Uploaded on December 15, 2005 by Eggz

I feel invigorated by the start of this site on strength-based leadership. I anticipate 2006 with energy, excitement, and enthusiasm. I look forward to providing ideas, articles, resources, links, and discussion to further advance your strength based leadership.

The next two weeks will be a personal and family time of relaxation, recovery, and renewal.

As Loehr and Schwartz stated in The Power of Full Engagement:

The richest, happiest and most productive lives are characterized by the ability to fully engage in the challenge at hand, but also to disengage periodically and seek renewal…We become flat liners mentally and emotionally by relentlessly spending energy without sufficient recovery.

As a “flat-lander” from the Canadian prairies I don’t also want to be a flat liner. It is time experience waves of relaxation in Mexico.

Keith Ferrazzi was a co-author of Never eat alone: And other secrets to success, one relationship at a time. Brian Uzzi is a co-author of How to build your network.

Two authors with 4z’s in their names are contributing to a renewed buzzzz on relationships, connecting, and networking.

A strength-based leader knows the importance of caring connections. A leader’s work is done with others and through others. Never eat alone begins with this Margaret Wheatley quote:

Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.

Ramit Sethi talked about how networking is viewed by many as a dirty word or a sleazy collection of business cards. He disagreed saying networking is “about having deep relationships and giving more to people than you expect back.” This is synonymous with the love demonstrated by the strength-based leader.

Networking and relationships are transforming. Our connection may energize both of us and be of mutual benefit. I borrowed Never eat alone from my public library and the librarian was commenting that she read the book and that it was quite helpful. You could say we even networked for a just a couple of moments about the book and I believe we will have a stronger relationship next week when I return.

If you want to sample Ferrazzi’s thinking, visit the blog: Never eat alone. Business week just published an article on Ferrazzi on Networking for the right reasons. This includes how to manage 250 important relationships. If you read the book, whatever you do, try to avoid reading it alone at your desk while you eat lunch.

There are many pathways to networking. Perhaps you are looking for a more traditional or strategic view of networking. Brian Uzzi and Shannon Dunlap wrote a Harvard Business Review article on How to build your network. They examine the inner workings of networks, how to diagnose your current network, create a more potent one, and actively manage it. It includes a method to map your network and determine the next steps to build a more effective network. This article is currently available for free on line by clicking here.

Carry on caring and caring enough to be connected from A to Zzzz.

Is the use of the word love a problem for you as a central characteristic of strength-based leadership?

I was having lunch with my mentor, Peter Dyck, and we talked about all the unfortunate connotations of the word love and how it can be a trigger word for many people.

The notion of love in leadership is not about being blinded by some romantic ideal that makes your heart go all-a-flutter. This can be a wonderful romantic experience but leadership within organizations is more art than experience.

I appreciate Erich Fromm’s perspective on love. He maintained that love was an art, not merely a romantic notion of falling for something. Love is about standing alive and alert and working on the discipline, concentration, and patience that are required for this very human art.

I joined the discussion of leadership on Chris Bailey’s post on: Is this what leadership looks like? I was originally pulled in by Dick Richards perspective on leadership: leadership means inspiring others to commit their energy to a common purpose. I also liked his client’s distinction betweem managment and leadership: “Management is about allocating the available human energy. Leadership is about raising the amount of human energy available.”

For a moment I would like you to imagine that you are at the following meeting that Dick Richards wrote about:

I once attended a meeting of about 100 managers for the Mediterranean division of an American company that was a client of mine. The managers were Italian, Spanish, Greek. The meeting was held in Italy and the CEO of the division was Italian. I almost fell out of my seat when he said, “Of course we must love our products. Of course we must love our customers. But our success begins with loving one another.”

What would be your thoughts and emotions if you were in attendance?

Can you hear this as a genuine expression with lived expectations and actions or would you hear it as CEO rhetoric?

What does love mean as an art and an action within an organization?

In 2006, it will be 50 years since Erich Fromm published The Art Of Love. In 2006, this blog will advance Fromm’s ideas about the art of love into specific and concrete organizational actions.

David Zinger is celebrating the first month of the strength-based leadership blog. There were 12 posts or articles in the first month.

This post invites you to engage in the 12 days of strength-based leadership. There is a specific leadership action attached to each post.

Choose one or two actions to begin. One of the principles of strength training is to gradually build up your strength – this will add muscle to your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual actions.

If you click on the post, it will take you to the complete article for each action.

To use a horse race analogy, you’re at the post:

Post 1: Commit yourself to strength-based self-management. Read the article by Peter Drucker on managing your own career and begin taking actions to strengthen your own career development.

Post 2: Discover your signature strengths. Log into www.authentichappiness.org and take the VIA signature strength test today. Go beyond listing your strengths to living your strengths.

Post 3: Take 30 minutes to plan on how to build your strengths the RONA way.

Post 4: Be a purrrfect leader. Love cats share their knowledge, network and compassion. Share your knowledge with your network and use compassion as a beacon to guide all your leadership actions.

