This week, I’d like to share some ideas on how to build a strengths-based leadership development program for your organization. I realize that not everyone is in a position responsible for serving an entire organization in this way. However, at the very least, these ideas can shape how we think about the implications of organizational leadership. Here they are:

Use a Strengths Model Before a Competency Model

I’m a huge proponent of competency-based leadership programs, in part because I’ve helped build one before. But there’s another, more objective reason: your organization ought to know what you are looking for in your leaders. Most leadership competency models include the likes of communication, planning, problem solving, initiative, etc. But a competency model isn’t the best place to start.

Here’s the psychology: think back to when you were a kid bringing home your school report card. Your courses (i.e. “competencies”) were a pretty standard set. If you had one A, several passing grades, and a failing grade, which one got the most attention? The truth is that students who aren’t intrinsically drawn to math (and therefore don’t excel at it) will never become great accountants. But that won’t prevent them from become great lawyers, doctors, writers or salespeople.

The temptation with competency models is to attempt to turn everyone into an autonomous, standard issue leader. But even if this were possible (it’s not), the ultimate success would turn out to be the ultimate failure since everyone would be good, good would become average, and no one’s contribution would be unique or noteworthy. No one is rewarded for being average. We can all be remarkable if we focus on our natural strengths, and each strengths contributes to a distinct leadership style.

Competency models should establish a leadership baseline. Each leader ought to be able to score a passing grade. But priority should be given to maximizing and utilizing each employee’s strengths instead of over-managing their weaknesses.

Take a Strengths Assessment Corporately

It should come as no surprise that I advocate for the StrengthsFinder 2.0 strengths assessment. Depending on level of infiltration (either partial or full), here is the priority I suggest that it be administered to:

• HR Development staff (who will be responsible for building/managing the program)
• Executive sponsors (who will be the face of the initiative)
• Executive team who will need to practice what the organization preaches, not to mention play to each other’s strengths)
• Managers (who will need to demonstrate commitment to lower levels)
• Individual contributors
• New employees via New Employee Onboarding experience

Provide Interactive Training for Each Career Level

One way to ruin an otherwise good intervention is to provide information with no analysis, application or collaboration. Strengths training ought to include all three. Tell each audience the benefits of the assessment and of the program in general. Demonstrate specific instances in which their strengths awareness can and should be applied. Then provide open-ended discussions or scenarios for the group to engage together.

Depending on the organization, it might be just as effective to provide training team by team instead of by career level.

Offer Team-Specific Resources

As I discussed in the previous post, the team-level is the critical target for strengths-based leadership development. When it comes to strengths, individual effectiveness only goes so far. The greatest power comes in its application to teams. So go the extra mile by providing job aids, reference sheets and intranet resources. You might put together a discussion template to help teams map out a new project leveraging each one’s strengths. One resource that is a must is a Team Map so that anyone can see the team’s strength profile at a glance. (I’ve included a link to sample Team Map template here and StrengthsFinder also includes one in the resource section of their website).

Introduce Strengths-Specific Language in Visible Places

There’s no point in having core values if no one ever talks about them. It’s the same thing with strengths – especially if you are going to go the extra mile to include strengths in your leadership development program. This means the organization should refer to strengths in high profile communications, such as newsletters, emails or executive town hall events. Also, employees should be able to display their Top 5 Signature Themes visibly at their work spaces with a small certificate on their cubicles or a desktop artifact.

So there they are, some best practices for including strengths in your organization’s leadership development program. For additional assistance, I’m available to help your team build your own program, to deliver a StrengthsFinder workshop or coach through any step of the process. Visit my Consulting page for more information, or simply contact me.

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.

Now replace my name with yours. How would you respond?

When was the last time someone asked you to identify your strengths? Was it in an interview or an application? Were you joining a new organization, team, project, school or program? Maybe you were about to accept a new promotion or a new role with a new set of people. What did you say? Do you answer the same way each time? Do your answers change based on your present circumstances?

If I could share a proven method to discover your strengths accurately, easily and in a quick and inexpensive manner, would that be good news?

Over the next three weeks, I will be sharing three separate posts addressing how strengths are crucial to individual and organization leadership success.

• An Introduction to Strengths
• Strengths-Based Leadership Styles
• How to Build a Strengths-Based Leadership Program

In 2007, Gallup released a strengths assessment called StrengthsFinder 2.0 and a small book by Tom Rath with the same title. Using data from 1.7 million survey inputs, 40 years of research and previous thought leadership by Don Clifton, the assessment features 34 distinct strength themes. By taking the assessment, each individual gets access to his or her Top 5 Signature Themes. In the past 6 years, over 8 million people have taken the StrengthsFinder assessment.

What are Strengths?

According to Gallup, strengths are made up of three key ingredients: talent, knowledge and experience.

Talent: Talent is a natural way of thinking, feeling or behaving that is innate. This means a person with a particular talent can be counted on to operate from this consistent basis, no matter what comes his or her way. Since it is intrinsic, talent never changes and it only grows.

Knowledge: Simply put, knowledge is the sum total of the amount a person knows about his or her talent and how it applies in any given situation.

Experience: Experience is the amount of time invested in developing a certain talent. Just because someone is inexperienced doesn’t mean a talent doesn’t exist, only that it has limited application.

When you combine talent, knowledge and experience together, you establish a strength, which Rath calls “the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance.”

All the 34 StrengthsFinder themes can be found here. As an aside, my Top 5 Signature Themes are: futurist, maximizer, strategic, focus and relator.

What are the Benefits of Knowing Your Strengths?

Aside from being able to easily and consistently answer inquiries about your strengths, knowing your strengths has many individual and organization benefits. Here are a few of the most explicit:

Employee Engagement Skyrockets: Based on Gallup research, Rath quotes an astounding statistic that employees who have the chance to use their strengths at work everyday are six times as likely to have a high level of engagement at work.

Building on Your Strengths: For a talent to become a strength, knowledge and experience must be added. When you identify your talent, you are much more able to target your knowledge and experience priorities and become remarkable in those areas. In fact, the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book suggests many ideas for development with each individual theme.

Knowing How to Best Support Others: One of my favorite benefits of the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment is that it introduces a common strengths language, not just for individuals, but also for teams. This means teams have the ability to communicate on a strengths basis and to adjust their words and actions based on how they can best support one another in a team environment. The level of synergy is often shocking. Once again, the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book includes suggestions for working with the strengths of others.

Identifying Team Gaps: Completing the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment with your team will give you the ability to identify the gaps that exist on your team. Forewarned is forearmed. All of a sudden, team members with strengths that are in short supply become invaluable. Gaps can also play a strong role in recruitment considerations.

How Can I Discover My Strengths?

The easiest way to discover your strengths is to take the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment for yourself. Simply purchase the book and use the access code at the end of the book to take the short assessment online.

For teams, I also offer a StrengthsFinder workshop through my consulting service. I’ll guide your team in completing the assessment and then give your unique team profile showing where your team strengths and gaps lie. I’ll give you suggestions for maximizing your strengths and facilitate a breakout session for team discussion. Contact me if you’d like to know more.

So who cares about your strengths? Do you? If so, I encourage you to invest in your own leadership development by completing the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment just like 8 million individuals – including myself – have already done.

If you’ve already taken the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment, what are your Top 5 Signature Themes?

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.