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Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, And Why People Follow (2009)

by Tom Rath(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1595620257 (ISBN13: 9781595620255)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Gallup Press

review 1: A quick self-improvement work on leadership, this book serves mainly as a vehicle to promote Gallup's StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment tool. The work opens by correctly noting most people's lack of self-awareness/honesty in terms of their own leadership potential ("Out of 1,001 people randomly surveyed, 97% rated their ability to lead as being at or above average." p 1). It then transitions into a parable about a boss addicted to following first one then another leadership fad, without attaining any lasting success (pp 8-10). Of course, the authors then launch into promoting their own leadership fad, apparently assured that THIS time it's going to do the trick...The four core leadership traits they identify through Gallup polling are "Executing," "Influencing," "Relations... morehip Building," and "Strategic Thinking," each of which are further subdivided into numerous traits. While this list seems okay, the authors make no particularly strong case as to why these four and not some others, or not just three, or six, etc... All told, these four categories are broken unevenly into 34 of these traits, which the StrengthsFinder assessment tool then identifies which five are the reader's strongest. As is typical of most of these types of assessment tool, there's an element of astrology to it, though it's not bad, and the assessment tool seemed to identify traits that were reasonably in line with our own self-assessments among myself and my colleagues, when our boss had us read this book and take the assessment. That said, it's quite possible a person has more than five strengths, or maybe a couple of strengths that ought to have made the list in place of others. This would not be such a sore point, except that the assessment does NOT identify any of the reader's weakest points. So while the authors recommend leaders surround themselves with people having complementary strengths, without properly identifying a person's weakest points first might only cause him/her to surround him/herself with teams of people strong in many of the same areas (just not the assessed "top five"), leaving the weakest areas completely uncovered. The risk of this is all the greater considering most people's tendency to promote people like themselves and surround themselves with such people. The authors identify what strong teams have in common:- Conflict doesn't destroy strong teams because strong teams focus on results.- Strong teams prioritize what's best for the organization and then move forward.- Members of strong teams are as committed to their personal lives as they are to their work.- Strong teams embrace diversity.- Strong teams are magnets for talent.As with the other points above, the authors don't make a strong defense of these points, merely explaining what they mean. The authors identify followers' four basic needs using Gallup polling: "Trust," "Compassion," "Stability," and "Hope." Again, they don't make much of a case why they picked these four, not only three, not six, why not some of the other words they viewed as synonymous (some people might consider "trust" and "respect" as distinct, for instance), etc.One final point. While the four core leaders they pick to embody their four main leadership categories seem to be reasonably good picks from an objective results/outcomes point of view, the authors quote briefly from other "leadership" figures whose records are considerably less convincing, for instance General Wesley Clark or Shimon Peres. The reduced credibility of some of these sources of leadership wisdom does not strengthen their message than if they were quoting Gandhi, Patton, etc.The book (and its assessment tool) is not a complete waste of time, having some useful nuggets for consideration. If nothing else, the authors make a compelling case for leaders not to try to become Renaissance men/women, but focus on their strengths. But their tool would have been of considerably more practical use if it had identified the reader's weakest points as well, for use in selecting team members with complementary strengths.
review 2: What a dud. Anyone already invested in strengths-based leadership will find some value here, hence the second star rating. Anyone else is likely to claw out her eyes a the hideous corkscrew English ("business speak"), redundancy, and lack of thought or substance.For the good stuff, suitable for all walks of life and careers, check out Greenleaf on Servant Leadership. Caveat lector: some of his followers go heavy on the religion, but it's not at all essential to the philosophy. less

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