Join Our Strengths-Based Leadership Discussion Group

If you’re a LinkedIn member please join our Strengths-Based Leadership Development group. If you’re not already connected to me, please click on http://ca.linkedin.com/in/jimclemmer/ and send me an invitation to connect.

As a reader of this blog you should find our recent discussion (How do you help leaders let go of focusing on their weaknesses?) useful. Here are some of the points we’ve been discussing:

• The traditional deficit model in education and business makes it difficult for people to flourish.
• Using strengths to minimize and overshadow weaknesses.
• Management By Exception — a leader manages the exceptions and only intervenes when there’s a problem — is deeply ingrained in organizations.
• Can a weakness also be a strength by reframing the weakness/strength model to characteristics, intentions, and goals?
• Leaders can let go of focusing on weaknesses through being confidently vulnerable.
• The “doom loop” of less effective leaders comes from insecurity and not being OK with exposing weaknesses.

Last week I facilitated 20 leaders through The Extraordinary Leader process. Once again I saw many leaders struggle with how to address weaknesses. If a weakness is fatal to a leader’s effectiveness, he or she needs to fix that.

But most often weaknesses aren’t fatal flaws and we need to let them go. Building a strength from good to great draws other strengths with it. Research clearly shows that elevating just 3 – 5 strengths to profound strengths boosts overall leadership so high weaknesses become irrelevant and are overlooked.

We’d love to have you join our Strengths-Based Leadership Development group and our discussion if you feel so inclined.