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Tagged with 'Strengths-Based Leadership'

Positive Psychology Conference Insights and Themes

Last month I participated in the Canadian Positive Psychology Association’s 4th conference at the University of Toronto with 400 researchers, counselors, facilitators, coaches, and psychologists (visit our Positive Psychology resources section or Flourish for background on this new field). I was especially struck by three key themes at the conference: Building strengths is key to […]

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Special Webinar on Developing Leaders at Wilfrid Laurier University

WLU is a dynamic and fast growing university in the heart of “Silicon Valley North” in Waterloo. A core part of their mission and values is nurturing a culture that “inspires lives of leadership and purpose.” Our daughter, Vanessa, is a Laurier graduate. Living in Waterloo Region, I’ve spoken to various student groups and conferences […]

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Re-Fired with Building Strengths

It’s been three years since Jack Zenger and I had one of our periodic update conversations after we headed off in different directions over 20 years ago. Our previous companies, The Achieve Group and Zenger Miller, had worked together for more than a decade. When this conversation took place with Jack, my wife, Heather, and […]

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Video Clip: Focusing on Gaps 2 – 3 Times Less Effective

Last week I had two separate one-on-one coaching sessions with the Provost and a key Dean at a major university. We were reviewing the 360 assessment report they’d just received from students, faculty, peers, their manager, and others. Both assessments were quite strong with many leadership competencies rated at the 90th percentile and most above […]

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Beware the Self-Assessment Trap

As a senior citizen was driving down a divided highway his car phone rang. When he answered the phone his wife’s urgent voice came through the speaker system warning him, “Herman, Herman! It’s all over the news that a car’s been driving for miles on the expressway going the wrong way. Please be on the […]

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Building on Strengths Key to Improving Organizational Health

In our culture development keynotes, workshops, and retreats we’ve been citing research from the largest study of organizational effectiveness ever undertaken. A few years ago McKinsey & Company published their extensive research in Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage (click here for my book summary and review). The research study identified nine […]

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Don’t be Fooled into Focusing on Weaknesses

April 1 as April Fool’s Day or All Fools’ Day can be traced back to the Roman festival of Hilaria and the Medieval Feast of Fools or the Feast of the Ass dating from the fifth century in various European countries. In 1392, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is set in on March 32 or April Fool’s […]

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Join us at the Extraordinary Leadership Summit

Zenger Folkman is rapidly being recognized as one of the leading-edge leadership development and consulting firms of the 21st century. Global leaders in the automotive, financial, engineering, technology, retail, consumer products, and professional services sectors are using ZF’s ground breaking systems as the foundation of their leadership and organization development. Now in the second year […]

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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. […]

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Strengths-Based Development for Parenting and Education

An 11 Keys to Building Extraordinary Leaders and Coaches webinar participant e-mailed me with this observation and question: “It’s amazing that for so long our organization has been concentrating on improving employee weaknesses and seemed to forget about helping them achieve greatness by focusing on what they are good at. I assume I can use […]

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Letting Go of Our Weaknesses is Really Hard

Two readers recently posted comments voicing the common struggles many people have in letting go of weaknesses when developing leadership effectiveness. One reader responded to Zenger Folkman’s Harvard Business Review blog Three Myths About Your Strengths by naming a fourth myth as focusing on your strengths means you can ignore your weaknesses. He went on […]

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Is Your Culture Built on a Weak Foundation?

In the opening lines of the chapter entitled, “Making Strength Productive” in his 1967 book The Effective Executive, the “father of modern management,” Peter Drucker writes, “to make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization. It cannot, of course, overcome the weakness with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make […]

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Most Performance Appraisals like Being Poked in the Eye with a Stick

In 1998, Martin Seligman, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, was elected President of the American Psychological Association by a landslide. This set him casting about for a central theme for his time in this key leadership role. A few weeks later — still puzzling over a theme — he was weeding in […]

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Leveraging Strengths and Building Team Spirit

I was working with a highly energized financial services team who really connected with the power of strengths-based leadership. Part of our discussion centered on the story of a 7th grade teacher who had each student write down what they felt was the greatest strength of each of their peers (see “The Enduring Impact of […]

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Asset-Based Community Development is Part of Emerging Strengths-Based Movement

I had lunch recently with Derek Alton to discuss his new role as Campaign Animator at the Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement. Derek is a sharp, creative, and ambitious young innovator who is very driven to fulfill Tamarack’s mission of “collaboratively creating vibrant communities by engaging learning leaders.” I’ve stayed in touch with Tamarack’s co-founding […]

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3 Keys to Developing Extraordinary Leadership

I’ve delivered hundreds of leadership workshops over the past few decades. Until our partnership with Zenger Folkman, these sessions were based on “timeless leadership principles” that encouraged participants to build their improvement plans around the weaker areas to round out and expand their leadership skills. That meant focusing on weaknesses. Last week I delivered another […]

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Very Rare Leadership Summit Opportunity

If you’re interested in dramatically boosting personal, team, or organization leadership and coaching skills there’s an incredibly rare opportunity you’ll want to seize this summer. And you could combine this powerful Leadership Summit with vacation and leisure time in picturesque Park City — one of Utah’s top tourist destinations favoured by entertainment stars during Robert […]

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Breaking the Manager-Employee Dependence Spin Cycle

During last week’s first public workshop (these sessions are usually run in-house) of The Extraordinary Coach in Calgary, the lights came on for a manager from a technology company.  Like many managers — and especially those in very technical organizations — Dave viewed coaching as directing, advising, and training his direct reports. Since he was […]

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A Common Misconception Hampering Leadership Skill Development

In recent keynote presentations and workshops with HR and leadership development professionals, more and more participants have been embracing the approach of building on strengths. When presented with the powerful evidence and logic of strengths-based leadership development, most people are convinced. But it’s tough to let go of deeply ingrained practices and “conventional wisdom.” One […]

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Are You Stimulating or Stunting Growth?

Are your houseplants stunted? Are you limiting their growth by keeping them in a small pot? BBC Nature reports a fascinating story entitled, “‘Stunted’ Pot Plants Cannot Reach Their Full Potential” from the Society for Experimental Biology’s annual meeting in Salzburg, Austria. Researcher Hendrik Poorter with the Julich Research Centre in Germany found that houseplants […]

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