How Leaders Can Leverage Their Strengths for Better Wellbeing and Performance
Leaders often find themselves on a perpetual quest for improvement. We scrutinise our performance, identify areas for development, and diligently work to overcome our limitations. But what if this approach is fundamentally flawed? What if the path to better leadership, enhanced wellbeing and superior team performance lies not in fixing our weaknesses but in leveraging our innate strengths?
Beyond the Deficit Model
For decades, performance management has been dominated by a deficit model: identify what's wrong and fix it. We've become experts at spotting gaps and deploying resources to address them. However, research increasingly suggests that this approach yields diminishing returns.
Alex Linley, a renowned psychologist and strengths researcher, describes the constant focus on improving weaknesses as the "curse of mediocrity." The effort required to improve our areas of lesser capability typically leads only to adequacy, not excellence. Meanwhile, this focus diverts precious time and energy away from developing our natural talents into true strengths.
Consider this: when was the last time you felt truly energised and engaged at work? Chances are, you were using your core strengths those aspects of your character that come naturally to you and that, when deployed, leave you feeling invigorated rather than depleted.
Understanding Character Strengths
Before exploring how to implement a strengths-based approach, it's important to distinguish between different types of strengths. Many leaders immediately think of skills or technical abilities when discussing strengths. While these are certainly important, character strengths represent something more fundamental.
Character strengths highlight core values that are integral to how we operate at our best. Unlike skills that may be specifically developed for a particular role, or interests that evolve over time, character strengths tend to be consistent across different contexts and throughout our lives. They reflect who we are at our core and how we naturally approach situations when we're functioning optimally.
Several well established frameworks exist to help identify character strengths, including VIA Character, Gallup's CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder), Strengths Profile and Strengthscope. Each offers a comprehensive assessment to identify your unique combination of strengths.
It's worth noting that strengths profiles differ fundamentally from personality assessments. While personality tests often categorise people into types, strengths profiles recognise our uniqueness. There aren't just 4 or 16 categories, instead, each person has a distinctive constellation of strengths that makes them who they are.
The Evidence for a Strengths-Based Approach
The benefits of understanding and consciously using your strengths are backed by robust research. The VIA Institute on Character, a non profit organisation that has catalogued 24 universal character strengths, has been at the forefront of this research.
Some of the earliest work in this field was conducted by Martin Seligman, a prominent researcher in the field of positive psychology. In a large scale study, participants who identified their top strengths and deliberately used one of them in a new way each day showed significant increases in happiness and decreases in depression symptoms with the benefits persisting six months later.
This finding has been replicated numerous times, including in workplace settings. Research consistently shows that deliberately using strengths every day increases positive emotions and work engagement. For leaders, this translates to greater resilience, better decision making and enhanced ability to inspire others.
Strengths-Based Leadership in Action
As a leader, embracing a strengths-based approach offers multiple advantages:
Enhanced personal wellbeing and performance: When you consciously apply your signature strengths to leadership challenges, you'll experience greater energy, engagement and satisfaction. You'll also likely perform better because you're operating from a place of natural capability.
More authentic leadership: Understanding your unique strengths allows you to lead authentically rather than trying to emulate leadership styles that might not align with your natural tendencies.
Better team composition and delegation: Knowing your team members' strengths enables you to assign tasks that play to their natural abilities, boosting both performance and engagement.
Improved team dynamics: Research in Holland found that when colleagues appreciate each other's strengths, it leads to greater team vitality and thriving. Strengths provide a positive language for discussing differences in ways that celebrate rather than judge.
Finding the Golden Mean
While the benefits of using your strengths are clear, it's important to understand that strengths exist on a continuum. Building on Aristotle's concept of the "golden mean," strengths researchers note that we can both underuse and overuse our strengths. The goal is to find that optimal middle ground where the right strengths are used in the right amount in the right situations.
Take humour, for example. Used appropriately, it can diffuse tension, build rapport and make learning more engaging. Overused, it might undermine serious discussions or even offend. Similarly, prudence helps with careful planning, but taken too far can lead to paralysis by analysis.
Leaders must develop a nuanced understanding of their strengths, including recognising when they might be overusing them. This awareness is particularly important in high pressure situations, when we tend to default to our dominant strengths even when they might not be appropriate for the circumstance.
The solution often lies in creating what researchers call "strength constellations" using combinations of strengths to balance each other. For instance, if you tend to overuse prudence (careful planning), you might balance it with judgement (to know when enough planning is enough) and bravery (to proceed despite remaining uncertainties).
