Lisa Cummings, the founder of Lead Through Strengths and a Gallup-certified strengths coach, dives into empowering leadership through strengths-based approaches. She shares insights on how to identify and leverage your core strengths, steering clear of burnout caused by focusing on weaknesses. Cummings emphasizes reframing leadership challenges by applying your top strengths. The conversation highlights the importance of fostering team dynamics through ongoing discussions about strengths, ultimately transforming leadership and enhancing fulfillment.
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Team Transformation
Lisa Cummings' first management experience in 2000 inspired her StrengthsFinder journey.
Applying StrengthsFinder to her team improved dynamics and revealed hidden talents, leading her to pursue strengths-based leadership.
insights INSIGHT
Strengths vs. Hard Work
People often mistakenly identify strengths as areas where they've worked hardest.
True strengths are natural talents that require less effort and bring more joy.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Focus on Strengths, Not Weaknesses
Avoid focusing on bottom StrengthsFinder talents, as chasing weaknesses is unproductive.
Instead, understand how these talents might drain energy and identify alternative approaches.
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In 'Soar with Your Strengths', Donald O. Clifton and Paula Nelson present a revolutionary approach to business and personal development by emphasizing the importance of leveraging individual strengths. This philosophy transforms companies, builds careers, and changes lives by shifting the focus from weaknesses to strengths. The book is a foundational work in the strengths movement, offering practical advice for maximizing potential.
First Break All the Rules
Marcus Buckingham
Curt Coffman
First, Break All the Rules is a self-help book based on extensive research involving 80,000 interviews with managers across 400 companies. It emphasizes the importance of treating employees as individuals, focusing on their strengths rather than weaknesses, and measuring outcomes rather than processes. The book provides actionable advice for managers to improve employee satisfaction and performance by challenging conventional management norms.
StrengthsFinder 2.0
Tom Rath
StrengthsFinder 2.0 is a bestselling business book that helps individuals, teams, managers, and leaders understand and apply their strengths. The book, based on Gallup research, includes hundreds of strategies for using your natural talents and an access code to take the CliftonStrengths assessment. This assessment provides personalized reports, including your top five CliftonStrengths and a Signature Theme Report, to help you develop your strengths and achieve your goals.
Lisa Cummings: Lead Through Strengths
Lisa Cummings is the founder of Lead Through Strengths, a firm supporting building strengths into your team's culture. She's also the host of the Lead Through Strengths podcast. Lisa is a Gallup-certified strengths coach and has trained over 20,000 people in 14 countries. Today, she facilitates offsites and retreats to help leaders and their teams go deep on utilizing their strengths well.
When challenges arise in leadership, we sometimes miss what’s right in front of us. In this conversation, Lisa and I discuss how to zero in on your core strengths and utilize them to address new challenges that arise.
Key Points
Lisa began her StrengthsFinder journey through the First Break All the Rules book. Dave began his with the Soar With Your Strengths book.
Many of us value what we’ve worked hardest to achieve, but those areas aren’t typically our core strengths.
The talents appearing on the bottom of your StrengthsFinder assessment are the approaches that tend to drain you and lead to burnout.
It’s helpful to focus on removing blind spots. Those are most often hidden in our top strengths.
When new leadership issues come up, aim your top strengths at them. Often, there’s an opportunity to reframe challenges in the context of your strengths.
Resources Mentioned
CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder) assessment
StrengthsFinder Talents overview by Lisa Cummings
Contact Lisa for a question or workshop
Related Episodes
How Teams Use StrengthsFinder Results, with Lisa Cummings (episode 293)
Craft a Career to Fit Your Strengths, with Scott Anthony Barlow (episode 424)
Bringing Your Strengths to a Big Job, with General CQ Brown, Jr. (episode 691)
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