Leila Barzegar

Rath, Tom, and Barry Conchie. Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why

People Follow. New York: Gallup, 2008. Print.

How to Lead: Know Your Strengths

Bestselling author Tom Rath and renowned leadership consultant Barry Conchie reveal the results of decades of Gallup research in Strengths Based Leadership. Gallup scientists conducted more than 20,000 in-depth interviews with leaders, in addition to interviewing more than 10,000 followers around the world to discern why they followed certain leaders. Strengths Based Leadership is well organized and to the point.

Rath and Conchie note three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths and investing in others' strengths, getting people with the right strengths on your team and understanding and meeting the four basic needs of those who look to you for leadership. The four basic needs of followers are trust (Do you keep your word as a leader?), compassion (Do you have your workers’ best interests in mind?), stability (Do your employees always know what to expect from you?) and hope (Are your employees inspired about the future?).

The four identified leadership domains include: executing (leaders who know how to make things happen), influencing (leaders who help their teams reach a much broader audience), relationship building (leaders who are the glue that holds the team together), and strategic thinking (leaders who keep us focused on what could be). This book states that instead of working on our weaknesses, in the professional sense, we should focus on our strengths. The premise is that well-rounded people never become great leaders; it is only those who play to their strengths that become great leaders. We should manage around our weaknesses, but find ways to hone our strengths to achieve more.

Rath and Conchie offer an excellent approach to leadership. Rather than propose a one-size-fits-all strategy, like Taylor’s scientific management and Drucker’s Management by Objectives, they go in to detail about the different kinds of leadership traits. MBO focuses on outcomes, rather than the individual activities or personal traits of employees. And though it is the most commonly used management system in the United States, Rath and Conchie do not see it as the most effective.

Instead, Strengths Based Leadership draws more from Fowlett’s Collaborative Management. Fowlett emphasizes power with rather than power over. Teaching is carried out by leading, and a skillful leader influences by stimulating others.

With each of the 34 leader themes, they go more in depth on how to build trust, show compassion, provide stability, create hope and other general tips on leading. These notions build on Fowlett’s idea of interrelatedness: being coactive as opposed to coercive. Furthermore, Rath and Conchie go in to detail as to why people follow certain leaders. It is important for someone in a management role to not only understand how to lead a group of people, but to also understand why that group will follow a leader.

I would definitely recommend Strengths Based Leadership to PR students. Buying the book is great idea, because it comes with a new leadership version of Gallup’s StrengthsFinder program that provides specific strategies for leading with each individuals top five strengths. One can more easily plot the strengths of a team based on the four domains of leadership strength revealed in the book. Also, there are a number of firsthand accounts of incredibly successful organizational leaders from recent times. The book reveals how effective leadership has its foundation in personal effectiveness. The great thing about Strengths Based Leadership is how personalized it is. This book fosters a deep understanding of your unique strengths and weaknesses, resulting in greater self-awareness and ability to lead.