Post 5: Tally your high quality interactions (HQI) today. To add energy to the organization double your high quality interactions tomorrow.

Post 6: Find an everyday leader to inspire your development of strength, caring, and energy management. Remember: leadership is a way of being.

Post 7: Read the Power of Full Engagment by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.

Post 8: Gallup along with your strengths by taking the Gallup Strength Finder inventory.

Post 9: Avoid the blahs, read a blog, use a blog reader, or write a blog.

Post 10: Get engaged – say, stay, and strive. Do all you can to keep yourself and your followers fully engaged.

Post 11: Play chess not checkers – make the right move now.

Post 12: Incorporate the 7 characteristics of highly effective entrepreneurial employees as a selection criteria to find the right talent to create a strong, caring, energetic and entrepreneurial organization.

I frequently scan Tom Peter’s blog: The latest headlines on stuff that matters. It offers 10 to 20 references a day on stories about businesses and organizations. When I saw the headline on Seven Characteristics of Highly Effective Entrepreneurial Employees I quickly clicked to the link. It was a short Boston Business Journal reprint of a 2-page article by Joe Hadzima from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

I encourage you to read the article yourself especially if you work with or look for highly effective entrepreneurial employees. Here is Joe’s list:

1. Ability to deal with risk
2. Results oriented
3. Energy
4. Growth potential
5. Team player
6. Multitasking ability
7. Improvement oriented

Joe refers to the highly effective employee as having the “Right Stuff.” In regards to energy, The Right Stuff employee has high levels of enthusiasm and energy. The Right Stuff employee consistently generates output that is higher than could be reasonably expected. The Right Stuff employee is fully committed to the organization, its goals and overall success.

The strength-based leader is able to select employees with abundant energy and then the leader is able to unleash that energy in pursuit of results for the employee and the organization. Click here to read the article.

Learning to manage energy more efficiently and intelligently has a unique transformative power, both individually and organizationally.
Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz

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.

Click here is you would like to read the rest of the article on Good managers focus on employees strengths, not weaknesses.

The important first step is to figure out what your employees are good at. Here is some additional guidance from the Wharton article:

So how can managers tap into the talent they have in their organizations? Buckingham said a good first step is to determine what employees are good at. The tasks they learn quickly, the talents they naturally exhibit and the jobs they feel good about doing are hints about their inherent strengths. Once those strengths are uncovered, a good manager will put them to use. “You can only win as a company when you get your people into positive numbers,” Buckingham said.

Only 17 per cent of Canadians are “highly engaged” in their work, Towers Perrin HR Services found in a recent survey of 5,100 Canadians. This low number is disconcerting, to say the least. Also disconcerting is that Canadian engagement scores have decreased over the past few years.

Yet engagement is a key variable in an effective workforce. It contributes to accomplishing organizational objectives, a healthy organizational climate, bottom line results, and worker wellness.

Different organizations define engagement in different ways and ask different questions to measure engagement. Some key terms associated with engagement are: energy, involvement, efficacy, vigor, dedication, and absorption. Because strength based leadership can be a key contributor to employee engagement this blog will examine various studies on engagement in greater detail with an eye towards the contribution of leadership to overall engagement within an organization.

Hewitt Associates, who conduct research to determine Canada’s 50 Best Employers, use 3 S’s to operationalize engagement: say, stay, and strive.

Say – how much an employee speaks positively about the organization to to others.

Stay -how much an employee wants to be a member of the organization.

Strive – how willing an employee is to exert extra effort and how dedicated the employee is to doing excellent work.

Hewitt Associates will be releasing their latest results on Canada’s 50 Best Employers later this month in the Globe and Mail.

Strength-based leadership can be a key driver to contribute to employee engagement.

Leaders who are aware of their strengths and practice their strengths have a higher probability of being engaged themselves and engaging their employees. Their caring for employees and the organization will contribute to engagement while the skillful management of personal and organizational energy will sustain engagement over the long term.

Here are a few questions to consider: How engaged are you at work? Has your level of engagement fluctuated over the past year or years? What do you do to stay engaged? How do you contribute to the engagement of the people you lead?

This blog will feature strength-based responses to these and other engagement questions over the next few months.

What are your sources for leadership information, perspective, and knowledge?

Being informed can make you a stronger leader. My hope is that this blog will become one of your sources for understanding the roles and functions of strength, caring, and energy management in leadership. It is important that you find the sources that are most helpful to you.

If you have never explored the world of blogs I encourage you to click on some of the blogs listed on the right hand side of this page. Blogs, short for web logs, provide a direct link to the thoughts and perspectives of a specific blogger or group of bloggers. Because there are millions of blogs it is very important to separate the wheat from the chaff. Once I find a good blog I tend to check the blogs listed on that blog for other good sources of leadership information.

If you become a regular blog reader it is important to find a “reader” that will collect your blogs and let you know when a new one is published. I use Bloglines but there are a number of free readers that make it so much easier to read and track the blogs of interest to you.

