The art of strengths leadership

If the history of leadership tells us anything, it’s that there has been no shortage of theories on how we lead our organisations and teams. In turbulent times, it’s crucial that we find an approach that helps all of us ‘ride the waves’ and create engaged and aligned organisations to meet the challenge. This means we need more true leaders, not mediocre managers.

At our Midlands Future Forum, kindly hosted by Jardine Motors Group at their offices in Milton Keynes, we introduced the ‘Art of Strengths Leadership’ and why we feel this is so important for leaders facing the changing workplace today.

We were delighted to welcome Dr Paul Brewerton, founder and Managing Director of Strengths Partnership to challenge our thinking and give us some different perspectives on strengths in action. Also, Clare Martin, HRD of Jardine Motors Group, joined us and along with Victoria Walton and Dan Hargreaves, recent graduates of their ‘Leaders of the Future’ programme, shared a powerful case study of the strengths-based programme which was recently short listed as a finalist in the Training Journal Awards ‘Best Talent Programme’ for 2018.

Paul, a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Doctorate in Organisational Psychology, shared his observations that leaders all over the world are facing significant change in the form of increased competition, disruptive technological change, global mobility of talent and major demographic shifts (e.g., ageing population and Millennials). For leaders, this feels at best like mild turbulence, but at worst, like a major storm. It is hardly surprising then that CEO tenure has dropped dramatically from 2000 with 40% lasting no longer than 2 years in the job. Leaders in every type of organization need to navigate this major and unpredictable change that is accelerating in pace and intensity. There are many different challenges, but the most common we see include:

1) Doing more with less – leaders and managers are having to find ways to increase productivity at a time when resources are declining and wage growth is stagnating 2) Attracting, retaining and engaging top talent in a world where talent is increasingly mobile – with more potential challenges ahead with Brexit as our European neighbours woo talent away 3) Global competition and trade - meaning that things can often be done cheaper and even better elsewhere, especially given the rapid rise of online, e-commerce services that can serve you 24-7 at a lower price. This is eroding protective moats and disrupting businesses everywhere

He continued with some really powerful thinking around the role of strengths today, challenging the flawed assumptions of how we think leaders needed to be.

He advocated a shift for better new assumptions and that the greatest leaders should:

• Optimise their standout strengths • Possess different strengths • Achieve great feats with complementary teams • Positively stretch others • Proactively reduce performance risks

Building on this, Clare shared the background to developing the Leaders of the Future programme in 2016 with The Art of Work and how over the past 3 years this programme had transformed leadership across the Jardine Motors Group. With a powerful presentation on the significant tangible results the programme had achieved, including reducing dealership staff attrition in one site from 45% to 0% , her story was compelling. Added to this, the stories shared by Victoria and Dan, two of the graduates from this programme, and the difference this had made to their leadership; we had a compelling case for the art of strengths leadership as a positive way forward today. Victoria shared how the programme had helped to improve her confidence to play to her strengths and how she had been invited to join ‘30percentclub’ for demonstrating increased awareness of the role of women in the motor industry. Dan shared his experiences of being able to apply his learning in his role and the increased capability and confidence it has brought him.

As Sandra summarised, our is aim to raise the debate around strengths leadership and to help organisations to develop their own internal strengths capability, but also to really develop a thriving Midlands Art of Work community of practice and we hope this forum stimulated thinking and formed the start of a continuing dialogue.

Finally, here are some resources to take a deeper dive into the topic:

Blog: Leadership-in-the-21st-century

Blog: Overcoming-negative-thinking-peak-performance

Article: Greatest-risks-leadership-performance-comes-overdone-strengths

There will be opportunities to get together and discuss other hot topics this year. In the meantime, if you want to know about our forums please contact [email protected]