Finding your strengths to go from good to great
07-12-2009
Have you ever wondered why it is that we focus so much of our time and energy on improving our weaknesses instead of developing our strengths? The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and USA Today bestselling book Strengthsfinder 2.0, based on Gallup’s research, aims to help you identify your strengths and change the way you see and develop yourself forever!
Have you always wanted to be the “hero” in difficult situations, to be the one parachuting into enemies’ firing lines in order to save the day? Or have you wondered why you always seem to find the “problem” in every plan presented? Perhaps you feel compelled to “action” every idea colleagues have or to point out why it just won’t work. You might just have the strengths of WOO, Ideation, Restorative, or being an Activator. According to Strengthsfinder 2.0, your greatest strengths may lie in these “automatic” responses.
Eight staff members from OLIVE LEAF Foundation in Stellenbosch participated in the online Strengthsfinder process involving an online test as well as individual and group coaching sessions. The team rediscovered themselves and each other in this journey, by learning about each person’s strengths and correlating behavior.
In conjunction with the ideology of Strengthsfinder, the book Good to Great written by Jim Collins was used to help each staff member define their personal hedgehog concept. To explain the hedgehog concept, herewith an excerpt from Good to Great: “Picture two animals: a fox and a hedgehog. Which are you? An ancient Greek parable distinguishes between foxes, which know many small things, and hedgehogs, which know one big thing. All good-to-great leaders, it turns out, are hedgehogs. They know how to simplify a complex world into a single, organizing idea—the kind of basic principle that unifies, organizes, and guides all decisions. That’s not to say hedgehogs are simplistic. Like great thinkers, who take complexities and boil them down into simple, yet profound ideas, leaders of good-to-great companies develop a Hedgehog Concept that is simple but that reflects penetrating insight and deep understanding”.
The whole Stellenbosch team agreed that the sessions were life changing and mind-altering whether they learned these things about themselves and others for the first time or it just confirmed that they are indeed on the right bus and in the perfect seat!