When you bake a cake, you follow a specified recipe to create a perfect desert. Different ingredients can be combined to create various flavors – all delicious in their own way. I believe there is no secret recipe for being a great leader. Different combinations create different types of leaders – one just as good as the next – like cake. The secret lies in discovering what your leadership strengths are.
To discover my team’s strengths, we use the #1 international bestselling book StrengthsFinder 2.0. Gallup first introduced this simple tool in 2001. It was the result of Gallup’s landmark 30-year research project that ignited a global conversation on the topic of strengths. Almost 20 years later, millions of people have used this approach to discover their top five strengths, which in turn helps them to become a better leader.
Knowing our team’s strengths, helps us understand everyone better and strengthens our company as a whole. Everyone of our team members is a leader in some capacity and as the company owner, it’s my job to develop and nurture my staff so they can reach their leadership potential.
Each TGHR employee has their own “recipe” of strengths. Understanding where we overlap and differ has provided a common language we use to communicate with each other every day. Although each recipe is different, there are some leadership characteristics that are shared by our staff – responsibility, communication, achiever and woo.
According to the StrengthsFinder, leaders strong in the responsibility theme are committed to values such as honesty and loyalty and take ownership of what they say they will do. These are key values to our company and the pillar of why I started TGHR – to do staffing better.
People strong in the communication theme are good conversationalists and presenters. They can quickly and easily put their thoughts into words. This is not unexpected since our business consists of talking to our candidates and clients every day! We interview candidates all day long and need to be able to be superior conversationalists to discover their strengths and explain those strengths effectively to our clients.
Achievers have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They derive satisfaction from being productive. Since one of our company mottos is “work hard, play hard”, it comes as no surprise that this shows up in our team’s strengths!
Woo is another strength that pairs perfectly with being in the staffing industry. People strong in woo love meeting new people and are fulfilled by making connections with people – which is perfect for staffing! Our team loves matching the right candidate to the right client job.
I am fortunate to lead a team that takes pride in their strengths and thrives on discovering the strengths of others. If you do not know where you excel as a leader, I highly recommend you discovering your strengths! Let me know how I (or my team) can help.
