Strengths based leadership was the basis of both these sessions today.
The keynote speaker, Rodd Wagner, works for The Gallup Foundation and spoke about strengths in partnerships. The basis of the topic was how we need to push ourselves out of our comfort zones and find people who are opposite to us to create the best results. He covered the four essential elements for a good partnership which included notions such as equal input/equal reward, agreed direction and outcome, and forgiveness.
The session I attended immediately after that built on this concept and spoke in practical terms how a college pulled together a dysfunctional team through a strengths based assessment. They have gone on to analyse these strengths in their work groups and project teams to ensure that they have complementary skill sets for the best outcome. I have completed the Strengths Quest and so as part of the activity we were asked to plot our top five on a chart. Mine were heavily concentrated in Relationship Building (Connectedness, Developer, Empathy, Relator) while my fifth strength (Intellection) was under Strategic. I had nothing in influencing or executing - wonder what is represented in my top 10?
I can very much see how this would apply back at work and wonder what use departments, and indeed, the organisation has made of the DiSC profiling many of us have undertaken. People are often just assumed to be the best people to be put into a project team, perhaps we need to consider the mix of people for a better outcome in future.
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