Practical Applications for Leaders
How can you put these insights into practice? Here are several evidence based approaches:
Identify your signature strengths: Take a strengths assessment such as the free VIA Survey to identify your top five to seven character strengths. These are your "signature strengths" the ones most core to who you are.
Strength spotting: Once you understand the language of strengths, practice identifying strengths in action both in yourself and others. Make it a habit to notice and appreciate the strengths that team members bring to projects.
Strengths alignment: Deliberately align your signature strengths with frequent leadership tasks. For example, if creativity is a signature strength, how might you bring it to your next team meeting or strategic planning session?
Strengths-based feedback: When providing feedback, start by acknowledging the strengths you observed in action. Then explore how those strengths might be applied to areas needing development.
Team strengths mapping: Create a visual map of your team's collective strengths. Identify areas of strength concentration and potential gaps, then use this information to inform task allocation and team development.
One particularly powerful intervention is to focus on tasks you don't naturally enjoy. By deliberately applying your signature strengths to these activities, you can increase your engagement and effectiveness. Research shows this approach has been positively linked with job performance and increases in life satisfaction, with some people beginning to describe previously mundane work as a calling.
Building a Strengths-Based Culture
While individual awareness of strengths is valuable, the real magic happens when an entire team or organisation adopts a strengths-based mindset. As a leader, you can catalyse this shift by:
Modelling strengths-based language and approaches: Keep your own strengths visible (perhaps on a Post-it note by your computer) and reference them in conversations about your work.
Incorporating strengths discussions into team meetings: Begin meetings by inviting team members to share which strengths they'll be drawing on for the day's agenda.
Recognising strengths in action: When acknowledging good work, specifically name the strengths you observed rather than offering generic praise.
Appointing Wellbeing Ambassadors: Designate team members who can champion strengths-based approaches and provide peer support for strengths development.
Reviewing processes through a strengths lens: Examine your organisation's recruitment, performance management and professional development processes. Do they focus primarily on fixing deficits, or do they equally emphasise identifying and leveraging strengths?
The Ripple Effect
The beauty of a strengths-based approach is its ripple effect. When leaders embrace their own strengths and encourage team members to do likewise, the benefits extend far beyond individual performance. Teams become more cohesive as members develop greater appreciation for diverse contributions. Innovation flourishes as people feel empowered to approach problems from their natural strengths. Organisational culture shifts from a focus on fixing what's wrong to amplifying what's right.
Moreover, research shows that strengths use buffers against stress and burnout increasingly important considerations in today's demanding work environments. By encouraging strengths use, leaders contribute not just to organisational performance but to the fundamental wellbeing of their people.
Moving Forward
The shift to a strengths-based leadership approach doesn't happen overnight. It requires conscious effort to move beyond the deeply ingrained deficit model that dominates much of professional development. Yet the potential rewards greater energy and engagement, enhanced performance, improved team dynamics and increased wellbeing make it well worth the investment.
Start small by identifying your own signature strengths and experimenting with applying them more deliberately in your leadership role. Notice the difference in your energy and effectiveness. Then gradually introduce strengths language and practices to your team, creating space for everyone to discover and deploy their unique capabilities.
Remember, the goal isn't to ignore areas for development but to approach growth from a foundation of strength. By understanding and consciously leveraging what you naturally do best, you unlock new levels of leadership excellence and help those you lead do the same.
When we focus on developing our natural strengths rather than fixating on our weaknesses, we don't just become better leaders. We become more authentic, more engaged and more fulfilled in both our professional and personal lives. And in doing so, we create environments where others can thrive as well.
Bibliography
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Linley, P. A. (2008). Average to A+: Realising strengths in yourself and others. CAPP Press.
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Niemiec, R. M. (2018). Character strengths interventions: A field guide for practitioners. Hogrefe Publishing.
Niemiec, R. M. (2019). Finding the golden mean: The overuse, underuse, and optimal use of character strengths. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 32(3-4), 453-471.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford University Press.
Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410-421.
VIA Institute on Character. (2021). The VIA Classification of Character Strengths. Retrieved from https://www.viacharacter.org/
Wood, A. M., Linley, P. A., Maltby, J., Kashdan, T. B., & Hurling, R. (2011). Using personal and psychological strengths leads to increases in well-being over time: A longitudinal study and the development of the strengths use questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(1), 15-19.