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Title details for Fear Your Strengths by Robert E. Kaplan - Available

Fear Your Strengths

What You Are Best at Could Be Your Biggest Problem

by Robert E. Kaplan
Robert B. Kaiser
ebook
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Once you've discovered your strengths, you need to discover something else: your strengths can work against you. Many leaders know this on some intuitive level, and they see it in others. But they don't see it as clearly in themselves. Mainly, they think of leadership development as working on their weaknesses. No wonder. The tools used to assess managers are not equipped to pick up on overplayed strengths—when more is not better. Nationally recognized leadership experts Bob Kaplan and Rob Kaiser have conducted thousands of assessments of senior executives designed to determine when their strengths serve them well—versus betray them. In this groundbreaking book, they draw on their data and practical experience to identify four fundamental leadership qualities, each positive in and of itself but each of which, if overemphasized, can seriously compromise your effectiveness. Most leaders, they've found, are "lopsided"—they favor certain qualities to the exclusion of others without realizing it. The trick is to keep all four in balance. Fear Your Strengths provides tools to help you become aware of your leadership leanings and excesses and provides insights for combatting the mindset that encourages them. It offers a practical psychology of leadership, a better way for leaders to calibrate their performance so that you can make sure your strengths don't overpower you but rather move you—and your organization—forward.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 1, 2013

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781609949068

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781609949068
      • File size: 2344 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 4, 2013
      Consultants Kaplan and Kaiser conducted thousands of assessments of executives, many of whom don’t realize that they’re overusing their strengths. While we ordinarily strive for strength in a corporate setting, “too much strength can a weakness,” the authors suggest. Kaplan and Kaiser aim to assist readers in identifying their key strengths and using them wisely. The executives in their case studies struggle with issues such as an overabundance of charisma or being too solicitous to others—traits that can be productive in small doses, but problematic when overdone. Much of the time, the difficulty is in falling too close to either end of the forcefulness/enabling spectrum. Leaders need to follow three steps to move closer to the center: accept themselves, test themselves, and finally, offset themselves. While the main argument is valid, the attempt to spin out this slender analysis into a full-length book results in a repetitive, colorless treatise.

    • Library Journal

      March 15, 2013

      Consultants Kaplan (president, Kaplan DeVries, Inc.) and Kaiser (founder, Kaiser Leadership Solutions) present an original work on the quotidian topic of leadership. The authors focus on how leaders use and overuse their strengths, showing that overusing can actually result in weakness. The material is largely based on their analysis of manager ratings (covering those ranging from mid-level to CEO) by coworkers using the "leadership versatility index" (kaiserleadership.com). Their study outlines the consequences leaders face when their skills are overplayed. Further explained are two core dualities confronting leaders: forcefulness/enabling and strategic focus/operational focus. Kaplan and Kaiser address the mindset that traps a leader in certain habits and provide simple tools for dialing back overbearing behaviors. VERDICT This book succinctly summarizes the rigorous data presented in the authors' previous work, The Versatile Leader, and represents a balanced guide in a field of titles that tend to exaggerate leadership skills as a means to counter inner weaknesses. Recommended for university libraries and any business curriculum.--Dale Farris, Groves, TX

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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