10 Leadership Strength Application Methods – MMP #36

Strength Based Leadership and Employee Engagement – Monday Morning Percolator #36

During the previous 5 weeks I engaged in leadership strength development through the application of StrengthsFinder 2.0. I encourage you to read the past 5 Monday Morning Percolators to follow the development and progress of this project.

Here was the schedule of 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 strengths included:

• 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 one page PDF form to assist in your strength work.

Here are 10 leadership strength applications and methods I encourage you to apply based on the experience of the past 5 weeks:

1. We must go beyond listing our strengths to living our strengths. Many people have completed strength assessments but what happens after the assessment? Do your strengths get lost in the shuffle of daily demands?
2. The conscious application of strengths gives more power to projects and enthusiasm to efforts.
3. It is helpful to focus on just one strength a week rather than trying to apply all the strengths all the time.
4. In a future project I will dedicate each day to a strength: Monday – Maximizer / Tuesday – Strategic / Wednesday – Positivity / Thursday – Ideation / Friday – Empathy. You could even do this on an hourly basis during the day.
5. A powerful questions to leverage your strengths to specific tasks and encounters is to ask yourself: How can I use my signature strengths right here and right now?
6. Even with a conscious focus on strengths I believe that there were literally hundreds of times that my strengths would have helped me with situations that I simply overlooked.
7. Do whatever you can to be mindful of your strengths: write them down, study them, or make a commitment to yourself and others. Without being mindful of our strengths we can experience strength resource myopia – we have this resource but we fail to see it and leverage it.
8. I believe there is a huge untapped resource of strength application that lives within us  and between us calling for more focused and mindful application on a daily basis to help us achieve results that matter.
9. Strength focus and application is not a fluffy extra. I think conscious strength application is vital, especially for leaders who feel exhausted or demoralized by the constant and growing demands of leadership.
10. Focused strength application may be a strong prevention against a possible employee engagement implosion that is occurring in middle management. We must strengthen the middle of organizations before organizations topple over due to top heavy demands, decreasing levels of employee disengagement and a middle that feels they can’t hold it together.

Photo Credit: Backbone Rock by http://flickr.com/photos/pfly/201161868/