StrengthscopeLeader™

Authentic leaders achieve greater impact than those trying to fit a stereotype of a leader. The StrengthscopeLeader™ report helps leaders use their strengths to bring out their best leadership behaviour. It is the first strengths assessment in the market where the leader receives 360 feedback from up to 20 raters.

FAQ

• What is the definition of strengths?

We define strengths as ‘underlying qualities that energise you and that you are great at or have the potential to become great at’.

• What model is Strengthscope® based on?

It’s built on a wide range of research in the fields of personality, ability, positive psychology and strengths. We drilled down to identify the essence of strengths at work; finally selecting 24 strengths which best captured performance-critical strengths in the workplace. These strengths are broken down into four ‘clusters’ of strengths, as follows:
• Emotional: these strengths relate to how you manage and express your emotions in relation to circumstances and people around you.
• Relational: these strengths relate to establishing and maintaining productive relations with others.
• Thinking: these strengths relate to the areas in which you prefer to apply your intellect, as well as how you go about gathering and using information to make decisions at work.
• Execution: these strengths relate to delivering results, in terms of content and delivery.

• Is it possible that I might have a strength that I am not good at?

Yes, this is possible, but doesn’t occur very often. This is because we tend to build skill and competence in areas we are naturally more drawn to. However, a person might not have had the opportunity to develop skills and experience in an area of strength, meaning that it has remained an under-developed strength. Of course, this area offers lots of potential for development and learning for the person and could over time become a fully optimised strength.

• What can I do about the areas where I don’t have a strength?

The first question you need to ask is, “What is the impact of this non-strength/weaker area on my performance?” If there is little or no impact on your current work or future aspirations, then you probably shouldn’t invest too much time trying to develop in this area. However, if there is a negative impact on your performance or potential as a result of this area, or if there is the risk of such impact, you should consider ways to make your non-strength/weaker area less relevant by mitigating or improving it. Possible approaches include:

1. Using other strengths you have to compensate for the effect of the weaker area. For example, someone with low Common Sense might use their Leading or Collaboration strength to bring in others who have Common Sense during problem- solving tasks.
2. Finding someone else in the team or organisation who can compensate for your weaker areas to partner with you to perform the work.
3. Being more intentional about learning and putting in place daily habits that don’t come naturally to you. We call this “Going to the gym when you really don’t want to”.
4. Using support mechanisms (including technology) as a substitute for the lack of a strength in a particular area. For example, someone who is low on ‘Efficiency’ might use an online diary application to ensure they assume a more methodical approach to managing their time and tasks in future.
5. Finding a new role which enables you to play to your strengths more of the time.

• If I am a manager or leader, is it better for me to have particular strengths?

No, since management and leadership roles tend to vary significantly from organisation to organisation, there is no one set of strengths that make up a ‘good manager’. Also, research has found that similar managers and leaders call on vastly different strengths to undertake their role, with equally impactful outcomes. What is important to the success of a manager or leader is knowing one’s strengths and applying these as optimally as possible, whilst managing or minimising performance risks to make them less relevant.

• Do strengths change over time, i.e. will my strengths be the same in 5 or 10 years’ time?

Research has shown that an individual’s strengths tend to be fairly stable over time, as they are a core part of who we are as individuals. However, important life events (marriage, divorce, major job change, childbirth, etc.) may bring strengths into the foreground or push them into the background for a period of time.

• What is different about Strengthscope® from a normal personality questionnaire?

Strengthscope® identifies the things that ‘strengthen’ or energise you – this is a critical distinction between Strengthscope® and a general personality measure, such as OPQ or Insights, for example. Strengthscope® does not describe behavioural preference (as personality questionnaires do) but instead identifies the behaviours and activities which make us feel strong, powerful and energised.

• How is Strengthscope® different from other strengths assessments?

Strengthscope® differs in several important ways from other strengths assessments:

1. Strengthscope® is the only strengths-based assessment to have achieved ‘Registered Test’ status with the British Psychological Society, the global gold standard for psychometric testing. 
2. If the multi-rater/360º option is chosen, the user receives multi-rater feedback from work colleagues and other key stakeholders on how effectively they are applying their strengths at work.
3. The model is intentionally more straightforward than those of other tools to make it more practical and usable.

• What differences are there between strengths and competencies? 

Competencies are typically defined as characteristics and behaviours that predict successful organisational outcomes. Most organisations using competencies have focused their efforts on defining skills, knowledge and behaviours associated with success in a particular role, function or at a particular level in the organisation (e.g. leadership). Unlike competencies, strengths are related to the person and not the role, function or level. They have a strong emotional element as well as leading to valued outcomes; the best signpost of a strength is when something energises or strengthens you. Strengths are also part of your character – things that are core to you and are fairly consistently expressed across situations. Unlike surface characteristics such as skills and knowledge, strengths are relatively ‘hardwired’ in our teens and are difficult to develop and fundamentally change beyond this point. We believe it is at the point where skills and knowledge (competencies) and energisers (or strengths) overlap, that productive habits can be developed, which lead to sustainable peak performance.

• What about Strengthscope®’s reliability and validity – is it ‘fit for purpose’?

Strengthscope® is one of the very few assessments to have achieved registered-test status with the British Psychological Society, which represents the global gold standard for psychometric design. Strengthscope® is the only strengths assessment available globally to have achieved this standard. In practice, this means that it has been built with rigour and has a substantial amount of test data to support it.

• When would I use StrengthscopeLeader™?

The StrengthscopeLeader™ report is the only dedicated strengths-based 360 leadership profiler on the market today. It allows leaders to discover what makes them truly unique and provides valuable feedback on how to bring their authentic style into their leadership role.

• What model is StrengthscopeLeader™ based on?

The StrengthscopeLeader™ model is based on 3 key areas, which are critical for leadership effectiveness:
• What you bring to leadership – Your strengths
• How you lead or behave – Leadership habits
• Outcomes and success drivers.

• How is the StrengthscopeLeader™ profile different to the Strengthscope® Standard and Strengthscope360™ profiles?

StrengthscopeLeader™ contains similar information as the Strengthscope® and Strengthscope360™ profiles, as all three contain information on your strengths in the form of the ‘strengths wheel’ and also provide information on your Significant 7 Strengths. StrengthscopeLeader™, however, is a much more comprehensive profile and provides additional information about how well leaders are performing against 4 well-researched habits (or behaviours) every leader needs to be successful, as well as the outcomes they deliver. As with Strengthscope® and Strengthscope360™, feedback on the profile from a trained practitioner or coach is an important and required element for someone who has completed StrengthscopeLeader™, as this will allow the leader to gain the most value from their profile.