So I'm here today with Dr.
Denise Quinlan to discuss strengths-based leadership.
So probably a good place to start,
Denise,
Is what are strengths?
What do we mean?
I think it's always helpful to go short and simple to start.
Strengths are things we do well and enjoy doing.
We can get a lot more complicated,
But that is strengths in a nutshell.
And so many important things flow from that.
Okay,
Great.
I like that.
Keep it simple.
And now let's go one level higher.
So tell me about strengths-based leadership.
What do you mean by that?
Strengths-based leadership is leadership that is focused on knowing and utilizing what is best in each staff member and in your team collectively.
So this is very much about getting clear on what you have,
Working with what's good,
And maximizing it.
And really,
The reason for this is that the seeds of the solution to any problem lie in what's working and not in what's broken.
So often in business,
We focus heavily on what's not working,
Who's not doing what,
And in fact,
The research is really clear that we can really damage individual performance and group results when we focus exclusively on remediating weakness.
So I love what you said there.
It's about really understanding those people in your team much better so that you are able to enable their peak performance.
And I'm just going to add to that,
Knowing yourself too,
Hey?
That's the start.
That's the start.
And this stuff sounds kind of simple or apple pie and blah,
Blah,
Blah,
But actually it cuts to the heart of how human beings see themselves.
And my favorite quote about this work is the challenge to us to realize that what is good and right about you is as real and as important as anything that goes wrong with you.
This is such a key point and is not how we have been programmed throughout the course of history or even the course of our own lives,
Hey?
So before we go any further,
I want to ask you about,
You and I have both done empirical research into strengths and why they're important.
So can you just share some of yours first,
Please?
Sure.
My research looked at the impact of focusing on strengths on individuals,
On the collective they were part of.
And we also looked at mediation,
Looking at what was driving change.
So big picture,
We were able to demonstrate that focusing on strengths benefited individual wellbeing,
Their engagement and the relationships between the people and the social climate they were working in.
So we were also able to show in further analysis that the benefit the individuals got was driven by the focus of the leader of the group on strengths.
If the leader wasn't focusing on it,
Saying you have a strengths program was dead in the water.
So it's powerful stuff.
That's so interesting,
Isn't it?
And Lucy,
Your research has shown similar things in terms of the effect of strengths on engagement and performance.
Tell us a bit about that.
So I had a really big representative sample of adult workers,
5,
000 people.
And what we were able to do is the first step was looking at,
Hiving off the people who were psychologically flourishing.
And once we looked at and had identified that sub-sector of these 5,
000 people,
We then did some more analysis of them.
And what we were able to discover was that those people in our sample who really knew their strengths were nine times more likely to be in that top psychological flourishing segment.
But then Denise,
I found it even more fascinating when we dug a bit deeper to discover that,
So knowing your strengths was one thing.
Yes,
You were more likely to be flourishing,
But actually the people who reported that they frequently used their strengths were 18 times more likely to be psychologically flourishing.
So that just gives a clear demonstration of how important it is,
Not just to know your strengths,
But to actually get them out of the bottom drawer and use them every day in work,
Love,
Life,
And play.
So that being said,
I'd like to you just also,
Can you tell us a little bit about what you were teaching when you were working in Spain as part of that business school master's program?
So I was teaching strengths-based leadership in a business school.
So working with senior executives from Fortune 500,
From global countries,
We had executives from,
I think,
Most continents.
And what was fascinating was how challenging it was for some of them to adopt a strengths focus.
Yeah,
You know,
There is some organizations were still very steeped in a deficit focus and a lack of trust.
Now,
The work that I was teaching them was around the strategies that would enable them to build team,
To build connection,
To unlock performance.
And,
I mean,
Lucy,
What I think is really interesting now is that was a few years back,
But actually I think strengths matter even more in the current climate.
Yeah,
And so that's great that you brought that up because that was going to be my next question.
So tell me,
Why do strengths matter,
Particularly now when we are dealing with ongoing disruption,
Challenge,
Uncertainty,
And change?
We know we need change.
We know it's coming.
And sitting in a fear-based fight or flight response isn't where we will do our best work.
We need to have organizations where there is trust,
Where people have each other's back,
Where they can do their best work and they feel free to collectively create and solve the problems we're facing.
So there has been,
I think,
A global wake up to the fact that we need psychological safety in organizations.
And for me,
A lot of this is about collective resilience and an inclusive approach to redesigning and solving our problems.
Hang on,
I'm just going to interrupt there.
For anyone who's listening who doesn't know,
Psychological safety is our belief,
That your belief,
That you won't be humiliated or punished for speaking up with ideas,
Challenging the way things are done around here or making mistakes.
And it's such a key part of high-performing teams.
Now,
Denise,
We haven't got much time today.
And I know that you also want to share some key benefits from strengths-based leadership to wrap up.
Sure.
So fundamentally,
Why do we want to use strengths?
We want to use them because it will enable us to attract,
Engage,
And retain the best people,
To enable them to perform at their best and to respond creatively to change.
And a strengths focus is such a great tool because the research is really clear on the fact that when we can build teams with strong connection and a sense of belonging,
They outperform those without that.
We get greater engagement,
Lower burnout,
More job satisfaction,
Better performance under pressure.
The list really goes on.
But I think what I really would say in sum is having a strengths focus has been demonstrated to support organizations at every stage of the employee life cycle.
When recruitment and onboarding emphasizes strengths and the strengths that people are bringing,
We see that having an immediate effect in engagement,
Job satisfaction,
And performance.
We particularly see it in performance under pressure and information sharing.
And these are all things that organizations know are going to be absolutely essential to deal with the change that's coming and respond effectively and appropriately.
So I love that you have brought up one of the strategies that leaders can use to really create a strengths-based culture,
Because we're going to wrap this up for today,
But in our next time together,
We're going to talk much more about the techniques and tools that enable and underpin strengths-based leadership.
So I hope you join us then.
