Sunday, September 8, 2013
How Strengths Based Leadership Can Suport A Commumity Of Practice
Strength based leadership provides us with the opportunity to focus on our strengths and become even better at what we are good at. With such a limited time in such a busy life why would we focus on our weakness when we could focus on our strengths and become even better at what we do best. The Strengths based leadership philosophy gives us opportunities to focus on our strengths and then apply it to a shared leadership approach. So I guess you will ask now how does this work? Well, lets look at the possibilities. Research has come up with three ways to become effective leaders. But first let us define what a Community of Practice means in this setting.
A community of practice (CoP) is, according to cognitive anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, a group of people who share a craft and/or a profession.
So what are the three ways to become effective leaders by using the strength based leadership approach?
(From Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath)
1. The first thing that effective leaders must do is to know their strengths and make investmets in the strengths of others.
2. The second thing is to get people with the right strengths on your team.
3. The third thing is to understand the needs of those who look to you for leadership.
Once we learn how to appreciate, value and build upon our strengths, we can then make the investment in others strengths. This will give us the opportunity to build an effective team. By focusing on a team of strengths from a variety of individuals we will look to each other for shared leadership within our community of practice. This will give us a better understanding of the needs of others who seek our leadership. As a result we will have a team build on strengths and not on weaknesses.
Bill Schlacht
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thank you for sharing the three ways to become effective leaders and the importance in a community of practice. I really like your comment about making investments in the strengths of others. I like how the book touches on how to work with others who have a certain strength. Being aware of others' strengths can create a more cohesive team. Strength based leadership allows us to spend more time on the important issues rather than always trying to improve the weaknesses of others.
ReplyDeleteBill you hit the nail on the head for me with the statement "With such a limited time in such a busy life why would we focus on our weakness when we could focus on our strengths and become even better at what we do best." This is so true. We are so busy so why spend wasted time looking at the things that will not best serve us in the end. Doing much like your second point in becoming a leader the energy should be spent on developing our own individual strengths and finding others that have the right strengths to compliment ours.
ReplyDeleteBill, I love the last two statements you made and I think that these really do summarize leadership within a community of practice. It is for us to better our understanding so that we can recognize not only our strengths and weaknesses but help those around us to find theirs. It makes sense to work this way so that the end result is a team built on strengths. We so often focus on what our weaknesses are and try to make those areas stronger that we often neglect the strengths that we should be making stronger. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteMandy