Matt L. Beadle - Strengths Oriented Leadership

Strengths Oriented Leadership

Strengths Oriented Leadership

The World Through Bee Glasses

Matt L. Beadle

Strengths Oriented Leadership: The World Through Bee Glasses
Copyright Business Expert Press, LLC, 2021.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 250 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published in 2021 by
Business Expert Press, LLC
222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017
www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-95253-818-6 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-95253-819-3 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior Collection

Collection ISSN: 1946-5637 (print)
Collection ISSN: 1946-5645 (electronic)

Cover design: @whatneywhoston.
Interior design by S4Carlisle Publishing Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India

First edition: 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

Abstract

This book is about talent, strengths, and positive psychology. Everyone is naturally talented in certain areas and if we get the opportunity to use our talents at work and develop them into strengths, then we can work better, faster, and far more productively. Bees search for pollen, and they find it in the beautiful, successful, growing things around us: flowers. Flies search for rotting trash, bacteria, and ugliness. Do you want to go through life like a fly or like a bee? These pages present the overwhelming scientific evidence that strengths-based leadership and collaboration lead to more productivity, more innovation, better well-being at work, lower absenteeism, and better health. Learning to recognize your talents, leveraging them into strengths, and mitigate your weaknesses will leverage the way you and your colleagues work.

Keywords

talent; strengths; strengths-based leadership; strengths orientation; strengths-based approach; positive psychology; strengths-based teams; strengths mindset; intrinsic motivation; flipside of talents; prefrontal cortex; limbic system; reward mode; threat mode

Contents

In this book, Matt Beadle shows what the talent activator can produce if you develop it into strength. Activator is in the category Executing and is all about getting things done. I know Matt from our friendly, extraordinarily successful and joyful, long-term collaboration. Countless people, most of them managers from different industries, have given us feedback on how they have benefited from their new awareness of their talents and strengths both in their everyday work and in their private lives and how happy this makes them.

Matt has spent years practicing and applying what he has been preaching. Driven by his Activator and his Positivity, he is now passing this experience on to his readers together with his profound expertise. Thanks to his talent for Intellection, he has not only acquired an endless pool of experience and material on the subject of strength orientation, but also the need to pass this resource on to a broad audience in a way that is structured from practical experience and for practical use. He shares with experts and regular people alike the knowledge, experience, and joy of strengths orientation.

Matt lives life according to the principles of doing and sharing or according to the motto good only happens when you make it. He has produced a book which starts with a brief reflection on positive psychology and the strengths-oriented use of talents, then leads on to constructive criticism and the use of assessments such as the CliftonStrengths and other tools. This book is totally geared toward practical use and contains authentic examples from both his own experiences and those of his workshop participants. This makes reading it as entertaining as it is informative. In his characteristically engaging manner, Matt captivates his readership with his wonderfully pragmatic writing style. You can see and empathize with his often tongue-in-cheek delivery of provocation, instructions, and anecdotes, which is sometimes half-joking and sometimes half-serious.

If you happened to get out of bed on the wrong side this morning (with your fly glasses on), you might ask yourself why we need another book on this subject. Matts extensive bibliographical index shows that he himself acknowledges that his book makes him just one of a long list of authors who have already examined the subject from multiple perspectives. If, however, you give the book a fair chance, youll find that comparisons with other works are frankly irrelevant. The book doesnt claim to be a scientific study which researches and describes completely new knowledge. Matts approach is similar to that of the CliftonStrengths publications. It is based on empirical observation and perception. The content of his 11-chapter work is based on countless real-world situations, questions from participants, and intensive intellectual exchange with colleagues. Its primary goals are to give interested readers broad access to the topic of strengths orientation, to share knowledge, and last but not least, to continue Matts own learning process. This is the reason for the sincere request for additions and constructive feedback as well as feed-forward.

As a long-time colleague and friend, I respect Matt for his unswerving commitment to making his thoughts publicly available and for being willing to discuss them and to have them discussed. He doesnt just announce his book projects; he actually completes them diligently and with determination. In his workshops, he imparts knowledge and experience with both charm and absolute professionalism and manages to be both competent and entertaining at all times. My pleasure at working with Matt grows day by day. The discussions we shared during the creation of this book enriched and advanced us both.

I hope that all readers find refreshing insights for use in their everyday professional and private lives. Anyone who reads this book and deals with this topic will find that it delivers real added value in the context of their personal development and enrichment. Every journey starts with the first step and one step may lead to another and then another. Dear Matt, congratulations on this book and good luck with what is undoubtedly your calling.

Your friend and colleague

Dr. Martin Friedrich

Strengths Coach

February 2020

___________

All words in italics in the foreword are Gallup CliftonStrengths terminology.

What are you really, really good at? Go on. Have a go, what pursuits do you find easy and deliver high performance in, almost without fail? Maybe you are a good speaker and dont get nervous when presenting in front of a group. Perhaps you have always found that you can quickly identify patterns in numbers or spreadsheets, even when the data are complex. Or have you received feedback over the years that you are able to remain calm in pressure situations and still come up with fresh, innovative ideas, even when others around you are panicking and fretting and wheeling out tired, old suggestions again and again?

What is interesting about this is that, when asked what they are really great at, most would probably respond with humility or even embarrassment at having to boast, as they see it, about mundane, regular achievements. Indeed, most dont see such performance as achievement at all, rather as normal, run-of-the-mill endeavor. Many of us still carry with us powerful, lingering lessons from our childhood. Dont show off, darling...be humble...its not polite to talk about what you are good at our parents or guardians would tell us. Talking about yourself, your talents, and your achievements is often considered vulgar or self- absorbed and we are politely told that we should better turn down the self-aggrandizement dial a notch and focus on more important things like teamwork, strategy, and the bottom line.