Notes on Strengths-Based Leadership

Overview

• The objective of today’s class is to introduce a new tool or perspective that can strengthen your working relationships with each other and your future clients.

Strengths-Based Leadership

• Strengths-Based Leadership is the leadership practice of:
  • Investing in your strengths
  • Developing your strengths and the strengths of others
  • Effectively using your strengths to accomplish your leadership goals (Wooten, n.d.)

Understanding Strengths

• Talent: Naturally recurring patterns of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that can be productively applied.
  • Examples include: effortlessly starting conversations, thinking in an orderly manner, influencing others, seeing patterns in data, maintaining a positive outlook on life.
• Investment: Time spent practicing, developing skills, and building knowledge.
  • Examples include: life experiences, education, acquired knowledge, understanding contexts, practicing skills, learning by doing, coaching, and mentoring.
• Strength: The ability to consistently deliver near-perfect positive performance. (Wooten, n.d.)

Investing in Talent

• You possess a unique set of talents that, when developed, can lead to high achievement, success, and personal excellence.
• Awareness of your talents builds confidence and serves as a foundation for achievement.
• Learning how to develop and apply strengths can improve your levels of achievement.
• Talents can be applied across various areas, including relationships, learning, and leadership. (Wooten, n.d.)

Maximize Strengths over Weaknesses

• There is nothing wrong with being aware of our weaknesses and managing them, but our greatest opportunity for success lies in building on our natural talents. (Wooten, n.d.)

Strengths Growth Perspective (visual concept)

• Weakness vs Strength: the journey from starting point to mastery involves the amount of effort required.
• If you totally suck at something, the amount of work to become a MASTER is significantly more than if you are GOOD at something and want to become a MASTER.
• This idea is often illustrated in resources like Thrive materials:
  • Starting Point vs Mastery
  • Amount of Effort vs Mastery
  • Emphasis: leverage existing strengths to reach high levels with relatively less incremental effort.
• Note: See Thrive materials at associated sites (e.g., thrivenetmarketing.com) for visuals and examples. $ext{Starting Point} o ext{Mastery}$

Strengths Exercise – Good to Great (Exercise Steps)

1) Using your dominant hand, slowly and carefully write this sentence five times – “This Presentation is Amazing”
2) Using your non-dominant hand, slowly and carefully write this sentence five times – “This Presentation is Amazing”

• Purpose: illustrate how practice interacts with natural skill (dominant vs. non-dominant) to produce performance.
• Source: (Wooten, n.d.)

Strengths Exercise 1 – Good to Great (Visual Concept)

• Comparison framework:
  • Non-Dominant Hand: With Lots of Effort & Practice
  • Dominant Hand: With Lots of Effort & Practice
• The exercise demonstrates differences in ease and speed of achieving high performance based on initial talent and practice. (Visuals reference: thrive and thrivenetmarketing materials)
• Notation reinforces the idea that while deliberate practice improves performance, starting point matters.

The Clifton StrengthsFinder Assessment

• The Clifton StrengthsFinder measures the presence of talents across $34$ themes.
• These themes represent the ways we naturally think, feel, and behave as unique individuals and serve as the foundation for developing leadership strengths.

Success Instinct Growth Needs

• S – Success: Strengths are where you feel successful.
• I – Instinct: Strengths are activities that you are naturally drawn to.
• G – Growth: Strengths are where you learn the most, produce the newest ideas, and have the best insights.
• N – Needs: Strengths are where you feel the need to spend more time.
• Signs of a Strength (summary): The four indicators above describe when a trait can be considered a strength.

Four Domains of Strengths

• None of the four domains or the $34$ strengths are more or less important than another; each contributes uniquely to overall effectiveness.

Executing Strength

• Meaning: how you accomplish work
• Examples (themes and notes):
  • Faculty Achiever: Lots of stamina and likes hard work and staying busy
  • Example reference: Dr. Ketchum
  • Arranger: Organized but flexible
  • Examples: Dr. Krassen, Dr. Guerrero
  • Belief: Relies on strong core values that don’t change
  • Consistency: Exhibits fairness, aware of treating people the same
  • Deliberative: Takes serious care in making decisions or choices
  • Discipline: Enjoys routines and structure
  • Focus: Takes direction, follows through, and makes corrections to stay on track
  • Responsibility: Assumes psychological ownership of what they do
  • Restorative: Especially good at figuring out what’s wrong and resolving it
  • Examples: Dr. Wrightsman, Dr. Krassen, Pam, Rachel

