Page 81 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

THE WHY OF WORK

FIGURE 3.2 Seligman’s Signature Strengths (continued)

TRANSCENDENCE—spiritual strengths that connect us to the universe and provide
meaning
20. Appreciation of beauty and excellence—delight in nature, art, skill, or
excellence
21. Gratitude—counting one’s blessings; expressing thanks; delighting in life’s
goodness
22. Hope—expecting good outcomes and a positive future based on effort today
23. Humor and playfulness—ability to have fun, play, joke, and make others smile
24. Religiousness—a strong belief system; feeling connected to God

accounting, go to authentichappiness.org and take the
VIA Survey of Character Strengths to identify your
signature strengths compared to other people. Use of
this research site is free and can be used by you and your
work team to determine and compare your strengths.)
• • Gallup organization. Marcus Buckingham and col-
leagues in his firm and the Gallup organization have
also developed an instrument that helps people assess
work-related skills and characteristics. They find that
such skills are difficult to train for but easier to hire for.
They have identified 34 strengths a leader should con-
sider when hiring an individual for a job—strengths that
have little to do with specific work experience or job
skill but a lot to do with the qualities it would take to
work well in a specific culture or with a certain kind of
customer. We list these strengths in Figure 3.3. (To take
their test, buy Now, Discover Your Strengths to obtain a
code for the online test.)
As a leader, you might invite employees to take either
(or both) of these tests as a way to quantify what comes
naturally to them. While self-assessments have a certain

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