ANITA SATTERLEE, EDD ASSOCIATE DEAN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS LIBERTY UNIVERSITY KATHIE TUNE, MS VICE PRESIDENT HUMAN RESOURCES AVERETT UNIVERSITY Soar With Your Strengths -or- Why you should never order steak at a seafood restaurant.

Why The rabbit goes to school… Clifton and Nelson (199). Soar with your strengths. New York: Dell Publishing.

Myths of Strengths & Weaknesses  Fixing weaknesses will make everything all right.  Let the strengths take care of themselves.  Success is the opposite of failure.  Everyone can do anything they put their minds to.

Strength Theory Find out:  what you do well and --- do more of it  what you don't do well ---and stop doing it.

Strength Theory (cont.) Strength theory suggests that by fixing weaknesses, you will become an average performer. Instead, put the same energy on practicing your strengths, then you can be a star performer. Excellence is achieved by focusing on strengths and managing weaknesses, not through the elimination of weaknesses. Develop your strengths to the maximum – they will become so great that they will overwhelm your weaknesses.

What Are Your Strengths?  Yearnings  Satisfactions  Rapid learning  Flashes of excellence  Flow

Strengths Quiz  Do you feel you always knew how to do it?  When you practice it, do you get better at it?  Do you know you can perform it well?  Do others applaud you when you do it?  Can you get paid well for doing it?  Do you feel pride and pleasure when you do it?

Weakness Quiz  Feeling defensive about performance.  Obsessive attempts to overcome a behavior.  Slow learning.  No growth from repeated behavior. Being good enough just to "hang in“ there.  Consciously having to think through the steps of a process versus the activity being unconscious, automatic and flowing.  Experiencing a reduction in confidence from performing the activity.  Having the "Just want to get through it" feeling. Forcing your way through.  Experiencing burnout while practicing an activity.

Managing Weaknesses  Own the weakness.  Acknowledge the weakness as part of you.  Manage the weakness. Stop trying to make it be a strength, and find a way to minimize its impact.  Do it as little as possible.  Find ways to engage others for whom it is a strength.  Develop and use support systems and tools to compensate,  Find an alternative approach that employs a strength

What Now?  Strengths atrophy and die when left alone.  Strengths develop best within the framework of a mission. Mission is at the heart of why you do what you do.  Mission, like exercise, is most effective when experienced as much as possible.  Mission gives purpose to life. Lacking a mission, people are likely to have only materialistic goals.

Personal Mission Statements Attitudes Values Beliefs Objectives Priorities

Celebrate Strengths Celebrate what is important in an organization. Find ways to measure it, and make sure the celebration is of real achievement. Acknowledge and attend to achievement in many ways, but be scrupulous about focusing on REAL achievement, not pretend or politically motivated back-patting.

Integrate With Our Work Jim Collins, ‘Good to Great’  Transform from mediocre to great.  Start with who and then determine where.  Good-to-great companies paid little attention to managing change or motivating people. Under the right conditions, these problems naturally go away.

Start with ‘who’ Get the right people on the bus Get the right people in the right seats

Level 5 Leadership Level 1: Highly capable Level 2: Contributing Team Member Level 3: Competent Manager Level 4: Effective Leader Level 5: ‘Who’ then ‘What’

Hedgehog Concept Intersection of 3 concepts  What you can be best in the world at, realistically, and what you cannot be best in the world at?  What drives your economic engine?  What you are deeply passionate about?

Managing Change United they effect transformative change Rational Mind Emotional Mind

How to Redirect Weaknesses Find and follow the Bright Spots Script the Critical Moves Point to the Destination

References: Good To Great, Jim Collins, HarperBusiness; 1 edition (October 16, 2001). Orange Revolution, Adrian Gostick, and Chester Elton, Free Press (Simon and Schuster); 1 edition (2010). Switch, Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Broadway Books, 1 edition (2010). Andrew J. DuBrin, Applying Psychology, Pearson Prentice Hall, (6th edition, 2004)

Conclusion Thanks!