Strengths-Based Leadership (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

From the author of the long-running # 1 bestseller StrengthsFinder 2.0 comes a landmark study of great leaders, teams, and the reasons why people follow.

Nearly a decade ago, Gallup unveiled the results of a landmark 30-year research project that ignited a global conversation on the topic of strengths. More than 3 million people have since taken Gallup's StrengthsFinder assessment, which forms the core of several books on this topic, including the #1 international bestseller StrengthsFinder 2.0.

In recent years, while continuing to learn more about strengths, Gallup scientists have also been examining decades of data on the topic of leadership. They studied more than 1 million work teams, conducted more than 20,000 in-depth interviews with leaders, and even interviewed more than 10,000 followers around the world to ask exactly why they followed the most important leader in their life.

In Strengths Based Leadership, #1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Rath and renowned leadership consultant Barry Conchie reveal the results of this research. Based on their discoveries, the book identifies three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths and investing in others' strengths, getting people with the right strengths on your team, and understanding and meeting the four basic needs of those who look to you for leadership.

As you read Strengths Based Leadership, you'll hear firsthand accounts from some of the most successful organizational leaders in recent history, from the founder of Teach For America to the president of The Ritz-Carlton, as they discuss how their unique strengths have driven their success. Filled with novel research and actionable ideas, Strengths Based Leadership will give you a new road map for leading people toward a better future.

Book Description

Unique code to accompany book is delivered wirelessly to your Kindle in a separate message. For users of the Kindle for iPhone application, the unique code is delivered to Your Media Library. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Gallup Press; 1 edition (January 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595620257
• ISBN-13: 978-1595620255
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,202 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Individualized Approach to Leadership, March 2, 2009

By	Stephen N. Shields (Ellicott City, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Rath and Conchie have provided us with a helpful tool for fine-tuning our own leadership capacity. Using statistical factor analysis of data in Gallup's database, the authors detail how balanced leadership teams have strengths within four Leadership Domains: Strategic Thinking, Relationship Building, Influencing, and Executing. The authors relate that while individuals are rarely balanced, teams always should be. Leadership Teams operating in these four domains work both to serve the four primary needs of their constituencies and to execute their primary organizational responsibilities.

Using a recent Gallup review of data from 10,000 followers, the authors also report that followers report surprising agreement on four of their primary needs: trust, compassion, stability, and hope.

Leaders who use the code that comes with the book to take the online Strengthsfinder assessment (www.strengthsfinder.com) to determine their Top 5 Strengths are provided with a customized Strengths-Based Leadership report that help them understand their Top 5 Strengths and a Strengths-Based Leadership Guide that provides detailed advice on how to use each of their Top 5 Strengths to meet the four primary needs.

Leaders who read this book will have a deepened appreciation of both their own leadership abilities and of the degree to which they lead best when they work in team. The four Leadership Domains and the four primary needs of followers provide leaders with a rich paradigm for considering new approaches in attacking organizational priorities.

Highly recommended.

34 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Strengths, strengths, strengths... but could there be more? , February 18, 2009

By	Leadership Gadfly - See all my reviews

I read this book with great interest. Most leadership books are part of the cult of personality celebrating some charismatic big ego while neglecting the team it took to realize the vision. The emphasis here on followers and teams is commendable. There are heartwarming stories of leadership who brought people together to achieve BIG things--e.g., Martin Luther King, Jr.

But I had to think about the focus on strengths aspect. Strengths are important, but leaders' weaknesses can kill a company, economy, and nation. There has been a lot of ballyhoo about "play to strengths" the last few years, and an equally raucous bantering about how "fixing weaknesses is a waste of time." But what about $18.5 Billion in Wall St. bonuses subsidized by government bailouts; the derailments of Prince at Citi, Fuld at Lehman, and then Thain and O'Neal at Merrill; the 600,000 lost jobs as of January 2009; or 401(k)'s down the drain? The current global financial crisis seems like a line extension of this line of thought.

The relentless strengths, strengths, strengths mantra is like betting the farm on upside potential without considering downside risk. Strengths are compelling, but weaknesses can be lethal. In politics, one need look no further than George W. Bush in the U.S. or Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. In business, Morgan McCall and Mike Lombardo studied how executives run down companies and get fired back in the 1980s. They found that so-called "derailed" managers had plenty of strengths. But these strengths were mitigated by very real and dangerous weaknesses. These weaknesses took two forms: (1) a lack of ability or aptitude and (2) a strength used to the point of excess (e.g., when Gallup StrengthsFinder Command themes become micro-management; when Gallup StrengthsFinder Self-assurance themes become arrogance).

Several modern management researchers have extended the seminal work of McCall and Lombardo to further reveal the perils of accentuating the positive (see resources at www.hoganpress.com), and the case seems pretty compelling: a single-minded focus on strengths might not be the silver bullet to fixing our current crisis of leadership in business, government, and politics.

It is curious that none of this other research is cited, refuted, or even acknowledged in any of the Gallup and Buckingham work on strengths. Perhaps they are only self-referential and pay no attention to what other people have learned about leadership. The reference list to Strengths Based Development, for instance, is larded with Gallup internal publications, but precious little that has been peer-reviewed. It starts to look suspicious.

While Strengths Based Development has some interesting ideas and lots of feel-good stories, definitely be sure to see the other side of the argument. A one-sided perspective will get you one-sided results, and that tips the scale down, down, down--kind of like the Dow and S&P right now.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars `Strengths' is the new currency, April 26, 2009

By	Bill Milnor (Denver, Colorado) - See all my reviews

`Strengths' is the new currency. The Gallup group began isolating and understanding people from the talent perspective over a decade ago. Names like Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton and Tom Rath have brought to light a powerful medium for understanding what excites us and these insights make better work places and happier lives. For business it is about productivity and employee engagement; for employees it is about feeling good about your choice in where and what you do almost every day. Both are big! Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie takes strengths application to the next level: Leadership and for me, inherently part of this is great management. This work further develops the strengths of teams into four leadership domains. They are: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking. I found this distilling of a team's strengths into these domains a way to conceptually simplify very important areas of focus and understand where each member might excel in their performance. This seemed especially relevant to the achievement of an organization's strategic plan. Knowing which key individuals bring the most energy to the different aspects of moving an organization forward is not only critical to success, but even more so to keeping a competitive edge.
The second theme in this work is identifying the "Followers Four Basic Needs": Trust, Compassion, Stability and Hope. This is also a compelling framework for supporting a work environment that helps people act at their best.
This book will be very helpful if you are interested in strength based applications and not deficit or weakness improvement approaches. I suggest some foundation in strengths based work before utilizing this book, like Strengths Finder 2.0 and Now Discover Your Strengths, to get greater depth on its offering.