Influencing Strength

• Meaning: how you influence others to reach goals
• Examples (themes and notes):
  • Activator: Make things happen by turning thoughts into action
  • Example: Dr. Krassen, Pam
  • Command: Has a presence, takes control, and makes decisions
  • Communication: Finds it easy to put thoughts into words, good talkers
  • Competition: Measures their progress against the performance of others
  • Maximizers: Seeks to transform something strong into something superb
  • Example: Dr. Krassen
  • Self-Assurance: Confident in the ability to manage themselves, an inner compass
  • Significant: Independent and wanting to be recognized for good works
  • Woo: Loves to meet new people and win them over

Building Relationships Strength

• Meaning: how you build and maintain effective relationships with others
• Examples (themes and notes):
  • Adaptability: Take things as they come and “go with the flow”
  • Examples: Dr. Ketchum, Dr. Giannone, Pam
  • Connectedness: Has faith in the link between all things; it all happens for a reason
  • Examples: Dr. Mazur, Dr. Koch, Dr. Guerrero, Dr. Clark, Dr. Gittings, Lexi, Rachel
  • Developer: Recognizes and cultivates the potential in others
  • Examples: Dr. Ketchum, Dr. Giannone, Rachel
  • Empathy: Can sense the feelings of others by “walking in their shoes”
  • Examples: Dr. Ketchum, Dr. Giannone, Dr. Gittings, Rachel
  • Harmony: Seeks consensus, doesn’t like conflict
  • Example: Dr. Krassen
  • Includer: Accepting of others and seeks ways to not let others feel left out
  • Example: Dr. Koch
  • Individualization: Intrigued by the unique qualities of each person
  • Examples: Dr. Wrightsman, Pam
  • Positivity: Has an enthusiasm that is often contagious, upbeat
  • Examples: Dr. Gittings, Pam
  • Relator: Deep satisfaction in working hard with others to achieve goals
  • Examples: Dr. Wrightsman, Dr. Clark

Strategic Thinking Strength

• Meaning: how you think about the world and plan ahead
• Examples (themes and notes):
  • Analytical: Searches for reason and causes
  • Context: They understand the present by researching the past
  • Examples: Dr. Giannone, Lexi
  • Futuristic: Inspired by the future and what it could be
  • Ideation: Finds connections between seemingly disparate phenomena
  • Examples: Dr. Mazur, Dr. Clark, Dr. Gittings
  • Input: Having a craving to know more; often collects and archives information
  • Examples: Dr. Ketchum, Dr. Koch, Dr. Guerrero, Dr. Clark, Lexi
  • Intellection: Introspective and appreciates debate and discussion
  • Examples: Dr. Mazur, Dr. Guerrero, Dr. Giannone, Dr. Clark, Lexi, Rachel
  • Learner: Great desire to learn and continuously improve; the process excites them
  • Examples: Dr. Mazur, Dr. Koch, Dr. Guerrero
  • Strategic: Often creates alternative ways to proceed; quickly spots patterns
  • Examples: Dr. Wrightsman, Dr. Mazur, Dr. Gittings, Lexi

Unique Combination of Strengths

• Each person's combination of strengths is unique and has the potential for success when developed.
• Awareness of personal strengths, as well as those of others, opens up possibilities for exponential excellence.

Strengths Schematic

• A schematic diagram is a representation of the elements of a system using abstract, graphic symbols rather than realistic pictures.

You Are Unique!

• The combination and the order of the $34$ themes of talent measured by StrengthsFinder lead to more than $33{,}700{,}000$ possible unique sets of signature themes.

Theme Weaving

• Definition: Theme weaving is the synergy and interaction between themes that provides a deeper understanding of how these themes work together.
• Value: Utilizing the synergy of theme dynamics maximizes talent and leads to higher levels of individual effectiveness and performance.
• Copyright © 2011 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.

Investments Develop Strengths

• The majority of successful people start with their dominant strengths – and then add skills, knowledge, tools, and practice to the mix.
• When they do this, the power of their strengths multiply.

Partnerships

• Complementary partnerships form when people come together to achieve something greater than what they could accomplish alone.
• Consciously considering your strengths and the strengths of others can lead to more effective partnerships. (Wooten, n.d.)

Dealing with Opportunity Areas

• Open communication/transparency
• Get the RIGHT training
• Leverage other talents
• Use support systems
• Form complementary partnerships
• Adjust/Change role (Wooten, n.d.)

Experiential Component – StrengthsFinder Reflection

• Complete the StrengthsFinder Exercise, which can be found in Canvas.
• This exercise will be shared with your faculty advisor to support Strengths-based advising.
• Discuss your reflections with a pair. Consider sharing your experience with the class.

References

• Wooten, L. (n.d.). Strengths Based Leadership.
• https://umich.instructure.com/courses/85779/files/1842368/download?verifier=SZPOitriOl1nlr0S1a218WV5FqrwVZWpsPFAj3jM&wrap=1