EP 18 - Steve Simonson - Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie Book Review

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: What are the keys to being a more effective leader? On this episode, Steve introduces the Awesomers Book of the Week, Strengths Based Leadership written by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. The book is based on Gallup’s StrengthsFinder program that has been instrumental in many of his organizations. Here are more gold nuggets you will learn from this episode: The Barrier Labels of strengths and how it relates to determining your full leadership potential. Steve’s five leadership strengths: responsibility, self assurance, relator, ideation, and learner. How to identify bucket strength themes to become a more effective leader and more. So listen to today’s episode and find out how you too can use your unique leadership strengths towards becoming a better leader. Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, "You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope that you will join me on this Awesomer journey. SPONSOR ADVERTISEMENT If you're launching a new product manufactured in China, you will need professional high-resolution Amazon ready photographs. Because Symo Global has a team of professionals in China, you will oftentimes receive your listing photographs before your product even leaves the country. This streamlined process will save you the time money and energy needed to concentrate on marketing and other creative content strategies before your item is in stock and ready for sale. Visit Symo Global to learn more. Because a picture should be worth one thousand keywords. You're listening to the Awesomers podcast. 01:15 (Steve Simonson introduces today’s Book of the Week episode.) Steve: Welcome back to the Awesomers podcast everybody. This is episode number 18 and as always, you can find show notes and details available at Awesomers.com/18. That's Awesomers.com/18. Now this is a book of the week episode and you'll find that we don't always space these out exactly seven days in between episodes, based on schedules of guests and so forth, but our objective is to encourage you and to suggest that maybe reading a book a week is a good idea. And internalizing those lessons in some of those books and so that you can improve your own you know knowledge and potentially help your organization. This week is about a very important book and something that it goes far beyond just a simple read. As some of our books are great simple informative reads, this one is a powerhouse. So without further ado let's get right to it. Steve: So today's book is called Strengths Based Leadership and this is a book that has been instrumental in many of my organizations for all these many years. Probably well over I don't know 10 or 15 years. I really don't know the exact count, but we definitely believe in the philosophy that is put forward by strengths based leadership. And we're going to talk about what that philosophy is and why we think it's particularly important to pay attention to. One of the most important aspects of this is the fact that it's based on research, it's based on science. And what we know is that patterns and behaviors within human beings are consistent. Somebody who has a particular pattern of behavior, they found