Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow

This book brought together the most critical factors of running a business, appplying talents to lead an organization. Great science supporting what is considered a soft subject.

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.

As a Strengths coach who has studied Leadership for years, I am thrilled to see Gallup come out with a book specific to utilizing Strengths in leadership roles. I can say that this resource is invaluable for anyone who intends to lead others in any situation. The 34 Strengths have not changed, but what this book adds that others don't is a sense of leadership-specific actions that you can take to grow in your Strengths and become the best leader you can possibly be. Strengths-based leadership is different from other leadership concepts because Gallup assumes that there is no expert who can tell you how to lead better than you can lead from your own strengths; they also assume that there is no expert better than those you lead to tell you what is the most important part of good leadership. Instead of trying each new fad leadership concept, this book encourages you to develop your Strengths and learn how you can best lead from yourself... the expert in you. -Rebecca (Input, Connectedness, Communication, Ideation, Learner)

A solid book. Of particular interest was the section that describes the Four Domains of Leadership Strength (executing, influencing, relationship building, strategic thinking). My fellow strengths fans should know that the book includes an access code to the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment and customized Leadership Guide. You can use this code to take the StrengthsFinder 2.0. After you take it, you get the strengths report and your customized leadership guide. Or, if you took StrengthsFinder in the past, you can simply apply your previous StrengthsFinder results to get immediate access to your customized leadership guide. Overall, a good read and assessment for anyone interested in leadership and strengths.