October 14, 2025
The answer to this question can mean the difference between incremental improvement and extraordinary transformation.
Most leadership development programs follow a predictable pattern. They assess leaders, identify gaps and deficiencies, and then prescribe training to address these weaknesses. It’s logical, systematic, and fundamentally flawed.
This deficit-based approach dominates the industry. Whether it’s competency models that highlight where leaders fall short, 360-degree feedback that emphasizes areas for improvement, or transformation programs that focus on “reactive” patterns to overcome, the underlying message is the same: you’re broken, and we’ll help you fix yourself.
The problem? This approach ignores how people actually develop and grow. It assumes that shoring up weaknesses creates exceptional performance. But research tells a different story.
Analysis of more than 100,000 leaders reveals a counterintuitive truth: unless you have a critical flaw that derails your effectiveness, you’re far more likely to achieve extraordinary results by building on your existing strengths than by obsessing over your weaknesses.
Think about it in practical terms. Imagine a leader who scores at the 65th percentile in strategic thinking and the 40th percentile in operational execution. Traditional approaches would push this leader to spend significant time and energy improving their operational skills—trying to move from the 40th to perhaps the 50th percentile. Meanwhile, their natural strategic ability languishes.
A strengths-based leadership development approach takes a radically different path. It asks: What if this leader developed their strategic thinking from the 65th to the 90th percentile? What if they became truly extraordinary at what they already do well? The impact on organizational performance would be exponentially greater.
The strengths-based approach isn’t feel-good psychology or motivational cheerleading. It’s grounded in rigorous research from positive psychology, neuroscience, and decades of empirical data on what actually creates leadership excellence.
When leaders focus on their strengths, several powerful dynamics occur. First, development happens faster because you’re building on existing neural pathways and natural talents rather than fighting against your wiring. Second, the work itself becomes more energizing rather than draining, leading to greater persistence and deeper mastery. Third, leaders can more readily achieve distinctive excellence that sets them apart rather than merely becoming adequate across all dimensions.
This research-driven methodology doesn’t mean ignoring weaknesses entirely. Critical deficiencies—what might be called “fatal flaws”—must be addressed. If a leader has integrity issues, treats people poorly, or can’t make decisions, these problems will undermine everything else. But for most leaders, the path to extraordinary performance runs through their strengths, not their weaknesses.
Another limitation of traditional leadership development is its reliance on one-size-fits-all solutions. Organizations purchase subscriptions to content libraries, send leaders to standardized programs, or implement company-wide competency models that treat all leaders identically.
This approach ignores a fundamental reality: every leader is different. They have unique combinations of talents, work in different organizational contexts, and possess distinct passions and motivations. Effective development must address this individuality.
The most powerful leadership development plans operate at the intersection of three critical factors: individual strengths, organizational needs, and personal passion. When a leader can leverage natural abilities to address genuine business challenges in areas they care deeply about, development becomes self-sustaining rather than forced.
This three-dimensional approach requires more than handing someone an assessment report and telling them to figure it out. It demands a structured methodology that helps leaders identify their most powerful strength combinations, understand how those strengths serve organizational priorities, and design development experiences that tap into intrinsic motivation.
Rather than overwhelming leaders with dozens of competencies to develop or abstract psychological frameworks to internalize, the strengths-based approach provides a clear, actionable structure. Research on extraordinary leaders—not just good ones—reveals 19 key competencies that truly differentiate high performance.
But here’s the crucial insight: extraordinary leaders don’t excel at all 19.
Instead, they possess deep strengths in a few key areas that create distinctive leadership value. This framework gives leaders permission to be themselves while showing them exactly where to focus their development energy for maximum impact.
This is fundamentally different from competency models that imply leaders should be strong across all dimensions or transformation models that suggest leaders must completely reinvent their psychological makeup. The strengths-based approach says: become more of who you already are at your best.
Too many leadership programs measure success by participant satisfaction scores or whether people completed modules. These metrics tell us nothing about business impact.
When development focuses on amplifying strengths in areas that matter to organizational performance, the results become measurable in terms that matter: employee engagement, retention, productivity, innovation, and financial outcomes. Leaders who develop their strengths show statistically significant improvements in how others perceive their effectiveness—and these perceptions correlate directly with team and organizational performance.
This isn’t theoretical. The data from thousands of leaders demonstrates clear correlations between strength-based development and tangible business results. Organizations can track not just whether leaders are learning, but whether that learning is creating value.
Leadership development represents a significant investment of time, money, and organizational energy. The question isn’t whether to invest, but how to invest wisely.
Traditional approaches offer the comfort of familiarity and the logic of fixing what’s broken. But comfort and logic don’t necessarily produce results.
The strengths-based leadership development approach offers something more valuable: a methodology proven to create extraordinary leaders through research, designed around how people actually develop, and focused on measurable business impact.
In the end, organizations must decide: Do you want leaders who are adequate across all dimensions, or extraordinary in the ways that truly matter? The answer determines not just which development approach you choose, but what kind of leadership culture you build.
The choice between fixing weaknesses and building strengths isn’t just a tactical decision about training programs. It’s a strategic choice about what kind of leadership your organization believes is possible—and what kind of results you’re willing to settle for.
-Joe Folkmand and Jack Zenger
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