Some of you may know, I am preparing for a leadership retreat this weekend. You can find out more by reading here in an earlier post.  I have been reading the Gallup book called “Strengths based Leadership”.  So far, it is a really good sequel to the book “How Full is Your Bucket?”  These books have an online questionnaire that you complete to access what your strengths are.  There are about 150 questions and it takes about 30 minutes to complete it.  At the end of the questionnaire you get your results.  The results consist of your top five (5) strengths, a Strength-Based Leadership Guide (with action strategies), and a Strength-Based Leadership Report (with your personalized Strengths Insights).  With the reports and guide you get some valuable information that will make the material in the book more relevant.

I too the questionnaire several years ago and I admit that I did not take the the first results all that serious.  However, after taking the second test I am surprised at how close my second score was to the first.  Three Strategic Thinking attributes remained the same, I added one to a new leadership domain, and switched a Strategic Thinking attribute for another. According to the “Strengths Based Leadership” there are four domains of leadership strengths; Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking.  If you read the book you will know, my leadership strength is in the domain of Strategic Thinking, 4 out of 5 attributes are in this domain.

The result?

What I am learning is that as the CORE President and with my leadership domain I need to change the way I do things.  I have always thought of myself as having a leadership strength similar to Executing.  What I found is that I execute extremely well in areas that I thrive in.  If I veer too far from my passions I tend to not execute anything.  That is were this book comes in.  It has taught me some immediate skills and tools that I can use to foster my teams to flourish and succeed at their goals.  As interesting as all this is, I still need to finish reading the book.  When I get that finished I will post an addendum.