The Five Talents That Really Matter

A former Gallup Global Leadership Research and Development leader and the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Strengths-Based Leadership demystifies the aura and complexity surrounding high-performing leaders through original research and interviews with high-performing global leaders.

The leadership space is rife with myths, such as the belief that anyone can be a leader with enough effort or that a leader's strengths can be their greatest weaknesses. According to Barry Conchie and his business partner Sarah Dalton, these statements are unfounded. The Five Talents That Really Matter explains how high-performing leaders are talented in five essential ways.

This book strips away the fluff in leadership and unveils and describes the traits and characteristics that actually determine high-performance leadership. These talents provide a template against which career-driven managers and leaders can assess and develop their own capabilities. The five evidence-based talent dimensions are:

• Direction: High-performing leaders describe a compelling, intrinsically good destination and help others understand that getting there will be worth the effort.
• Drive: This dimension hardly needs a description. We all know it when we see it: strong work ethic, tenacity, goal-orientation... being a self-starter.
• Influence: The ability to motivate, persuade, challenge, and change the minds of others.
• Relationships: People matter to outstanding leaders. They can build commitment and trust among the people they work with.
• Execution: Excellent leaders are obsessed with getting work done and how work gets done.

Through meticulous research, assessment, and testing, Conchie and Dalton have built a database that predicts the talents and behaviours of the most successful leaders. In this book, they present for the first time a scientific model that demystifies the aura and complexity surrounding high-performing leaders.