Strength-Based Leadership

Strength-Based Leadership

- John Pereira

Strength-based leadership is about focusing on your strengths, and delegating tasks that you’re not as good at to others who are more skilled or experienced. You can also use this approach to identify your team members’ strengths, and encourage them to use these in a way that benefits everyone.

Identifying and utilising the strengths of individuals is key to both business growth and employee engagement. Strength-based leadership is a more humanistic approach based on positive psychology – it’s about how businesses manage, how they work and how they develop people. It’s important for businesses to realise that strengths are not necessarily the same as talents and skills. Strength is something that a person is passionate about, in addition to demonstrating consistent high performance based on knowledge, skills and talent. It’s about the things that make people light up. It’s an activity from which a staff member derives intrinsic satisfaction.

Leaders are sometimes expected to excel at everything, and to have very few weaknesses. In reality, though, you’ll likely be an expert in a specific area only, despite your range of qualifications and experience, and this doesn’t guarantee that you’ll succeed elsewhere. When you attempt to become an expert in all areas, you risk spreading yourself too thin and becoming ineffective. So, it’s important to recognize your strengths and weaknesses, and delegate tasks that others could do better. 

Essentials of strength-based leadership

The companies that embrace the mentality of aligning people’s strengths and passions with the right projects and teams get amazing results in both employee brand evangelism and productivity.