Leading with the Deliberative StrengthsFinder Talent

Deliberative StrengthsFinder TL;DR

The deliberative StrengthsFinder talent means you are a very intentional decision-maker. You take a careful, detailed and considered approach.  

Leaders with the deliberative strength are very risk focused. They are skilled at accessing situations but can struggle with focusing too much on trying to avoid mistakes.  

Using your deliberative strength, you can guide your team through unpredictable to decided.

If you’re already familiar with StrengthsFinder, you can skip over the next section.

How do you lead well with deliberative in your StrengthsFinder top 5?

So you’ve taken the StrengthsFinder assessment, received your results and found deliberative in the list. Now you’re wondering how to grow or leverage this strength in your leadership. 

I've borne the weight of considering all the angles when making large decisions. At those moments, I've learned to lean on my team members with a deliberative strength.

These are four strategies I’ve seen leaders with the deliberative strength use to make critical, timely decisions.

1. Name the possible risks.
2. Ask for time to consider.
3. Set a deadline.
4. Reduce the variables.

Name the possible risks.

When your team is facing a decision a simple but impactful contribution you can make is to help them name all the possible risks.

Many of these risks will seem obvious to you, but some will be entirely invisible to the team.

I really like using the note-and-vote technique here because it allows everyone time to reflect and contribute. The voting will also facilitate the prioritization of these risks.

Ask for time to consider.

Leaders with the deliberative strength hate making split decisions. It feels irresponsible and dangerous.

There certainly are moments when a decision must be made right now. But more often than not, it can wait an hour or even a day.

Don’t be afraid to ask for that time. You can say something like, “This decision is really important and I want it to be carefully considered, can we wait till [this afternoon, tomorrow morning]?

You need to set a deadline when you take time to deliberate.

During that time, you can either get away to think or facilitate a conversation with your team, or both.

The danger here is that you become frozen and keep wanting to delay until you reach certainty. This leads to the next strategy.

Set a deadline.

I’m sorry to say it. You won’t get to certainty. If you wait for certainty then you’ve missed the opportunity, and the decision is likely no longer viable. 

This pitfall is why you need to set a deadline when you take time to deliberate. 

Again, it can be an hour, a day, or a week. But the deadline needs to match the urgency of the decision. Let your team speak into this deadline. They will likely help balance your caution. 

Reduce the variables.

Even when you have time to make a decision, it’s easy to get stuck in analysis paralysis.

I see this often in everyday life when people need to buy a car or a home. It’s a significant decision, so they want to be cautious. But there are also so many variables to consider. 

These variables relate to different and competing values. As the number of variables to consider increases, the complexity of the decision increases exponentially. You'll feel it even more if analytical strength is in your top 5.

It can feel like you're running around in circles, and the decision because overwhelming and exhausting. 

This is another good opportunity to apply the note-and-vote technique. Have the team list the variables relevant to the decision. After grouping them together, vote on which variables will have the greatest impact.

After this, prioritize the list of variables and choose one to three to focus on.

Next steps for StrengthsFinder Deliberative.

As you learn to lead using your deliberative strength, you can guide your team through unpredictable to decided. 

No more taking unnecessary risks or making unnecessary mistakes. When you take a considered approach, you can avoid these traps and chart a course to success.

Leaders with the StrengthsFinder deliberative talent can struggle with an anti-pattern of being frozen as they wait forever for the all-clear. Learning the strengths antipatterns will allow you to continue growing as a healthy, intentional leader. 

You are on an extraordinary journey to living and leading from your strengths. You can explore the list below to learn about the rest of your top 5 strengths.