Using Your Strengths to Lead Authentically
As a leader, you may often feel like others are telling you how to manage, what habits of well-known leaders to adopt and what tactics are going to lead to managerial success. It can often feel that, to be a great leader, you must alter your authentic style and fit into a predetermined mould.
Instead, using the strengths that already exist inside of you will create your unique, authentic leadership style. A style that those you lead will respond far better to.
Throughout your interactions with SAGE Insights, you might hear me refer to an image of a stack of rocks.
The Layers of Being Human
At the base of the rocks, is a platform ledge that represents where we come from, our heritage, genetics and DNA. They make up the foundations of our character. As a leader, it can be helpful to understand some key points of the background of those we lead in order to better understand behaviours.
Up next is a round stone that represents our values. This is where we consider ‘WIFM’, or ‘What’s Important For Me?’ What we value as important props up just about everything we do. As a leader, it is vital we spend time supporting people to focus on what they value. It is the key to their motivation.
Then we add a flat stone with a bullseye at the end. This is the stone we, as leaders, are most focused on. This stone represents the 24 universal strengths that we all have. Extensive research by Via Institute’s team led by Professor Martin Seilgman, has shown that using these strengths in a balanced way creates the optimum goodness in humans.
The bullseye is our signature strength; our 5 top strengths that we find are the easiest to use. These strengths define our uniqueness, that's why they are called signature strengths. As authentic leaders, these are what we aim to cultivate in ourselves and others.
Interestingly, if we use our signature strengths as a focus and balance them with the other strengths, the bullseye points towards the stone on the edge of the platform below it. This stone represents potential. If we overuse our top strengths, we topple all the other stones above and they smother the potential stone below it.
Using your signature strengths in a balanced way with other strengths will tip that stone towards the small stone of your potential, without toppling the stack. It’s that shift that propels you from ‘human being’ to ‘human doing’.
Those strengths are going to support your life experiences, beliefs and ultimately, your behaviours.
To understand your order of strengths, we always recommend taking the VIA Character Strengths questionnaire.
How to Use our Strengths
An empirical study to examine overuse, underuse, and optimal use of character strengths was conducted in 2017 by a team lead by Ryan Niemiec, Psy.D, a leading figure in the education, research, and practice of character strengths. This study showed:
Optimal use of our top 5 signature strengths provides a pathway for individual well-being, leads to higher flourishing work productivity, life satisfaction and less stress and depression
Overuse and underuse of character strengths are significantly related to higher depression, less flourishing, and less life satisfaction, with underuse of character strengths doing worse
Balancing Our Strengths
As our top 5 signature strengths energise us, it is easy to just use these and stay in our comfort zone. When we balance these top strengths with others, we avoid overusing our top strengths and underusing our other strengths. Our behaviour is more balanced as we lead value-focused, authentic lives.
For instance, to avoid overusing a common top strength of kindness by saying “yes" when we mean “no” because we don't want conflict, we use the self regulation strength to find ways to say “no” and be kind. We find ways to be honest, saying it is not possible for you to do it and discuss other options to support them.
Using Strengths to Become a Better Leader
If we overuse the leadership strength in our role as leader, by making all the decisions, we can be perceived as arrogant. People will either resist our leadership or become compliant as they feel their perspective is not valued. Collaboration stops as people are not honest. This undermines our leadership.
The VIA strengths data shows that the fairness strength is a more common top strength than leadership. Others are more likely to follow our lead if we balance the humanity strength of social intelligence to collaborate with others, ensuring everyone has a fair say.
We can then use judgement strength in our decision making. Others will trust we have considered all perspectives. If we balance the strengths of humour and gratitude to show we love teamwork, people will feel they belong and their input is valued.
People will then willingly follow our lead.
