Have you taken a strength inventory? Quick, what were your strengths?

Chances are you have not even taken this baby step in workplace strength development. And if you did, chances are that you got a list that is sitting in some binder or book rather than being integrated into what you do everyday at work.

Is your work strength based? I am not talking about lifting weights and bulging muscles. Rather, do you know what you are best at and do you bring your best to work everyday in a variety of ways?

Do you work at ensuring that all employees are using their strengths? How do you determine strengths? How do you go beyond listing strengths to living strengths and using them in the service of results, others and the organization?

Strength based leadership is a core foundation of this website. As we move into spring 2008, I will rekindle the strengths approach to encourage you to refresh your strengths development. When leadership is strength based and employees are operating from their strengths you will experience high levels of engagement and results.

I want to re-introduce the strength-based focus to work by offering some nuggets from earlier posts. I will do this over the next few weeks and then bring a fresh focus to strength based work. If you are intrigued by the nugget, I encourage you to click on the title as this will take you to the original article.

On Peter Drucker (November 11, 2005)

This was the very first post on strength based work, written on the day Peter Drucker died. Peter Drucker, one of the foremost management experts and writers, wrote a very important article on Managing Oneself. in the Harvard Business Review March-April. 1999: 65-70. The essence of managing oneself was to know our strengths and to fully develop a strength-based leadership approach. Here is a short strength burst from the article.

Drucker challenged each of us to ask ourselves: What are my strengths? How do I perform? What are my values? Where do I belong? What should my contribution be?

Don’t try to change yourself, Drucker cautioned. Instead, concentrate on improving the skills you have and accepting assignments that are tailored to your individual way of working. If you do that, you can transform yourself from an ordinary worker into an outstanding performer.

Chess not Checkers (December 2005)

Marcus Buckingham said the right move for leaders is to see their talent management as chess not checkers. Don’t treat everyone the same and limit their work and career moves. Recognize the differences and strengths of each individual and maximize the contribution of each person’s strengths to the purposes of the organization.

Here is a quote from the Wharton business article about Buckingham: How to tell a good manager from a bad manager? According to Buckingham, it’s simple: Bad managers play checkers. Good managers play chess. The good manager knows that not all employees work the same way. They know if they are to achieve success, they must put their employees in a position where they will be able to use their strengths.

The Free & Powerful VIA Signature Strenght Inventory (March 2006)

The foundation of Strength Based Leadership is the identification and application of strengths. There are numerous pathways to strength identification but one of my favorite tools is the VIA Signature Strength Inventory at http://www.authentichappiness.org/. There is no charge to complete the inventory and receive your results. I appreciate the solid psychological research behind the inventory and the sharp focus on your top 5 signature strengths out of a possible 24 strengths.

Here are a few statements about signature strengths from Martin Seligman’s classic book, Authentic Happiness.

Our life task is to deploy our signature strengths and virtues in the major realms of living: work, love, parenting, and finding purpose. Personal meaning is the attachment of your signature strengths to something larger than yourself.

At work, Seligman believed that re-crafting your job to deploy your strengths every day can change your career into a calling. Your work can be more satisfying than it is now by using your signature strengths at work more often.

Watch for future posts on achieving strength based approaches in the workplace.

Photo credit: 2005 Mar-Austin Type Tour-032 - Hyde Park Gym Muscle by http://flickr.com/photos/mrflip/8916916/

by David Zinger

These videos will be 1 to 3 minutes long and offer you quick tips or perspectives on leadership. The primary focus will be on the topics of strength based leadership and employee engagement.

Watch for more videos on this site and better videos as we progress into 2008.

This is part 2 of a 5 part series on leadership strength development through the application of StrengthsFinder 2.0.

Click here to read the first article in the series.

Here is the schedule outlining my strength focus:

1. Maximizer (Week 1)
2. Strategic (Week 2)
3. Positivity (Week 3)
4. Ideation (Week 4)
5. Empathy (Week 5)

The process of working on your strengths includes the following steps:

• Complete the StrengthsFinder 2.0 inventory.
• Scan your top 5 strengths
• Study your first strength
• Outline strength based actions for the first week.
• Implement your action plan
• Review your progress
• Repeat the the process with the next strength on your list.

Click here to download a concise and colorful one page PDF form to work  on your strengths during our 5 weeks of strength training.

As we work together, you will move from weak to week to strength!

Review Week 1: Your First Strength (Maximizer)

I was able to put my maximizer strength to good work this week. A network project with one of my parnters had very rapid and acclerated growth the past week with each of us raising the bar. I was also able to spend some maximizer time with my oldest son helping him to maximize his strengths during his first year of university.

I did lose sight of numerous opportunites to apply the strength - I call this strength myopia. We have our strength right in front of us and often fail to use it in obvious situations. Before reading about the strategic strength I will review maximizer one more time.

I also learned that the combination of Maximizer and a work mantra I call GEMO (Good Enough Move On) is very significant in creating tremendous progress in projects in short periods of time. Click here to read my article on Finding GEMO. GEMO helps me get projects started and to keep them moving while maximizer help me continually make them better.

Outline Week 2: Your Second Strength (Strategic)

People who are especially talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

Strategic Action Plan

1. Rather than being amused by external entertainment I will seek and nourish muse time. I need to take time to be think over projects, patterns, and pathways. One terrific place to do this will be before and during two flights I will take this week.

2. In two meetings this week I will ensure that I think about the initatives from my strategic strength and offer different pathways to accomplish results.

3. Strategic thinking can seem like inaction at times so I will ensure I place a high value on this strength and give it the time it deserves to unfold. I will also carry a tape recorder and paper to capture any strategic insights while spending time between activities.

4. I have much experience in blogging and online management/leadership development and I will seek out 2 opportunites to offer my strategic perspective to others in this rapidly growing field.

Next Week: Review and Strength#3 - Positivity.

Photo Credit: 3 payers chessboard by http://flickr.com/photos/slip/272995622/

Written by  David Zinger, M. Ed.

He also writes an excellent informative and interesting newsletter. I just received it this week and asked Mike if I could reprint the newsletter on the Strength Based Leadership blog.

Here it is:

Much of the elusiveness of a leading through meaning approach is that by its nature it requires that we lean into the failure, pain, insecurity, and negative emotions that represent the critical learning opportunities on our leadership path. Our coaching insight for today is:

The world is not made up of things - it is made up of relationships.

We achieve results primarily through relationships. Relationships are truly the most effective pathway to the highest levels of commitment, creativity, and performance within organizations. The reason is that positive relationships have a transformational impact on the individual. They draw out the best in each of us. But here’s the bottom line for our organizations. Human capital is useless without relationships - particularly in our fast-paced, global economy. In fact, leaders can be best measured by their ability to create “social capital” - the sum total of all their relationships. It is through this network of relationships that their work is conducted. The undeniable truth is that where there are high levels of trust and mutual understanding between people, you will see meaning.

My message to leaders is actually quite simple: It’s the relationship……stupid. A little blunt? Maybe. Accurate? Absolutely. We underestimate by some huge margin the importance of relationships in our efforts to create meaning in our organizational lives. For a half-decade I have been involved in research on relationships between leaders and followers. The results have been both eye-opening and fascinating. My five-year journey can be reduced to three basic findings about leader- follower relationships that we better pay attention to:
1. Some form fast - but most don’t.
2. Followers overemphasize their importance.
3. Leaders underestimate their significance.

Some relationships form fast - most don’t. Some relationships form almost automatically but for the most part, relationship building activities are not easy to do (due to differences in style, values, etc.). A root issue is that we fail to fully understand the art of “relating” that is core to the science of relationship building. That’s a mistake. The essence of relating begins with the heightened awareness of others and is fueled by trust-building interactions - such as self-disclosures. As leaders, we need to be relentless relationship builders and be 100 times more deliberate about the “relating” to people.

