That’s a question we considered at a workshop I attended recently. Author Mark Miller and a team of facilitators walked a large group through the content of his new book Chess Not Checkers. The boardgame imagery? It’s symbolic for what happens as organizations grow. In the early stages of most small organizations or teams, the rules are simplistic and team members may play interchangeable roles much like the game pieces in a checkers game. But as growth occurs, complexity kicks in. Roles require specialists to address additional complications. The playing field starts to resemble a game of chess, rather than checkers. If we’re not careful, we’ll fall behind.

That’s what the workshop addressed. How do leaders elevate their game to match new organizational complexities? You can find the answers in the book (as well as the digital field guide), but let me share the four big ideas we discussed.

Bet on Leadership

It shouldn’t be a surprise that organizational success starts with leadership. But many organization are extremely reactive in this respect. They place their bet too late by waiting until new leaders are needed to begin looking for them. The best organizations have a strong leadership bench. They know who their future leaders are and work hard to prepare them beforehand so they are ready to go when the call comes.

The other thing to note is that a bet is not a sure thing. Not every leader works out. But in Mark Miller’s words, “You cannot be a great organization without great leadership.” Why? Because leadership growth always precedes organizational growth.

Act as One

It’s one thing for a leadership team to be on the same page. But what about the rest of the organization? It’s true that leadership teams are uniquely responsible for creating clarity. That is one job that cannot be outsourced. But do key organizational messages cascade effectively throughout the organization or quickly go awry like a kid’s game of telephone? Or worse yet, do they even leave the boardroom?

The silver lining in this regard is that nearly every organization struggles with communication at least to some extent. Perhaps it’s just part of the human condition. But great leaders make the extra effort to ensure key messages get to every level using multiple communication methods. And by the way, it’s impossible to over-communicate what’s truly important (in case you were worried about that).

Win the Heart

Great organizations foster a spirit of shared ownership. Instead of working for “the man,” followers and employees show up to work for themselves. It’s a completely different mentality, but it’s starts with leadership.

Has your organization ever helped your followers’ dreams come true? I’m not just talking about their need to make rent that month. Actual dreams. This was a real question posed at the workshop. Everyone present wrote down a life dream and shared it with the rest of the table. It may not be realistic to deliver the final product, but many times we can do more than we think to help followers take the next step on their journey.

Remember this: when you win the heart, you get best of everything else a person brings to the table with them (hands, mind, energy, skills, etc.).

Excel at Execution

Without results, the rest of the discussion about leadership is pretty useless. What’s the point? Unfortunately this is where many leadership initiatives start rather than end. Still, excelling at execution is a leadership responsibility. One way to improve is simply sharing the score. People tend to work harder and smarter when they know where they stand.

If your team is operating at less than full potential, there’s room to improve your leadership execution. It may be up to you to raise the bar.

So how about you – are you playing chess or checkers?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

What I’d like to do in this post is show how the 34 StrengthsFinder themes neatly divide into four specific leadership styles – and I’ll explain what difference this makes for you and your team. In the next post, I’ll share some ideas for building a strengths-based leadership development program for your organization.

The 4 Distinct Strengths-Based Leadership Styles

In his follow-up book Strengths-Based Leadership, Gallup writer Tom Rath describes four distinct leadership styles that StrengthsFinder themes fall into.

Executing: Individuals with the majority of their strengths in the leadership style are adept at making things happen. They “catch” ideas easily and naturally make them a reality. They tend to be the ones who implement specific solutions.

Influencing: Individuals with influencing strengths help their teams reach a broader audience. They are the salespeople for a team’s ideas. Not only that, they naturally tend to “own” the responsibility for getting the message across.

Relationship Building: Individuals with relationship building strengths are the human glue that holds a team together. They take a group of individuals and create synergetic groups that work better together than they could apart.

Strategic Thinking: Individuals with strategic thinking strengths essentially keep everyone focused on what could – and should – be. They use information to help the team make informed decisions.

What Difference Do Leadership Styles Make?

At this point, you may be thinking that these distinctions sound nice but wonder how to determine which leadership style you lean toward as well as how it affects your team. I’d like to answer both questions using this table I created for a 20-person project team.

As we learned previously, the StrengthsFinder assessment gives each person a set of their Top 5 Signature Themes from list of 34 possibilities. You can see from this table which strengths fall under which themes. If two or more of your “Top 5” lie within one of these categories, you are likely strongest in that particular leadership style. Since this team was made up of 20 individuals, that means 100 strengths were represented in the sum of everyone’s Top 5. The totals for each theme are listed below.

Without knowing anything about the team itself, I’d like you to consider the following questions:

• What does this team likely tend to do well?
• What does this team probably tend to struggle with?
• How closely would you predict this team works together? With customers?
• In what areas would this team be most likely to enlist outside help?
• Given the profile, how might individuals with strengths in the “Influencing” theme best support the group?

None of the answers are cut and dried. Individual strengths reach their highest potential only when they are part of a collective group (tweet). There’s incredible value in taking StrengthsFinder 2.0 on your own to increase your personal insight and effectiveness. But the benefit multiples exponentially in a group context.

The good news is that you don’t have to come up with all the answers on your own. Each assessment comes with a Strengths Insight Guide to help understand your specific themes as well as an Action Planning Guide with tips on how to apply them. It even tells you how to work most effectively with people who have different strengths.

If you have not had the opportunity to complete the StrengthsFinder assessment, I suggest that you purchase the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book and use the code to complete the assessment online. If you have and it proved to be a valuable experience, invite your team to complete the assessment together. To increase the impact, many consultants, coaches and trainers (including myself) are available to facilitate a StrengthsFinder breakout session and build a team profile for you. I would be glad to help you find one – or you might even decide to give it a try on your own.

What is one way you know your team could benefit from a StrengthsFinder exercise? What types of leadership assessments has your team completed together in the past?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.