The Blog of Gordon Pruitt the Pastor of St. Matthew's United Methodist Church in Richmond Virginia

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Leadership Summit 2, Marcus Buckingham

The last talk of day one was Marcus Buckingham. He was awesome. I've heard him before and he is a great communicator, great use of humor and great content. Buckingham's schtick is that we should focus more on strengths than on our weaknesses.

When asked the question, "which do you think will help you be most successful. Building on your strengths or fixing your weaknesses?" 41% of people said strengths, and 59% said weaknesses. Buckingham says there are 3 myths we need to blow up and 3 truths we need to replace them with.
Myth 1- As you grow, your personality changes
Truth 1- As you grow , you become more of who you already are.
Makes the point that most of the personality traits you have as a child you have when you grow up. We grow and mature but basic traits stay the same.

Myth 2- you grow the most in your areas where you are weakest,
Truth 2-Truth- you grow the most in your areas where you are strongest,
Gave example of Shaquille O'Neal and how instead of focusing on his bad free throws percteage the Lakers focused on his inside play. As a result he was scoring champ 3 times and won 3 championships and his free throw % improve in the process.

Myth 3-that a great team member puts aside their strengths
Truth 3– a great team member volunteers his strengths to the team most of the time.

There are 3 skills we need to maximize the use of our strengths.
1. Identify what your strengths are,
2. Change things to utilize your strengths
3. Talk about your strengths without bragging and your weaknesses without whining.

How does this affect the church? I believe many people in the church are not serving in their strengths areas. If they were they would be more joyful.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

best talk of the day by far. Good Summary