The Strengths Focused Guide To Leadership

This effective guide shows you how to identify and develop the strengths of both yourself and your people, and ensure that talent is spotted and nurtured at every step. Strengths-Focused Leadership is the only step-by-step practical guide on the market to identifying and enhancing people’s innate strengths - which leads to higher levels of energy, job satisfaction and engagement. Rather than relying on online assessment tools, this book shows you how to discover your strengths yourself and how to use this process to assist others. The authors have used their executive coaching backgrounds to build a practical model for using and applying the strengths focus. The MORE model focuses on 4 key elements: Myself – how do I identify and develop my own strengths and overcome my weaknesses? Others – how do I help my people do the same? Regular conversations – how do I ensure that ‘strengths thinking’ becomes part of business as usual? Employee processes – how do I apply a strengths focus to recruitment, induction and performance? Broken into 3 chapters on each element, the Model teaches you how to use the strengths focus to tackle key business challenges – collaboration, change and strategy.

From the authors of the bestselling "StrengthsFinder 2.0" comes a landmark study of great leaders, teams, and the reasons why people follow them.

Positive organizational psychology, with its focus on the identification and development of strengths, is a natural ally to executive development and leadership coaching. However, this approach is only just beginning to come to the attention of organizations and consequently, the research base for strength-based coaching is in its early stages of development. Strength-based Leadership Coaching in Organizations reviews strength-based approaches to positive leadership development and evaluates the evidence for their effectiveness, critically assesses their apparent distinctiveness and considers how strengths can be reliably assessed and developed in their organizational context. Strength-based Leadership Coaching in Organizations reviews key areas of leader and team development and describes a model of strengths development in organizations. It discusses the application of strength-based leadership coaching from the managerial and external perspective within the context of career stage, seniority, role challenges and organizational need in order to facilitate meaningful change. Finally, it covers the limitations of the strength-based approach to leadership development together with the challenges of integrating positive leadership development. It shows exactly what a strengths focus is and that there is increasing evidence that this approach does get results. Where other books focus on one model of identifying strengths, this book offers a balanced and critical examination, showing how to apply a positive strength-based approach.

"A new & upgraded edition of the online test from Gallup's Now, discover your strengths"--Jacket.

What enables some talented people to rise to the top and live their full ambitions at work and in life, while others stop short? In 2007, Joanna Barsh led a team at McKinsey & Company to answer that very question. In the process, they uncovered what distinguishes leaders who are successful from those who achieve true greatness, developing an approach called Centered Leadership. They drew on research from across the academic fields of leadership, organization behavior, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and positive psychology. In addition, Barsh interviewed over 160 leaders from many fields – including business, government and the arts – and from many countries. With quantitative research, the team learned that these leaders have mastered practices to find their balance in the midst of chaos and lead from their most resourceful selves, unleashing the potential of others. In 2009, Johanne Lavoie joined to lead development of programs that help executives build these capabilities. Their research and development work continues as more and more leaders experience Centered Leadership. In the business bestseller, How Remarkable Women Lead, Barsh described Centered Leadership’s five capabilities and the research that underpins it. Here, with colleague Johanne Lavoie, Barsh provides a practical, actionable field guide for implementation. In Centered Leadership, Barsh and Lavoie will guide you through the Centered Leadership program. You’ll find the interactive tools, exercises, and practices that have helped the men and women participants in Centered Leadership programs gain the skills, courage and confidence to lead. And, along the way, you’ll read inspiring stories of remarkable men and women leaders who demonstrate the power of these skills in action. Those early in their careers will learn how to use these skills to explore their passions and accelerate their professional development. Those forming families will be able to use them to reconcile manage work and life to get the most out of both. And those who have already achieved success will be able use these practices to reach their next leadership horizon. No matter what stage you are currently at in your career, or what level of leadership you aspire to, this book will equip you with the tools to unlock your own Centered Leader and achieve more positive impact at work and outside it.

This third edition is a thoroughly revised and updated version of the bestselling text for undergraduate leadership courses. This book is designed for college students to help them understand that they are capable of being effective leaders and guide them in developing their leadership potential. The Relational Leadership Model (RLM) continues as the major focus in this edition, and the book includes stronger connections between the RLM dimensions and related concepts, as well as visual applications of the model. The third edition includes new student vignettes that demonstrate how the major concepts and theories can be applied. It also contains new material on social justice, conflict management, positive psychology, appreciative inquiry, emotional intelligence, and new self-assessment and reflection questionnaires. For those focused on the practice of leadership development, the third edition is part of a complete set that includes a Student Workbook, a Facilitation and Activity Guide for educators, and free downloadable instructional PowerPoint® slides. The Workbook is a student-focused companion to the book and the Facilitation and Activity Guide is designed for use by program leaders and educators.

"Unleashed is worth an afternoon of your time, whether or not you are already a leader. It is sparkily written and personal, drawing on the experiences of co-authors (and spouses) Frei and Morriss."— Financial Times Leadership isn't easy. It takes grit, courage, and vision, among other things, that can be hard to come by on your toughest days. When leaders and aspiring leaders seek out advice, they're often told to try harder. Dig deeper. Look in the mirror and own your natural-born strengths and fix any real or perceived career-limiting deficiencies. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss offer a different worldview. They argue that this popular leadership advice glosses over the most important thing you do as a leader: build others up. Leadership isn't about you. It's about how effective you are at empowering other people—and making sure this impact endures even in your absence. As Frei and Morriss show through inspiring stories from ancient Rome to present-day Silicon Valley, the origins of great leadership are found, paradoxically, not in worrying about your own status and advancement, but in the unrelenting focus on other people's potential. Unleashed provides radical advice for the practice of leadership today. Showing how the boldest, most effective leaders use a special combination of trust, love, and belonging to create an environment in which other people can excel, Frei and Morriss offer practical, battle-tested tools—based on their work with companies such as Uber, Riot Games, WeWork, and others—along with interviews and stories from their own personal experience, to make these ideas come alive. This book is your indispensable guide for unleashing greatness in other people . . . and, ultimately, in yourself. To learn more, please visit theleadersguide.com.

People can learn how to lead. This was the position John H. Zenger and Joseph R.Folkman took when they wrote their now-classicleadership book The Extraordinary Leader—and it’sa fact they reinforce in this new, completely updatededition of their bestseller. When it was first published, The ExtraordinaryLeader immediately attracted a wide audience ofaspiring leaders drawn to its unique feature: theextensive use of scientific studies and hard data,which served to demystify the concept of leadershipand get readers thinking about the subject ina pragmatic way. Now, Zenger and Folkman revisit the subject to addressleaders’ most pressing concerns today. Theresult is an up-to-date, essential leadership guidefor the twenty-first century that includes: Late-breaking research on the psychologyof leadership New information on leading in a globalenvironment A breakthrough case study on measuringimproved leadership behavior Studies revealing the importance offollow-through The Extraordinary Leader is a remarkable combinationof expert insight and extensive research.The authors analyzed more than 200,000 assessmentsdescribing 20,000 managers—by far themost expansive research ever conducted for a leadershipbook. Zenger and Folkman have created the leadershipbook of the ages. The Extraordinary Leader explainshow to build leadership skills that will take you andyour organization to unimagined success.