Donald O. Clifton1924-2003

Inventor of the Clifton StrengthsFinder® and recognized as the Father ofStrengths-Based Psychology by an American Psychological Association

Presidential Commendation

Table of ContentsIMPORTANT Information About Taking Clifton StrengthsFinderA Note of Thanks to Our TeamIntroductionPart One: Investing in Your StrengthsPart Two: Maximizing Your Team

EXECUTING

INFLUENCING

RELATIONSHIP BUILDING

STRATEGIC THINKING

Part Three: Understanding Why People FollowConclusion: Leadership That Lasts Beyond a LifetimeAdditional Resources

TAKING STRENGTHSFINDER

LEADING WITH YOUR STRENGTHS: A GUIDE TO THE 34 THEMES

THE RESEARCH

A: Your Strengths: The Research Behind StrengthsFinder

B: Your Team: Gallup’s Research on Work Team Engagement

C: Why People Follow

ReferencesGallup Strengths Center

A NOTE OF THANKS TO OUR TEAMGallup has been studying human behavior for more than 70 years and consulting withorganizational leaders for more than four decades. Over the years, hundreds of topscientists and leadership consultants have contributed to this collective knowledge base.Even as we write this book, Gallup consultants around the globe are spending their daysworking with leaders to improve their organizations’ effectiveness. It is the work of thefollowing team of experts, many of whom have devoted their lives to studying greatleaders, that fills the pages of this book: Vandana Allman, Jim Asplund, Dana Baugh,Cheryl Beamer, Brian Brim, Jim Clifton, Tonya Fredstrom, Andrew Green, ChristyHammer, Anne Harbison, Jim Harter, Tim Hodges, Rodd Karr, Lalit Khanna, CurtLiesveld, Mary Pat Loos, Rachel Maglinger, Jacque Merritt, Jan Miller, Jane Miller,Laura Mussman, Peter Ong, Connie Rath, Tony Rutigliano, Rosemary Travis, PaulaWalker, Stosh Walsh, and Damian Welch.

In addition to this team of leadership experts, there were many who shaped the contentof this book and its accompanying website. Our publishing team, led by business bookgurus Larry Emond and Piotrek Juszkiewicz, pushed us at every turn to tell a better story.Then our world-class editors, Geoff Brewer and Kelly Henry, refined this manuscriptcountless times and taught us how to be more effective writers along the way. Thefollowing members of our core team spent countless hours working on the research,content, and technology that went into Strengths Based Leadership: Samantha Allemang,Sangeeta Badal, Jason Carr, Swati Jain, Trista Kunce, Emily Meyer, and Joy Murphy.

Beyond this core team, we would also like to thank all the people who revieweddrafts of this book, the team who created the website, our research group, and inparticular, the many critical friends in our client partnerships who kept us true to ourmission and science and provided many of the subjects of our studies. Without these great

partners, this book would not have been possible. And to all of the leaders who gave ustheir time, we extend our most sincere thanks and gratitude.

INTRODUCTIONThe best leaders get to live on.

Think for a moment about the leaders you respect — whether they lead countries,organizations, communities, or families — who continue to live on because of the waythey have shaped your thoughts and beliefs. Even though you may not notice it in themoment, the most effective leaders forever alter the course of your life.

Chances are, you will have many opportunities to lead during your own lifetime. Ifyou’re able to seize these opportunities, your influence will continue to grow forgenerations to come. Maybe it’s the desire to make a lasting impact on the world thatdrives so many of us to want to lead.

In a recent Gallup Poll, we asked people to rate their own leadership ability. Out of1,001 people randomly surveyed, 97% rated their ability to lead as being at or aboveaverage. And more than two-thirds said they have led a group or team. The fact is,whether you are taking charge in a boardroom, on a construction site, or even in yourhome, it is likely that you will find yourself leading at some point in your life.

So what are the keys to being a more effective leader? To answer this question, weassembled a team of experts to review decades of Gallup data on this topic, whichincluded more than 20,000 in-depth interviews with senior leaders, studies of more thanone million work teams, and 50 years of Gallup Polls about the world’s most admiredleaders. Our team then initiated a study of more than 10,000 followers around the world.In this study, we asked followers to tell us — in their own words — why they follow themost influential leader in their life.

Three key findings emerged from this research:

1. The most effective leaders are always investing in strengths.

In the workplace, when an organization’s leadership fails to focus onindividuals’ strengths, the odds of an employee being engaged are a dismal 1 in11 (9%). But when an organization’s leadership focuses on the strengths of itsemployees, the odds soar to almost 3 in 4 (73%). So that means when leadersfocus on and invest in their employees’ strengths, the odds of each person beingengaged goes up eightfold. As we will review in Part One, this increase inengagement translates into substantial gains for the organization’s bottom lineand each employee’s well-being.

2. The most effective leaders surround themselves with the right people andthen maximize their team.

While the best leaders are not well-rounded, the best teams are. Our researchfound that top-performing teams have strengths in four specific domains. In PartTwo, you will hear from four well-known leaders as they describe how theirstrengths play out in these domains. You will also see how one CEO maximizedhis existing team and learn about the elements that differentiated the top-performing teams we studied from the rest of the pack.

