Strengths-Based Leadership Development IndexAs 2012 winds down, ’tis the season for looking back at the year’s highlights.

Harvey Schachter reviewed dozens and dozens of business, leadership, and management books for The Globe & Mail last year. As I contemplate my ever expanding must-read book list I am in awe of how many books he reviews. Harvey’s either a speed reader or spends most waking hours with his nose in one book after another. If he’s still reading physical books, his library shelves must have disappeared years ago under Book Mountain. Recently he proved what an astute bibliophile he is by putting How to Be Exceptional in the top five of his top ten business books of the year!

The biggest highlight of the year for us at The CLEMMER Group was our new strategic partnership with Zenger Folkman. As I wrote in the September issue of The Leader Letter we spent an extremely busy summer getting up to speed on ZF’s powerful and very revolutionary strengths-based leadership approaches. This was followed by a very busy fall of webinars, presentations, executive briefings, Client meetings, implementation consulting, phone consultations, and public workshops.

We were quite impressed by what we first saw in ZF’s approaches and this was further reinforced by our attendance at their Annual Leadership Summit at Sundance Resort in Utah. But now that we’ve had months of hands-on work with these radical new processes and approaches, my high expectations have been exceeded. Almost without fail, once senior executives and HR/training professionals are walked through the research, methodology, and evidence-based road map to building on existing strengths they experience a big paradigm shift. Future generations will look back at our “training needs analysis” and dwelling on weaknesses the way psychology researchers now regard Freudian sessions of laying on a leather couch digging back into childhood experiences as useless and often harmful.

Strengths-based leadership has deep and profound implications for personal, team, and organization development. I’ve been an especially avid student and supporter of the emerging science on emotional intelligence and positive psychology. ZF has managed to apply and advance these growing fields from philosophy or aspiration to implementation.

Below is an index of blogs, articles, and webcasts we’ve published over the past four months. You can pick and choose what you’re most interested in, perhaps missed, or would like to pass along to others.

Overview of Strengths-Based Leadership Development System

New Book

How to Be Exceptional: Drive Leadership Success by Magnifying Your Strengths

The Revolutionary Leadership Development Paradigm

The Power of Focusing on Strengths

Cross-Training and Competency Companions

The Power and Problems of Feedback and 360 Tools