Lessons of Life

Quite simply - wonderful! Take 7 minutes out of your day to refresh your memory of these magic moments from film.

Those who simplify — and those who complicate!

I started reading and listening to Dan Pink when he published The Adventures of Johnny Bunko a few years ago. It is essentially a book that brings the work of Bernard Haldane on strengths and career to life for teens and is, of course, beautifully put together and illustrated. More recently, Drive takes us on a journey through the history of motivational theory and has some great practical advice on how to find your own sources of motivation and help others to do the same. I love this post on his blog from a few weeks ago – it got me thinking about how I am being at home and at work and the choices I make every day. How about you?

Drucker on Strengths

Continuing on the subject of the history of the strengths philosophy, if you haven't read Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker's seminal work on the subject, written for the Harvard Business Review in 1999, I suggest you do so. How about this to whet the appetite:

Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at - and even then more people are wrong than right. And yet, a person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let alone on something one cannot do at all.

Strengths Philosophers

It was a great pleasure to attend the inaugural meeting of The Strengths Foundation last week at the HQ of QVC in London. We heard from 3 speakers who told their story of how taking a strengths approach to leading and developing people had transformed their business. Against the current economic backdrop, to have delivered the level of change that we heard about, create a more positive place to work and deliver bottom line results is astonishing and a great illustration of the power of applying a strengths lens to change.

We also heard about some of the history of the strengths movement and given that my research had taken me no further back in time than Bernard Haldane (1945) , I left inspired to find out some more. A quick search on google took me to, guess what, The Strengths Foundation website and this page on strengths philosophers in particular.

The Strengths Foundation

Mike Pegg has once again performed a minor miracle with his new site, the Strengths Foundation . The Foundation aims to share the strengths approach. It aims to provide a stimulating resource that people, teams and organisations can use:
• To build on their strengths
• To set specific goals
• To achieve their picture of success.
The Foundation is 'agnostic' inasmuch that it offers a portal that provides people with an overview of the many approaches to working with strengths and in this sense it is unique. Although still in its infancy the site is packed with resources and information. Take a look.

Van Commenee

I love Sportsweek (Radio 5, 8.30am on Sundays). This weeks programme featured an interview with Charles Van Commenee (the whole programme can be found at the BBC website but you cannot get to his bit in isolation). He was asked to respond to various articles that have featured in the press about his tough approach to coaching. He did a great job describing how he adapts his approach based on the strengths of each individual, as you would expect.

Here are a couple of the articles that have been in circulation in case you haven’t seen them: one highlights other tough talking coaches; the other disputes the effectiveness of a tough approach in sport and contrasts the styles of Van Commenee and Andy Flower in particular.

…this has reminded me of the requirement to truly understand the strengths of each person we coach if we are to effectively stimulate them to perform to their potential in organisations. A 'one size fit's all approach' will always limit the scope of what an individual can achieve through coaching?

Awareness

While wrestling with the tricky issue of helping a client to reach the point where he felt he would benefit from soliciting some feedback around his leadership performance, I came across a recent blog post from Tom Peters on the subject of self-awareness in leaders. It led me towards the conclusion that the ability to understand, exploit and develop our strengths, and commit to a plan for managing our weaknesses, may just be the most essential of all leadership attributes. Tom appears to have never agreed with Jim Collins that in reaching for the top, ‘Level 5’ leaders demonstrate a high degree of humility along with their strong will. However, a willingness to listen; take feedback on the impact of our behaviour; and to recognise that our talent is often not enough, surely requires a degree of modesty and respect. Our performance and the performance of others depends on this?