Followers overemphasize the importance of relationships. It’s a key source of meaning in their lives. Traditionally, the balance of power rests with the boss. It often goes way beyond the obvious power differences - where the leader controls resources, information, and access to meaningful work. Followers look to the leader for validation of their personal worth to the organization. And that can’t come from an e-mail. It takes face time and a stable relationship for that to occur. Studies consistently point to the lost productivity attributed to “worrying about the relationship”.

Leaders underestimate the significance of relationships. It is clear that a great deal of interaction is required to explain, reassure, and facilitate actual elements of a follower’s performance. While facilitative-type behaviors are often prescribed as effective strategies for leaders in motivating their followers, the reality is that the broad challenges of the leader’s role and the lack of skill and insight into relationship building serve as formidable barriers. In the heat of the battle, “relating” and the creation of meaning gets lost to the perceived needs to command, control, and communicate.

Simply stated, our organization leaders need a better understanding of the dynamics of relationship formation and the determination and patience to put them into play.

You can sign up for Mike’s newsletter at theothersideofthecard.com. There is a hot link for Amazon for ordering the book at the site as well. Most importantly, you can reach Mike at mike@theothersideofthecard.com to keep the dialogue going.

How do you perceive other people’s strengths?

Watch the short video below and as you watch the video also watch your attitude about the character in the video. How do you see him? Does judgement cloud your vision? Are you blown away by him at the end?

The video may take a short while to download but it is worth the wait.

A big thanks to Chris Brogan for his post on this in relationship to storytelling.

While there are many good levers for engaging people and driving performance — levers such as selecting for talent, setting clear expectations, praising where praise is due, and defining the team’s mission — the master lever is getting each person to play to his strengths. Pull this lever, and an engaged and productive team will be the result. Fail to pull it, and no matter what else is done to motivate the team, it’ll never fully engage. It will never become a high-performance team.

Go Team Go.

Knots:

1. Use this week to design work work to play to the unique strengths of each team member you lead.
2. Work with the individuals and the team to identify each person’s strengths and double your effort to design team work to be a fit with the unique strengths of your team members.

I have spend more time on the sites than with the books. To use the on-line resources you must purchase the books. StrengthsFinder 2.0 has the on-line access code in an envelope and Go Put Your Strengths to Work has the code on the inside of the book jacket.

In a future post I will outline the 5 strengths identified by StrengthsFinder 2.0. I completed the original StrengthsFinder and my top 4 strengths remained the same. I now have Empathy identified as my fifth strength.

The StrengthsFinder website has lots of resources to further understand and apply your strengths. There is an active forum to discuss your results and applications with other readers. A real nice added plus to StrengthsFinder 2.0 is that purchase of the book also gives you a six month subscription to Gallup’s leading management journal.

The Go Put Your Strengths To Work website gives you the opportunity to conduct a SET (Strengths Engagement Track) assessment. This does not look so much at strength identification as the application and knowledge of your strengths. Your SET scores gives you a real time comparison of how engaged your strengths are compared to the rest of the working world. My present level is 89 out of 100 and my future level is 96 out of 100. You can take the assessment 3 times.

Viewers of Buckingham’s video: Trombone Player Wanted will recognize most of the concepts in the book, as they also appear in the video. You can download 2 parts of the 6 part video with your ID code.

I am passionate about strengths and strength development. My early quibble with both books is the trivial extras they have added — StrengthsFinder 2.0 gives you cute little stickers to put your 5 strengths on the front of the book while a resource section in Go Put Your Strengths to Work has a cheesy 10 to 20 page “love it and loath it” notepad. Strong books like these don’t need fluffy extras!

These are just the kind of things that organizational strength naysayers will jump all over to say this is just some kind of shallow self-esteem movement. To be strong, you can always throw away the stickers and rip the little note pads out of the book. Strengths reside inside us and our relationships not in some clever marketing extra that can weaken such a strong message.

I encourage you to purchase both of these resources, accelerate your strength development, and work at leveraging the strengths of the people you lead.

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