Strengths Based Leadership: Leveraging Talent for Organizational Outcomes

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Strengths Based Leadership Leveraging Talent
for Organizational Outcomes
Laurie K. Baedke, FACHE, CMPE President LIFEworks
Healthcare Group, Inc. Nebraska Optometric
Association Fall Convention 2011 September 23,
2011
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Good drivers
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Good drivers
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Traditional Business Methods

• We can only cut so much
• We can only restructure so often
• Our competitive advantage will only take us so
  far
• The main goal of building a strengths-based
  organization is to drive
  higher financial and operational metrics,
  higher employee engagement, and higher
  patient loyalty.

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Leveraging Outcomes from a strengths based model

• How can knowing your own strengths improve
  overall performance?
• Contributes to your individual engagement
• Positively influences your relationships with
  your peers, direct reports, patients
• Creates a common language around peoples
  strengths
• Supports great people staying with the
  organization
• For all of these reasons, building on the
  strengths of those around you creates success for
  the individual as well as the organization

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Why Focus on Strengths?

• The best-led organizations know that the direct
  path to individual, team, and organizational
  strengths begins with a primary investment in
  their employees greatest talents.
• Find whats naturally right with your people, and
  build on it.

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Why Focus on Strengths?
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Why Focus on Strengths?

• All organizations seek to perform with strength.
  To get there, many follow conventional wisdom
• Focus on fixing weaknesses.
  Find whats wrong with your people,
  and try to correct it.
• Unfortunately, that wisdom leaves the
  organization struggling on the path to
  mediocrity.

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Why Focus on Strengths?

• Speed
• People operating from strength learn the role
  faster and adapt to more variance in the role
  quicker.
• Productivity and Precision
• People operating from strength produce
  significantly more at higher quality.
• Sustainability
• People operating from strength stay longer, miss
  less work, and build stronger customer
  relationships.

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Matching Strengths to Engagement

• At work, I have the opportunity to do what I
  do best everyday
• of the 1.7 million workers Gallup asked in 63
  countries, what strongly agree with this
  statement?

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Matching Strengths to Engagement

• At work, I have the opportunity to do what I
  do best everyday
• of the 1.7 million workers Gallup asked in 63
  countries, what strongly agree with this
  statement?

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Matching Strengths to Engagement

• What happens when a person is not operating from
  strength?
• He or she is quite simply less fulfilled and
  less effective.
• In the workplace, an employee is SIX times less
  likely to be engaged in the role.

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Engagement Effect Focus on Strengths
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Engagement Effect Focus on Strengths
My Supervisor Focuses on My Strengths and
Positive Characteristics
Engaged
Not Engaged
Actively Disengaged
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Matching Strengths to Engagement

• A person not able to use his or her strengths at
  work probably
• dreads going to work
• has more negative than positive interactions
  with coworkers
• treats customers poorly
• tells friends he or she works for a miserable
  organization
• achieves less on a daily basis
• has fewer positive and creative moments

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Expectations of Strengths Based Leaders
Effective development strategies begin with each
individuals mastery of self and then moves
through to others.
Drive Business Results By Being A Strengths
Based Leader
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Five Clues to Talent
Yearning To what kinds of activities are you
naturally drawn? Rapid Learning What kinds of
activities do you seem to pick up
quickly? Flow In what activities do the steps
just come naturally to you? When have you gotten
so absorbed in a process or activity that you
completely lost track of time and
surroundings? Glimpses of Excellence During what
activities have you had moments of subconscious
excellence, when you thought, How did I do
that? Satisfaction What activities give you a
kick, either while doing them of immediately
after finishing them, and you think, When can I
do that again?
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Think About
It.
Recall a time when someone highlighted your
weaknesses. How did you feel? In that moment,
what was your capacity to encourage or increase
the engagement of another person? Recall a time
when someone highlighted one of your strengths.
How did you feel? In that moment, what was your
capacity to encourage or increase the engagement
of another person? Based on your own
experiences, what conclusions do you draw about a
focus on weaknesses as opposed to a focus on
strengths?
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A new definition of a weakness

• A weakness is a lack of knowledge, skill or
  talent that negatively affects your performance
  or that of others. Because a weakness will
  prevent you or others from performing with
  strength, it must be managed or mitigated.
• Based on this new definition, by stating my
  weakness is golf, my weakness is singing, my
  weakness is public speaking, or my weakness is
  delegating, these only constitute a weakness if
  your performance success is dependent on your
  ability to golf, sing, speak to large groups, or
  delegate every day. If you must do these things
  to be successful, they must be managed. This is
  where one or more of the Seven Strategies may be
  useful.

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Seven Ways to Manage Weaknesses and Sharpen
Strengths.

• Open communication and transparency
• Leverage other talents
• Use support systems
• Set reasonable expectations and then just do it
• Get the right training
• Form complementary partnerships
• Adjust or change roles employers careers

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Signature Strengths

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Strengths Based Leadership Research

• The most effective leaders surround themselves
  with the right people and then maximize their
  team.
• While the best leaders are not necessarily
  well-rounded, the best teams are.

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Potential Return on Investment

• Retention
• Employees leave managers, not organizations
• Strengths-based environments are a
  catalyst to focus on right
  vs. wrong

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Potential Return on Investment

• Leaders manage to talent
• Research shows higher performance through
  focusing on strengths

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Potential Return on Investment

• Increased productivity
• Engagement produces a desire to do more of what
  I like and with higher degrees of quality

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Potential Return on Investment

• Increased awareness of talent in action
• Recognition on maximizing what is right vs.
  focus on fixing what is wrong

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Potential Return on Investment

• Higher engagement over time
• Growth from individualized foundation means
  greater improvement

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Potential Return on Investment

• Exceed overall performance expectations and
  achieve powerful organizational outcomes
• higher productivity and retention
• increased patient loyalty
• greater physician engagement
• positive organizational culture

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• Laurie K. Baedke, FACHE, CMPEPresidentLIFEworks
  Healthcare Group, Inc.1150 Westridge
  DriveBlair, NE 68008402.680.3311baedke_at_elifewor
  ks.com www.lauriebaedke.com/blog