the recoil distance Doppler Shift method. The newly extracted transition strengths alongside with ones of the decay of 2 + 2 state were compared to the results of large-scale shell-model calculations using an effective interaction derived from the realistic CD-Bonn nucleon-nucleon potential. The comparison indicates the importance of the quadrupole isovector excitations in the valence shell for a fine tuning of the two-body matrix elements of the shell-model interaction.