By the way, have you thought about creating a blog to share your perspective and experience. Writing your thoughts is a great way to clarify your own thinking and share your ideas with others who may benefit from your perspective. A blog is very easy to set up and this one on Blogspot, a Google-owned company, is free (Yes, I am from Winnipeg and we do like bargains in Winnipeg). If you want to start a blogspot blog click on the “get your own blog” button at the top of the page.

If you are new to blogs as a source of information or you want to begin a blog you are certainly welcome to contact me and I will freely offer whatever help I can to get you going with this. It is a small way to repay the debt of the free help that other bloggers have given me to help me navigate through what seems like a mess of information to an efficient connection to a highly customized and individual stream of knowledge and thoughts that enrich and enliven my understanding and practice of leadership.

The VIA signature strength test at www.authentichappiness.org is free. The STRENGTHSFINDER test at the Gallup site: www.strengthsfinder.com is the cost of one of their strength books. The book I recommend is Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton.

On the inside cover of the book jacket you will find a 14 digit code that will give you access to the STRENGTHSFINDER test.

Testing is certainly not the only way to discover or uncover your strengths but it provides a good start on knowing your strengths and determining how to leverage them for the maximum benefit of the organization, the people you lead, and yourself.

If you would like some basic information about the 34 strengths that range from Achiever to Woo (yes woo!) I encourage you to read some basic material at the Gallup site: http://gmj.gallup.com/book_center/strengthsfinder/.

By the way, here is a brief description of woo:

People strong in the Woo theme love the challenge of meeting new people and winning them over. They derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection with another person.

Strength training is not something simply for the body or something you do at a gym. Good leaders know their strengths and leverage their strengths in the service of their followers and the organization.

I would not ask you to do something that I have not done myself. According to the STRENGTHSFINDER report my top 5 strengths are:
1. Maximizer
2. Strategic
3. Positivity
4. Ideation
5. Individualization.

How well do you manage your energy at work?
How well do you handle the transitions between work and home?
How much attention do you give to the skillful management of your leadership energy?

Energy is something we often fail to pay attention to. We may take our energy for granted or we may just bottom out when we are exhausted. Yet energy is an essential resource to achieve our objectives and to build and maintain our vital relationships. Energy comes in many forms: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and organizational.

If you are excited to get a head start on managing energy I highly recommend Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s – The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal.

Here is what Marcus Buckingham had to say about the book

Fantastic! At the heart of this book is a simple truth: the secret to lasting success — individually and organizationally — lies in how we manage our energy. This is a phenomenal insight that most of us ignore. Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr provide a very practical map for marshaling our energy — physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually — to live much more productive and fulfilling lives.

Part of this strength-based leadership blog will be devoted to a closer examination of leadership energy and an outline of approaches and methods to work with our energy, enhance the energy of others, and build the energy of our organization.

For a quick energy boost click into the energy management tidbits section on my website.

To Esther

This blog is primarily focused on organizational leadership yet today’s post honors a quiet yet powerful family and community leader. Esther was a former neighbour who died this week at 45 years of age. She leaves behind her husband and her two children ages 16 and 14.

Esther was a stay-at-home mom but this did not preclude her from being an active and engaging leader in her family and community. In many ways Esther personified the 3 qualities of strength-based leadership: strength, love and energy.

Esther was a strong woman. She may have been small in size but she was large in heart. She had an inner spiritual strength that was quiet and humble yet always evident. She transformed her house into a welcoming comfortable home and Esther guided her family and children with both subtlety and grace.

Esther was not a leader who was out front trying to pull people along, rather Esther stood beside you. Esther lived with cancer for many years yet she demonstrated phenomenal grit, strength and determination. You always got the sense that this was not even so much for herself but for the people she loved so dearly.

You knew Esther loved her family and loved life. The look in her eye as she watched her children communicated so much caring. She was very present when she spoke with you and she had a lilt in her voice that always made you feel a little lighter after talking with her.

Even in illness Esther had energy. She was busy making food for the school even as her personal energy was dwindling. Each interaction with Esther was an authentic example of a high quality interaction that rekindled your energy.

Esther, you will be missed and you demonstrated to me that leadership is not a role; it is a way of being with both yourself and others.

Thank you.

Do you put your heart into leadership?

A recent study presented at the American Heart Association suggested that unsociable men were more likely to die from heart disease and stroke than more socially engaged men. Social avoidance increased the risk of death from cariovascular disease in men by about 40%.

We must be very careful how we interpret research but this research seems to indicate that caring and connecting might have health benefits for the leader.

Jane Dutton suggested that the single biggest factor to energize your workplace was to create and sustain High-Quality Connections at work. A High-Quality Connection is based on mutual positive regard, trust, and active engagement on both sides.

Reflection Question: How many High-Quality Connections did you engage in today?

Connections are pathways to caring in leadership and being connected might just be a heart-felt approach to leadership.