Leadership 322: Strengths and Skills

  I enrolled in Leadership 322: Strengths and Skills in the fall of my junior year.  My professor was Ed Barron, Azusa Pacific University's Executive Director of the Student Center for Reconciliation and Diversity.  Professor Barron brought an incredibly diverse perspective to the classroom as he had been involved in business at the corporate level, pastored churches, and worked in the education realm.  The entirety of the class was focused on how leaders and followers can maximize their strengths and skills in order to institute change.  Often we hear that we should work on our weaknesses in order to be a better rounded individual or leader.  But the strengths based leadership concept holds something counter-culture, and will be further explored below.  As a whole, this course laid a practical foundation for how to form teams and utilize strengths in a leadership environment.  

Strengths based leadership concept

  In this concept, found promoted within Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, hinges on the idea that an individual's strengths are what should be refined and improved because this will allow for the highest maximum output.  They identify four domains of leadership strengths boiled down from the 34 themes detailed through Strengths Finder: executing, influencing, relationship building and strategic thinking.  My strengths (developer, positivity, includer, adaptability, arranger) mostly were categorized under the "relationship building" domain of leadership.  This domain is characterized by individuals who are often responsible for being the "glue" of a team and bringing individuals together to form teams that are greater than the sum of their parts.  

  Rath and Chonchie suggest that as we focus on improving our strengths, we must surround ourselves with people who are strong in the exact areas we are not.  This is what enables the heterogeneity of a team to form a unit stronger than the sum of its parts.  This idea was fairly revolutionary to me as I have also thought I needed to work on the things I was not good at.  But it was those exact shortcomings that were the toughest for me to improve upon.  Under this theory, I should work to improve what comes naturally while surrounding myself with individuals who are strong in the areas I am not.  

Simon Sinek - The Golden Circle

  We watched a TEDtalk by Simon Sinek during that semester that still affects my daily thoughts (you can watch the video here).  The idea of the "Golden Circle" is three concentric circles and is modeled here:

Simon Sinek's main example he utilized was Apple.  Sinek suggested that the average company makes decisions from the outside of the circle towards the inside.  They decide on a product, figure out how to make it and then haphazardly decide why they are making said product.  But Sinek suggests that truly transformational companies decide on a why first.  This purpose, this belief shapes what they make and how they make it.  This is why Apple, a computer company, is one of the leaders in smartphone sales, music sales, and music player sales.  Sinek says we do not buy Apple products because they are inherently better, their product is not head and shoulders over the competition, but we buy Apple products because we believe in their "why."  

  This idea carries over into a more personal realm as I look at life.  What I do in life becomes less important than the reason why I am doing the hypothetical vocation.  So whether I am a doctor or a member of a team striving for some common goal, the first essential step to creating a great product is to establish why.  

Rath, T and Conchie, B (2009) Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow.  New York: Gallup Press