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Seven Easy Steps to Learn Your Strengths

February 7, 2012 in Blog, Coaching, Leadership with 1 Comment

Strengths based leadership cover photoDo you have $13.47, 35 minutes, and the desire to succeed at anything? Here’s a quick guide to investing those resources in learning your strengths. The payoff will last a lifetime.

  1. Buy the Kindle version of Strengths-Based Leadership.*
  2. Don’t read the book. (Yet.)
  3. Use the code you’ll receive from Amazon to take the StrengthsFinder online assessment. Allow 35 minutes of uninterrupted time. It’s easy.**
  4. Don’t read the book. (Still.)
  5. Instead, read the 12-page custom report you’ll receive by email, listing your five strengths (cool), describing them (even cooler), and giving you strategies for developing them (stupendously amazing).
  6. Find a trusted friend who knows her or his strengths and compare notes.
  7. Now read the book.

Why invest in learning your strengths? Because people are “able to gain far more when they expend effort to build on their greatest talents than when they spend a comparable amount of effort to remediate their weaknesses.”*** Or, as General Wesley K. Clark said, “Iʼve never met an effective leader who wasnʼt aware of his talents and working to sharpen them.”

Are you a board leader? You can learn strengths-based board leadership to take your social sector organization from good to great at my Board Responsibilities, Strengths and Impact Workshop on Feb. 15. Register at brsiworkshopfeb12.eventbrite.com. Tickets cost as little as $10 and get you a tasty lunch and leftover Valentine’s Day candy.

* Sorry, locally owned bookstores. I love ya, especially Indigo Bridge. But to get people to see past the urgent and unimportant to the non-urgent and important (that is, investing in their own development), I’ve got to make the first step as easy as possible. Full disclosure: That’s an affiliate link up there, meaning I get a few cents if you buy the book through that link.
** The assessment presents a bunch of paired statements. You click buttons to indicate which statement comes closer to describing you. There’s no time to over-think the choice, because you get just a few seconds for each pair.
*** Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, Strengths-Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and
Why People Follow (Gallup Press, 2009). For more, see the underlying research in Clifton, D.O., & Harter, J.K. (2003). Strengths investment. In K.S. Cameron, J.E. Dutton, & R.E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship. (pp. 111-121). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

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Board Responsibilities, Strengths and Impact Workshop Friday

January 4, 2012 in Blog, Events, Leadership, Social Sector, Speaking with 0 Comments

Your registration includes a 16-page workbook full of resources for a strengths-based approach to board leadership.

Social sector board members, get inspired Friday for a new year of mission impact at my workshop, “Board Responsibilities, Strengths and Impact.” At this low-cost Human Services Federation BoardTalk workshop, you’ll:

  • Get inspired with the mission impact you can create as a board member in 2012.
  • Learn to focus on abundance and strength, not scarcity and weakness, this year.
  • Refresh your knowledge of BoardSource’s 10 Responsibilities of a Social Sector Board Member.
  • Complete a matrix matching your board colleagues’ strengths to their responsibilities. You’ll see exactly the opportunities you have for taking your board from good to great.

At the workshop you’ll receive, and we’ll work through, a 16-page workbook full of resources for taking a strengths-based approach to board leadership, recruitment and development. Here are the details on the workshop:

  • Friday, January 6th, 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
  • Lincoln Community Foundation Building (215 Centennial Mall South)
  • 5th Floor Conference Room
  • HSF Members: $5 / $10 with lunch
  • Non-members: $10 / $15 with lunch

To register, go to http://hsfed.org/boardtalkreg.php.

Do you want to lead the way toward big and lasting mission impact this year? It starts with you, the social sector board member. See you Friday.

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At 80% ready, MOVE!

September 5, 2011 in Leadership with 0 Comments

Take quick action to avoid analysis paralysis and lead:

It is said–though probably apocryphal–that Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest explained his victories by his “getting there firstest with the mostest.” There is valid reasoning in getting there first. Life is about success not perfection. The first one into a market often becomes the leader, correcting imperfections later. Life-saving decisions and interventions are best done rapidly. Speed is often associated with intelligence when complex tasks are involved. You can’t be slow to pay the bets at a craps table in a casino. Try to improve your speed. Most people can identify an “i” even if it isn’t dotted. When you’re 80% ready, MOVE!

Source: Alan Weiss’ Monday Morning Memo, a quick hit on leadership and consulting best practices. Subscription recommended.

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Multitasking: The art of doing two or more things poorly

April 26, 2011 in Coaching, Efficiency, Leadership with 0 Comments

Someone once said, “Multitasking is the art of doing two or more things poorly. Here, from The Energy Project, is why.

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Your Big Hairy Audacious Goal should attract scoffers

April 19, 2011 in Coaching, Leadership with 0 Comments

Photo by ff137

If some people see your Big Hairy Audacious Goal as a snowball bound to melt away on a hot day, and others think you are whacked, you are on the right track.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals are BIG. How big? Big enough so you can only take them from impossible to possible by transforming yourself and your organization. They’re so big:

  • “Your idea doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Phoenix of succeeding–yet your gut tells you that if it does, the impact will be game changing.”
  • “Most of the people who you tell about your plans think you are whacked.”

Big Hairy Audacious Goals are those achievements passionate leaders dream about and others scoff at.

  • Man on the moon in 10 years (President Kennedy)
  • Transform minor desktop computer company into world’s largest, most influential consumer products company (Apple)
  • Restore a moribund football team (Coach Bo Pelini, Nebraska Cornhuskers)

(Blatant self promotion: Big Hairy Audacious Goals are best achieved with a leadership coach who may at first be the only one who believes in you, who thinks your idea isn’t whacked and can easily survive a hot Phoenix day. I am such a coach, and you can read more here about how I help make Big Hairy Audacious Goals possible.)

I got the two quoted points above about snowballs and whacked ideas from Dean Rotbart of Buzzsnatching, who shows people how to get national attention for their promotional efforts. He argued those points (and several others) separate a compelling, attention-grabbing idea from one that’s just ho-hum.

The same things, it seems to me, separate that ho-hum reach goal you might feel obligated to pursue from the Big Hairy Audacious Goal you passionately dream of pursuing.

Is your Big Hairy Audacious Goal cold and whacked enough? Tell me about it in the comments.

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My thanks to American Marketing Association Lincoln for bringing Dean Rotbart to Lincoln. If you live anywhere near Lincoln, AMA’s excellent monthly educational luncheons are not to be missed.

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