Strengths-based leadership

No one is born a leader, but one can become a leader. The process of becoming a leader is different for everyone and it can be more or less complex. Undoubtedly, work and effort are needed, but there is still something common to successful leaders – regardless of the level of your leadership. Whether you are a manager, team leader or a parent, recognizing your strengths will make you stronger and more effective in leading others. Before you take the lead, you need to identify your own talents and strengths – by using your strengths you will be able to get the best out of others. Although the ability to use your strengths plays a key role in a successful leadership, not everyone is aware of this. Many ignore their strengths and focus only on managing others, but it is always necessary to first work on yourself.

Strengths-based leadership is a new paradigm that results in high-performance teams in which employees are more engaged and enjoy their work.

As a result, the leadership style itself has changed. A leader can show the strength of leadership in difficult situations by bringing their team together and using the situation in their favour, or by making difficult decisions by dealing with the fear and doubt we all feel, but the initial reason people start following them is the way they lead their team to progress. Strengths-based leadership has a number of advantages over outdated concepts, and this approach will teach you what makes an excellent leader by new parameters, what skills they must possess, and how this type of leadership differs from traditional forms.

Strengths-based leadership is a method for improving your leadership skills. It focuses on strengths, not weaknesses.

Instead of worrying about what is harder for you, focus on your strengths. Strengths-based leadership revolves around the idea of recognizing what you and your team are great at, and the distribution of work in such a way that everyone does the part in which they are good, and thus together they can make a successful whole. Each team member has some advantages that others may lack, and the forces can be grouped into four general groups: execution, influence, relationship building, and strategic thinking.

Gallup scientists have been studying and collecting leadership data for decades. They studied work teams and interviewed more than 10,000 followers around the world to find answers to one and the same key question: “Why did you follow your favourite leader in your life?” 

From the results, they got four basic features that those who follow leadership want to see in their leader and they named them The 4 needs of followers: 

• trust, 

• compassion, 

• stability and 

• hope.

What makes a great leader?

To be a good leader, it is not enough to just order others how to behave – such ideas are outdated. Today’s successful leaders have the ability to motivate employees and engage them thanks to their compelling vision. A good leader must be assertive in order to achieve results and be able to overcome adversity and resistance – otherwise they will be a follower.

People are not yet fully aware of how much the world has changed – what employees expected 50 years ago from their leaders is completely different in today’s world. The workplace does not and must not be a cold space, and the leader must be a part of the team – at the head of their people, but still among them. The shortcomings of organizations are not business failures, but failures in organizing relationships and maximizing human potential. Organizations do not pay enough attention to their employees and are often unaware of how much progress they would make by investing in their intangible benefits. Outdated practices combined with a modern employee do not work together and they limit a company’s growth. However, if organizations are motivated, educated and adapted to new ways of thinking, managing people and teams, they will notice dramatic results in terms of productivity, revenue and employee engagement. The new purpose of business, which is also the future of work, involves maximizing human potential and it is becoming the great “game changer”.