February 22nd, 2014
In 2002, as I was close to completing my computer science studies, I was motivated and excited to have a chance for a one-on-one with the executive in the company I was contracting for as a Senior Developer at the time. The focus of my meeting was to seek opportunities for career advancements because I recognized my Bachelor’s degree was not in computer science. Therefore, I always felt like it was a weakness not to be able to comprehend, articulate, and formulate solutions that included all the components of information systems outside of programming disciplines. As a result, I invested two and a half years towards a master degree in computer science program to address this weaknesses. Much to my surprise, the executive’s response was he was fully aware of my weaknesses regarding various technical disciplines, and I am embarrassed to say, that extended to my programming skills compared to other talented Senior Developers in the company. However, he went on to say the reason he kept me on board all this time was because of my ability to influence, make decisions and take charge of situations with the teams, client, and management throughout the project when the project was confronted with challenges. According to him these skills, which are valuable within technical teams, are hard to come by. His advice to me was I should invest in building on what I was good at, and not focus on areas where I am not. Aside from trying to recover from the fact that the conversation was not going the way I planned in my head originally, it was a very enlightening discussion, a discussion that came two plus years and a lot of money too late. Many years later, I took his advice and invested in a MBA program to enhance my management skills. During my studies, I read the book titled Strengths Based Leadership. To me this book always reminded me of that conversation more than 12 years earlier, and it is also a book that I wish I had read much earlier to help me develop my leadership skills. Below is a brief review of the book that I hope you will find beneficial as much as I have.
Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie from Gallup Press is a leadership skills-development book that assists individuals to uncover their existing abilities (strengths) and then build upon them. The book is researched based on conclusions drawn from decades of interviewing leaders in companies of all sizes around the world. The authors’ goal is to inform the audience that based on the research, most great leaders interviewed demonstrated exceptional skills in certain key areas as oppose to being exceptionally strong in all areas. In addition, the authors state that a great leader is aware of his or her key strengths and continues to develop them as opposed to wasting time and effort on developing weaknesses in the hope of achieving well-rounded abilities. This finding frames the readers’ mindset at the start of the book and enables the authors to develop their Strengths Based Leadership approach.
The book is divided into two major parts. The first part concentrates on communicating to the readers the conclusions of the research and the framework that was developed through the findings on how one can develop leadership skills. Within the first part, there are three sub-sections. The first section focuses on the importance of investing in one’s strengths instead of weaknesses. The second section emphasizes the team approach to leadership, as when a leader only possesses certain key strengths, it is crucial for the leader to surround himself/herself with others that compensate for his or her weaknesses. The third section elaborates on the psychology of why people follow leaders.
The second part of the book focuses on providing a comprehensive description of the leadership-development framework that the authors have developed. The book also provides an online tool where the reader can take an assessment to help define his or her existing strengths and, through the book, can understand how further to develop those strengths as part of their leadership skills. In brief, the framework outlines four domains of leadership strengths titled, Executing, Influencing, Relationship-Building, and Strategic Thinking. Each strength domain is composed of eight to ten themes that make up the domain, where each theme is simply a more granular look at skills a person may already possess. The table below illustrates the themes within the four domains.
The book provided a very different perspective on leadership development compared to other leadership-development concepts. For instance, most leadership experts and scholars get much of their data studying the attributes of great leaders in history such as Theodore Roosevelt, Colin Powell, or John F Kennedy just to name a few examples. In addition, the leadership books they write analyze individuals that have done extraordinary things in their time, and study the attributes that allowed them to accomplish what they have achieved. Usually this type of book will provide guidance on how readers should start to develop similar skills, which, in turn, are assumed, would build up one’s leadership skills. Strengths Based Leadership reverses this mimicking-of-others concept completely and believes that an individual leadership-development approach is more practical for the average reader. The authors believe that most individuals already possess certain strengths in terms of themes and, by further developing them, will be more successful in becoming a better leader.
Unlike other leadership books, this book also provided added value where most other books did not. The book contains a unique access code for readers to utilize a Gallup Press online-assessment tool to help readers define their own top five themes within the framework. The assessment is a timed questionnaire, structured in a scenario-based response, to determine readers’ strongest themes. The tool will provide a report of the readers’ top five themes, plus an explanation of each. In addition, it also provides an analysis of how readers should build a team facilitating their strengths and weaknesses based on the assessment.
Leadership is an art where most literature on this topic provides conceptual explanations and approaches. However, this book was developed based on very comprehensive research coupled with very elaborate interviews with thousands of corporate executives and managers, both of which validate the framework of the book far beyond the level of other books. This book also provides readers with a very actionable tool, tangible context, and practical approach to absorb this conceptual topic. For these reasons, I find this book worth the investment for anyone who wishes to enhance his or her leadership skills. Remember, a leader can come from any level of the organization within any role. Authority, title, and/or rank are never a prerequisite to lead others.