3. The most effective leaders understand their followers’ needs.

People follow leaders for very specific reasons. When we asked thousands offollowers, they were able to describe exactly what they need from a leader withremarkable clarity. In Part Three, we will review the results from this study andtell you more about followers’ four basic needs.

To help you learn about your own strengths as a leader, you will have the opportunityto take a new leadership version of Gallup’s StrengthsFinder program. (See “TakingStrengthsFinder” in the Additional Resources section of this book.) Following an onlineassessment, you will receive a guide that shows you how your top five strengths fit intothe four domains of leadership strength (from Part Two). The guide will also give youspecific suggestions for meeting the basic needs of those who look to you for leadership(from Part Three). But as you will learn from some of the most effective leaders we’vestudied, the path to great leadership starts with a deep understanding of the strengths youbring to the table.

PART ONE:Investing in Your Strengths

If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything.While our society encourages us to be well-rounded, this approach inadvertently breedsmediocrity. Perhaps the greatest misconception of all is that of the well-rounded leader.

Organizations are quick to look for leaders who are great communicators, visionarythinkers, and who can also get things done and follow through. All of these attributes aredesirable and necessary for an organization to succeed. But of all the leaders we havestudied, we have yet to find one who has world-class strength in all of these areas. Sure,many leaders can get by or are above average in several domains. But paradoxically,those who strive to be competent in all areas become the least effective leaders overall.

Leading by ImitationSarah has a knot in her stomach as she drives to work on Monday morning. While sherarely looks forward to the start of a workweek, today the mere thought of going to theoffice is making her ill. While driving through traffic, Sarah begins to wonder why thisparticular Monday is so much worse. She’s perplexed because last Friday was one of thebest days in the office she could remember.

As Sarah pulls into the parking lot, she figures out why the end of last week was soenjoyable: Her boss, Bob, was out of town. That was the good news. The bad news isthat he was attending yet another course that would equip him to be a better leader. AsSarah walks across the parking lot, her stomach tightens even more when she rememberswhat happened the last time Bob went to one of those leadership retreats.

Earlier in the year, Bob had attended a conference that explored Lincoln’s leadershipstyle during the Civil War. When he returned, Bob predictably spent the next month tryingto teach everyone on his team to be “exceptional communicators.” Sarah chuckled at thememory, recalling how awkward this was for the computer programmers in her office,who usually prefer typing to talking. Fortunately, like all Bob’s phases, this one came toan abrupt halt once he read a book suggesting that the best leaders had humblepersonalities, and he subsequently quit pressuring Sarah’s more introverted colleagues tobe the next Lincoln or Kennedy.

When Sarah enters the building, she has no choice but to pass Bob’s office, and theknot in her stomach tightens. As if on cue, Bob waves her in. Reluctantly, Sarah leansagainst the frame of the open door. In her mind, Sarah is cynically wondering what flavorwill be served up this month. But to be cordial, Sarah asks Bob about the retreat.

After telling Sarah how peaceful and serene it was in the small mountain town wherethe event was held, Bob cuts to the chase. He declares, “My big takeaway from last weekwas that we all need to be more adaptive to change in order to grow our business.” ThenBob leans forward, looking at Sarah earnestly, and continues, “We went through thisactivity where each of us had to map out how quickly we adapt to new market trends.Well, like everyone else, it turns out that we spend nowhere near enough time readyingourselves for big change. If we’re going to lead our industry, we need to not onlyanticipate, but better yet, create change.” Bob rambles on for 10 more minutes, but Sarahhad gotten the message right away: The leadership buzzword for the next few weeks ormonths is going to be “change.”

As Sarah walks away from Bob’s office, she is already anticipating the moans andgroans of her peers when they hear about the latest fad. Then she suddenly realizessomething about Bob that almost has her feeling sorry for him. While he has spent much ofhis career in a leadership role, the vast majority of her boss’ efforts have been focused ontrying to mimic traits of leaders he has known or read about.

The bookshelf in his office is lined with weighty tomes about famous political andbusiness leaders, dead and alive. When Bob speaks to groups, he frequently quotes thecompany’s CEO and other leaders who have appeared in the media. On occasion, usually

when talking to groups of managers and leaders in the organization, Bob even putstogether a “greatest hits” list of all the things that he has learned from studying historicalleaders and modern-day corporate chiefs. He describes how all leaders must beempathetic, creative, disciplined, strategic, humble, decisive, and of course, greatcommunicators.

Sarah can see that Bob has spent most of his career striving to be just like the leadershe admires. Yet he fails to realize that the people he looks up to are all very different.There is no single person who embodies even half of the characteristics on Bob’sexhaustive list of what makes a well-rounded leader. And perhaps most strikingly, the oneleader that Bob knows the least about is himself.

Finding Your Leadership Strengths“I’ve never met an effective leader who wasn’t aware of his talents and working tosharpen them.”

— Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, in The New YorkTimes Magazine

Without an awareness of your strengths, it’s almost impossible for you to lead effectively.We all lead in very different ways, based on our talents and our limitations. Seriousproblems occur when we think we need to be exactly like the leaders we admire. Doingso takes us out of our natural element and practically eliminates our chances of success.