How to Implement Strength-Based Leadership (5 Steps)

I haven’t been a Christian my whole life, but I have always been in business. When I was young, we didn’t have much money, so I did what I thought was necessary to make a comfortable living for myself, and my future. So I did what came easiest at the time, I started selling weed. My passion for business at a young age got me in trouble, and I ended up in jail the Summer after high school. When all my friends were getting ready for college, I was experiencing the real world in a whole different way. I spent about 3 months in jail and during that time, I had recently gotten into fitness. I would create these work outs throughout day in the dorm that most people would follow.

This jail wasn’t like the jail you see in movies. There weren’t any bench presses or pull up bars, you had to be creative. One day, a guy that was working out with us said to me, “Jared, you should be a personal trainer.” I literally didn’t know what that was, so I asked him, and he told me basically people get paid to do what I was doing. That sounded incredible! The day I got out, I hooked up that dial up connection (because this was 10 years ago) and I Googled “How to be a personal trainer.”

Then I went on to get a job at a local gym. With my natural ability to sell what I’m passionate about, I became a manager. In 2011, that gym got bought out by LA Fitness, which brought me to Jacksonville a few years later. After 2 years in Jax, I decided to take a leap of faith to start my own gym and failed very quickly. A few months later I had the opportunity to start Superfit Foods. (For the sake of time and staying on topic, I had to fast forward a few really long stories just now.)

I tell you that part of my story for 2 reasons:

1. To remind you that no matter who you are, where you are right now, or whatever your situation is – we serve the God of second chances and He will always use our mistakes and short comings as opportunities if we let Him. And if I can go from there to here, so can you.
2. The second reason is because when you listen to that story, you’ll notice that the same things that got me in trouble when I was younger now serve as my greatest strengths in leadership and business today.

The point: Learning to leverage your strengths and the strength of your team is what’s going to help you reach your goals, whatever they are.

When we were in school, we were naturally conditioned to focus on our weaknesses. If we took home our report card and got a C on Algebra but an A+ in English, what did our parents want us to focus on? What did our teachers, and the school system condition us to focus on? The C, our weaknesses. Which resulted in us spending 80% of our time building up our weaknesses, and 20% of them maintaining our strengths.

I think we should do the opposite. And as business owners or leaders, or even with ourselves, I think we all still fall into the habit of focusing on our weaknesses.

With that being said, here are the 5 STEPS TO STRENGTH-BASED LEADERSHIP:

1. Know who you are!

How do I do that?

• Good leaders practice self-awareness and vulnerability.
• What is my mission/purpose in life?
• What are my values?
• Once you’d identified whatever that is, begin to let people know!

2. Know your strengths, and the strengths of your team.

How do I find this out?

• Take the Gallup Strength Finder test.
• Implement Gallup Strengths Finder and other reputable personality tests in your hiring and/or project assignment process.
• Reflect on instances where you experienced a “win” and write down why.
• Do the same thing for your team members.

3. Quit trying to fix people.

But how?

• Once you know their strengths, put them in a position to be successful.
• Empower them, but don’t rescue them.
  • Practice proper delegation.
• Check out my podcast for an example of practical delegation within small teams
• After you’ve played musical chairs for long enough, it’s time to move on.
  • As bad as this sounds, you need to be slow to hire and quick to fire.

4. Recognize your weaknesses.

How are we going to do this?

• Write down your strengths, then address the opposites.
  • No one wants to acknowledge it, but there is always a dark side to our strengths.
• Work on them, but don’t try to be them (20/80 rule)
• Build your team around them

5. Never stop learning.

• Read books
  • Here are a few of my favorite:
    • Built to Last
    • 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
    • How to Win Friends and Influence People
    • The 4 Agreements
    • 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
    • Atomic Habits
•  Listen to podcasts and audiobooks
  • Here are a few of my favorite podcasts:
    • How I Built This
    • Hidden Brain
    • Elevation Church
    • The Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
•  Follow people on social media in your space
• Attend local groups and travel for relevant seminars