Strengths: Post #4 - The Four Domains of Teams

The Four Domains of Teams (think of the word SIRE)
1. Strategic Thinking: People with strengths in this domain tend to force the group to look at the big picture and toward the future—what might be. Always reviewing the data and applying what they learn, strategic thinkers move the organization forward—stretching its members to think beyond what is, to the possibilities of the future. People who are strong in this strategic thinking domain possess strengths in such areas as: Context, Futuristic, Ideation, Input, Analytic, Intellection, Learner and Strategic.
2. Influence: People with strengths in this key domain know how to sell or promulgate the team’s ideas both inside and outside the organization. These people are natural persuaders, inspire others to adopt their ideas, and are vital to moving teams forward in communities. Again, not everyone influences the same way. But people with the following domain-area strengths tend to be key influencers: Activator, Command, Communication, Competition, Maximizer, Self Assurance, Significance, and Woo.
3. Relationship Building: Those with strengths in this domain tend to keep groups together. They’re the social glue, the mortar between the foundation building blocks. They know how to create and maintain groups such that the whole is much greater than its parts. Such relationship builders have domain strengths as follows: Adaptability, Developer, Connectedness, Empathy, Includer, Individualization, Positivity, and Relator.
4. Execution: People with strengths in this key domain know how to rally around a goal and get things done. Differing strengths might dictate the style of getting to the goal, but folks who have strengths in this domain area contribute mightily to execution. Here are those strengths: Achiever, Arranger, Belief, Consistency, Deliberative, Discipline, Focus, Responsibility, and Restorative. Take the StrengthsFinder to find yours and read the book for explanations of all of the strengths.

Necessary Endings: Post #12--FINAL

Sustainability: Taking Inventory of What Is Depleting Your Resources. Harvesting resources in such a way that they never get depleted is what sustainability is all about. This is also true for our own personal energy. If we treat energy as something that can be squandered, our business process becomes unsustainable. It could be a CEO who drives people and never lets up or investors who continue to dump good money after bad in an investment, hoping for a turnaround. Whatever or whoever overinvests, the results can eventually be unsustainable. We all need to monitor the expenditure of our limited resources to ensure that we don’t continue to invest long after we should have said goodbye to “…employees, businesses, and relationships that all of us have to give up in order to move forward,” to quote the author’s subtitle for this important book.

Necessary Endings: Post#4--Normalizing

Normalizing Necessary Endings—Welcome the Seasons of Your Life into Your Worldview. If we view endings as very difficult things, then we’ll avoid them and push them into the background, which causes all kinds of problems and inefficiencies in our life and work. We can correct this by making endings a part of our world view. First, accept the seasons of life. All things are born, grow and die. Second, life makes much more than we can handle. High functioning people have a LOT of relationships. However, brain research tells us that we can only handle relationships with about 150 people. More than that and things slip off the applecart. So, we need to prune off that which is no longer relevant or healthy. As a business, Starbucks did this well. They captured the market by having stores on every corner and then pruned them back. Smart market strategy—capture market share and then make it efficient.

Domains of Leadership Strengths

This is the second in a series of five posts from a book review of Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie.

1. In Gallup’s research of literally thousands of executive teams, the researchers have determined four domains of leadership strength of great teams:
a. Executing: Being able to take something from idea to reality.
b. Influencing: Selling the team’s idea both internally and externally.
c. Relationship Building: Acting like glue and being able to keep the team as a cohesive whole.
d. Strategic Thinking: Being able to think about the macro-picture,--what things could be.

2. If you look closely at how these four domains cluster, they agree with management research conducted in the past (Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid, for example). In Rath and Conchie’s model, consider a graph with on the X axis Task (Strategic Thinking and Executing) and on the Y axis Relationship (Relationship Building and Influencing). While this is an oversimplification, it does point out congruity with past findings in the area of leadership.