Leadership ideas within my Strengths

"Strengths-Based Leadership" by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie is a book I read last night that was quite interesting to help me develop my strengths as they apply to leadership. The book documents 4 domains that leadership falls under Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking. For better or worse, my strengths fall into the first and last category as Achiever and Responsibility are part of Executing while the Learner, Intellection and Strategic are all part of Strategic Thinking. This makes me wonder, "How well could I lead if I'm missing in the relationship areas?" as I see the influencing as still being part where I'm not alone. It may be part of the challenge in my life to figure out how to take my strengths and go beyond myself to include others in using these strengths that I have. Thankfully for me, there were a couple examples of leaders in the book where leaders executed more in one domain than the others and so I got to see how one can take some of these and use them in a different dimension in a sense. In a way this re-affirms my career goals of wanting to be in strategic planning. I enjoy analysing things and running various "What if..." scenarios all the time, so I think it may be one of those, "I like this but a lot of other people probably don't," areas.

A few months ago now, a friend showed me a few others that had taken the Strengths Finder exercise and I found it really interesting to apply what domains each covered. It was strangely relieving to see others with similar holes to mine but also odd to see how someone actually did manage to have a strength in each of the 4 leadership domains that I found kind of surprising. Such a well-rounded individual I'm thinking now.

Another part of the book mentions 4 themes when it comes to people following leaders, Trust, Compassion, Stability and Hope. I can see how these do influence me in various ways though I suppose my challenge in the coming years is to see how each of these can be met through my strengths. That I can learn to communicate with compassion about stability and hope, identify various relationship objectives and meet them through my Achiever and Responsbility strengths, etc. It could be some exciting stuff and part of the book does come with a code to get on-line guides to help with each of these and a strength so I just have to find where there is good overlap and see if I can shift my role in work and in social groups to have those kinds of positions to see how this could come to fruition. In an odd way, I'm reminded of how 6 months ago I remember saying that getting in on the ground floor of a movement would be really cool and now I think I'm starting to see some fruit from that.

I'm that person that may be a bit of a loner at times, which may not make a lot of sense to some people. I'm introverted and like seeing things through my mind's eye which makes sense to some people and very little to others but I'm not sure how else to describe what I can do. I remember yesterday just playing around on a pool table by myself as I recognize that I struggle to some extent with the physical aspects of playing billards as some would call it. Learning muscle control, thinking through the scenario of, "If I do this, that'll happen..." is kind of interesting to me and so I just enjoyed some of that. There are times where I can recognize that I'm really blessed have people in my life that have such resources for me to use and enjoy.

The evolution of understanding my strengths...

A couple of months ago now, a friend told me to try "Strengths Finder 2.0" to see what my strengths really are. Now, prior to this I had done some pondering about what I thought were my strengths and these were the two themes that kept repeating:

• Solving puzzles. Whether this be a brain teaser, Math problem, mystery or something else to figure out, I really do like the process of starting with a question and then having an answer in the end. There is a sense of achievement here of course as well as that of learning something, either something matching what I already knew or something new to add to my arsenal.
  
• Helping people. This can be sharing knowledge that I have about something that I overhear someone ask, giving support to others that may need some in a moment of need, or just generally feeling useful and getting a thank you in one form or another. Even if the person doesn't thank me, I may internally thank myself so it still works out well.

Now, after taking the questionaire from the book, I got quite the different themes to explore and I really didn't think these fit me well at the time. My strengths were so different than others I had seen and thus I felt some shame over it, kind of like "I don't want to be different" to put it in simplest terms. Those 5 themese are:

• Learner - This has 2 parts to it for me. The first is that I like to know stuff and so acquiring knowledge on a subject is something right up my alley. The second part to this is that I like to find new ways of doing things, continually improving what I do. Is there a better way to do this? How could I make this better? Those are questions I routinely ask myself at times.
  
• Achiever - This is shown in how I keep busy and always seem to be doing something. I want to get things done, has something I can reflect upon as "I did that" where the that can be almost anything in a sense.
  
• Responsbility - This has been a part of me since my grade 2 teacher wrote as a comment in my report card that I was dependable and responsible. Thus, this has been something I've done for years though in some parts of my life I am surprisingly irresponsible like with my health.
  
• Intellection - This shows up most frequently in various brain-y compliments I get. I really do like to think a lot and this is what this strength is. One could argue that back in my early school days, I knew I wasn't athletic or artistic, so I found academics to be where I'd carve out my niche in a way.
  
• Strategic - This is how I tend to see the periphery more than what is right in front of me. I can see consequences before they happen and try to prevent bad outcomes in a way. This can be a problem in some cases if I try to stay too far ahead as trying to stay 10 steps ahead is amazingly hard to do well. At the same time, staying only one or two steps is much easier to do.

Given that I've had a couple of months to reflect on these strengths, I can know see more of how I do really have each of these within me and where I can use these. Learner, Intellection and Strategic are all part of "Strategic Thinking" in various ways so that may be where I try to take my career in the next few years. At the same time, I feel like I've repressed my emotions for so long that I'm tempted to try to get more mature in that dimension of myself. This will be hard, but I believe I am in enough good communities where this is accepted that the next stage of my life is about to unfold. I will try to get this blog to be a bit more up to date as my journey continues so for anyone reading this, thank you for sharing in my journey.