Tag: leadership development

  • Review: The Strengths-Focused Guide to Leadership

    Review: The Strengths-Focused Guide to Leadership

    If you want a practical manual to understanding how to harness strengths, for you and your team, this book is a great place to start, as it:

    • introduces the key concepts of strengths
      • provides the research base for more inquisitive readers
      • illustrates with narratives
    • prompts you with a range of exercises and action points
    • explains how to weave strengths into your practice as a leader.

     

    What really sets this book apart is the emphasis on practicality. Numerous exercises help you engage with the ideas. There are questions, forms and questionnaires for you to use. The book looks at embedding strengths in all your work, including coaching, team meetings, recruitment and appraisals. So even if you know the value of using strengths, this is still a worthwhile read.

    A further great feature is the use of dialogues, showing the ideas in action (e.g. a coaching session transcript) or as two alternative ‘scripts’ – one using strengths, the other weakness. These stories keep you grounded in reality.

     

    The whys, whats and hows of using strengths

    The authors define strengths as something that:

    They show the advantage of working with strengths: that you are doing more of what you are best at. They set out the alignment between using strengths and increased sense of authenticity and purpose, increasing satisfaction and engagement. This naturally leads into a more productive cycle, with faster and better results.

    For any readers averse to leaving a weakness-focussed approach, the authors provide both the evidence for focussing on strengths, and also how to address weaknesses with a positive mindset.

     

    The MORE model

     

    My strengths: To identify your own strengths, the authors offer five different methods: strength spotting, weakness spotting, a 5 steps strengths map, 360 degree feedback and online strengths assessments. They provide the exercises, questions and examples to help you through whichever of these methods you prefer to use.

    Roarty and Toogood suggest 8 ways to develop your strengths:

     

    They also provide 6 ways to manage your weaknesses. To align your goals and strengths, they suggest usual SMART objectives should rather be SMARTIE – adding Important and Energising.

    Others’ strengths: The book suggests approaches to introduce strengths as a concept and to support your team in identifying their strengths.

    Regular conversations: To embed strengths into daily practice, the authors provide checklists and questions which embody the three principles that will help you develop a strengths mindset:

    • start with an outcome focus
    • focus on what’s working
    • manage weakness from strength

    They advise how to use this mindset in one-to-one conversations, development planning, team meetings and coaching: interventions where a strengths-focus has great rewards.

    Employee processes: Roarty and Toogood provide specific advice for a strength-based approach for performance appraisals, development discussions and recruitment. Particularly interesting is their approach for adapting to institutional reality: that while you may be required to use certain forms, competencies or expected approaches, you can still use a strengths mindset and techniques to provide a better outcome.

    Leadership and teams

    The book ends by providing the advice, evidence and resources to use strengths in two key challenges: creating a high-performing team, and in leading change. While specific examples are given, the advice reflects the key messages delivered previously, as detailed above.

     

    You can buy The Strengths-focused guide to leadership, by Mike Roarty and Kathy Toogood, on Amazon UK or Amazon USA

     

     

    Eszter Molnar Mills is a strength-based leadership and organisation development specialist.

    She helps organisations and individuals reach enhanced performance by reflecting on what works, and by developing skills and strategies for improvement.

    If you’d like help or advice on using strengths – such as implementing the MORE model, helping you find or use your strengths, or adopt a coaching approach, then please get in touch.

     

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  • The future of learning and development?

    The future of learning and development?

    The days are numbered for sheep-dip, classroom-based training courses, chosen by the L&D team, and often forgotten by the following week.

    Well, maybe not numbered, but the recent CIPD/ Towards Maturity report – Driving Performance and Productivity provides evidence that companies relying on old-fashioned models of learning and development are being outstripped by those embracing a learning approach that is more collaborative, multi-channel, integrated and accountable.

    The report’s message is that the top 10% of companies, for performance and productivity, are benefiting from using these modern methods – sometimes 3 times as much as the average, and massively above those in the lowest 25%.

    Here’s a few key findings:

    • 76% of the ‘Top Deck’ (highest performing 10%) are confident in incorporating the use of new media in learning design (33% average, 14% bottom quartile)
    • 62% routinely collect information on the extent to which learning points have been understood (30% average, 5% bottom quartile)
    • 71% collect information from learners on the extent to which learning points have been applied at work (24% average, 2% bottom quartile)
    • 73% involve learners in the design of the most appropriate learning solution (25% average, 1% bottom quartile)

    So the challenge to L&D teams is – how can you harness these approaches so that your company benefits? How can you incorporate these ideas into your strategies, and how to shift the culture towards collaboration, individual accountability for learning, and greater integration into strategic and operational needs?

    The report provides compelling ROI evidence that I’m sure will help those arguing for greater resources or the input from colleagues. But the important takeaway for me is the change management and strategic thinking that will be required to embed these ideas. It is about changing the perception of learning and development from a top-down obligation to a more bottom-up opportunity to thrive.

     

    Eszter Molnar Mills is a strength-based leadership and organisation development specialist and founder of Formium Development. She helps organisations and individuals reach enhanced performance by reflecting on what works, and developing skills and strategies for improvement. Eszter leads our learning partnership work; contact us to discuss how we can support your learning and development strategy.

  • 5 of the best…influencers on Twitter

    5 of the best…influencers on Twitter

    Exceptional leaders hardly ever stop learning, they know they can always improve themselves. Twitter is a great resource for thoughts, ideas and good examples. Here are just some of the top influencers that we follow and retweet on leadership skills or company culture. Check out our selection:

    TI1
    Through Alison Green’s Ask a Manager profile you can ask her a question like ‘this is what my boss says, what does it mean?’ Send her your questions or learn from others’ cases.

    TI2
    Based in London, David Shepherd tweets tweets about Human Resources, employment law, pay, benefits, the labour market, data services, b2b media, and a whole lot more.

     

    AadilTI3 Bandukwala is a social recruiting consultant with a history in Talent Acquisition and Social Media. Worth your while following him if you want to know everything about recruiting.

    TI4
    Lolly
    Daskal’s Twitter feed is about coaching, management, leadership, consulting. You can find truly informative  posts, inspirational quotes and pictures shared by her.


    Dan McCarthy
    TI%
    , self-described leadership and management development geek. His profile has everything that has to do with leadership and management.

     

     

    Who is missing from our list? Let us know in the comments below!