Why Leaders Who Leverage Their Strengths Win More Often
In the business world there is not much room for error. Companies across the globe face intense pressure to meet their bottom lines and increase profitability.
Leaders who run these companies must use whatever is at their disposal in order to be successful and win.
What if they could leverage more of who they already are in order to win more?
In a recent research study, the Gallup organization found that employees and leaders were 6 times more likely to be engaged and productive just by going through a basic experience with StrengthsFinder™ which means: (Rath, StrengthsFinder 2.0 2008).
- Understanding their Top 5 themes of strength
- Applying their strengths
- Building skills, knowledge and being provided opportunities to practice their strengths
What is StrengthsFinder™?
StrengthsFinder™ is a psychometric tool that focuses on your dominant patterns of thought; your innate talents. Talents are natural thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that can be productively applied. These talents group into themes, which can be turned into strengths.
What do strengths do for you as a leader? Strengths give you the ability to provide consistent near perfect performance in a given activity.
Leaders who are able to consistently perform at a near perfect level stand out from the crowd and effect change in a major way.
Finding your natural talents also allows you to know what you are not as strong at, and figure out ways to team with people who are strong in those weakness areas. Teams that are actively engaging in intentional strengths based experiences see overall performance improve up to 30%. (Wagner & Harter, 2006.)
Meaning they are…
- On a professional team that supports strengths
- Inspired to leverage their strengths to go beyond what is expected
- Recognized and valued for engaging their strengths to do good work
Leaders and teams acting out of their greatest areas of talent truly stand out and can get a lot of things done. But, what if the culture they are a part of does not embrace focusing on your greatest areas for success but rather fixing weakness?
“You Cannot Be Anything You Want To Be, But You Can Be A Whole Lot More Of Who You Already Are.” ~ Curt Liesveld
Curt is right. You cannot be anything you want to be, but you can be more of who you already are. StrengthsFinder is a tool that can save you time in figuring out what your strengths are and how you can leverage those natural talents.
Leaders, Teams, and Cultures that focus on strength have a better chance at winning in their environment.
Cultures that empower leaders to enthusiastically engage employees see a performance improvement up to 70% (©Gallup & Regents of the University of Minnesota, 2013)
Meaning in these cultures:
- Internal advocates are provided with relevant resources needed for success
- Leaders identify meaningful ways to enhance strengths-based teamwork and collaboration
- Support the use of a strengths philosophy to ensure people are in the right jobs
Leaders who take time to understand their natural strengths can be stronger leaders and win more often. Leaders who help teams focus on their strengths can have more influence and win more often. Leaders on highly engaged strengths based teams can effect overall culture in their organization and see dramatic improvement in their sector.
Is it worth it to focus on strength? I think so.
