Today I finished the book Strengths Based Leadership, by Tom Rath. The book is based on the concept of “strengths psychology,” and the work of its founder, Don Clifton. The basic idea behind strengths psychology is that most people are born with a propensity to be stronger in some areas than in others (communication skills, analytical skills, physical skills, and so on). While it is still important to work on reducing serious deficiencies, people are much more likely to be successful if they spend the bulk of their efforts on exploiting what they are already naturally good at. Rath’s book helps you figure out what your own strengths are, then offers up solid advice for how to put those strengths to work.
Here are some of my key takeaways from the book:
- “If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything.” p.7
- Anything worth having requires hard work, but focusing on your own unique strengths is much easier and more effective than spending all of your energy trying to overcome weaknesses.
- Optimal performance is the product of Talent x Effort (investment). Therefore talent is a force-multiplier.
- Many leaders are promoted based on their technical skills or performance in their current jobs, which are actually poor predictors of how well they will do in a leadership position.
- Maximizing your team means surrounding yourself with different types of people, particularly those with complementary strengths.
- Above all else, people want leaders they can trust. Integrity trumps literally every other leadership attribute.
I also took the actual Strengthsfinder 2.0 test to discover my own top 5 leadership strengths. While I wasn’t really surprised by the results themselves, I gained a lot of great insight into how to best apply these strengths in a leadership capacity. Here is a quick snapshot of my top 5:
My results put me mostly in the leadership category called “Strategic Thinking.” This means that the best way for me to lead is by constantly learning, asking the tough questions, studying the past and predicting possible future outcomes.
I definitely recommend these books to anyone, anywhere in their leadership journey!
Strengthsfinder 2.0: Copyright © 2017 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.
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