The Five Talents That Really Matter: How Great Leaders Drive Extraordinary Performance

by Barry Conchie, Sarah Dalton

Overview

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 complete BS. The Five Talents That Really Matter dispels the fluff in leadership literature, unveiling the traits and characteristics that truly determine high-performance leadership.
 
This book serves as a guide, stripping away misconceptions and providing a template against which career-driven managers and leaders can assess and develop their capabilities. The five evidence-based talent dimensions are:

• Setting Direction:  High-performing leaders guide their organizations through complex situations and articulate the value that so many employees find motivational and engaging.
• Building Energy:  Driven by a burning work ethic, Talented leaders set an exacting example. They measure progress, and recognize that the most Talented employees beneath them demand their greatest attention and support.
• Exerting Pressure:  Talented leaders assert a clear point of view and persuasively drive change and improvement, never settling for average outcomes.
• Increasing Connectivity:  Outstanding leaders prioritize people, establishing effective followership through purposeful and ethical behavior, and demonstrating care and concern for those they lead.
• Controlling Traffic: High performing leaders understand their organizations, driving superior performance by establishing protocols and guardrails while showing agility and flexibility when circumstances change.

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306833427
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	08/27/2024
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Barry Conchie is Founder & President of Conchie Associates. Previously he headed the Gallup organization’s Global Leadership Research and Development business and served until 2013 as a Senior Scientist. He is the NYT and WSJ best-selling co-author of Strengths-Based Leadership. His work for Gallup began in London where he developed their leadership consulting business across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, before moving to Washington, DC to assume global responsibilities in 2002. Barry’s current research is in the science of decision making, heuristics and cognitive bias. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
 
Sarah Dalton is a Partner at Conchie & Associates. She is certified in conducting executive level talent assessments and regularly advises leaders on the dominant ways in which they can achieve success while raising critical questions to help them become more effective. Originally from San Francisco, California, she is currently based in Denver, Colorado.
 
 

Editorial Reviews

06/10/2024

This competent manual from Conchie (coauthor of Strengths-Based Leadership) and Dalton—president and partner, respectively, at the management consulting firm Conchie Associates—details how executives and managers can improve their leadership skills. To determine the characteristics of good leaders, the authors collected data on 100 executives, identified what qualities they shared, and then verified the correlation between those qualities and effective leadership by comparing survey results from a different pool of executives with their performance reports. The authors found that the best leaders set goals, push for improvement, maintain flexibility in the face of setbacks, and cultivate meaningful relationships with direct reports while fostering their talents. When deciding what goals to pursue, the authors recommend that leaders consider how to make “the greatest progress with the least effort and most optimized cost.” To maintain good relationships with employees, Conchie and Dalton contend that executives should be “constantly curious” about others and on the lookout for “pockets of negativity” that might “require careful engagement” (though what such engagement would look like goes unexplored). The authors’ data-driven approach distinguishes this from more typical business manuals, though the guidance tends to be overly broad, if sensible. This is worth a look. Agent: Leah Spiro, Riverside Creative Management. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

The Five Talents is one of the sharpest and most practical books on leadership I have read! If you lead others, you need to read this book. If you hire or develop leaders, read this book and use it as a daily guide. It is a roadmap for developing sustainable and high performing teams.”—Tom Rath, New York Times Best-selling Author on Wellbeing and Organizational Leadership

“A game changer for CHRO’s attempting to drive performance focused on the definition and assessment of the most critical leadership talents. Data-driven and with actionable insights, this book addresses topics as important as succession planning, DEI, and leadership selection with strong, research-based authority.”—Ali Bebo, CHRO of Pearson

“This is a wise book that will change how serious people think about leadership.  Conchie and Dalton bring refreshing clarity to a complex and convoluted field by elucidating the tortuous relationship between individual traits and organizational context.  Their secret—meticulous science.”—Don Ronchi PhD, Senior Advisor at White Wolf Capital

“I highly recommend this book, which will challenge and broaden your thinking of leadership.  It is blunt, fact-based and provides piercing insights that I will incorporate into my own leadership journey.”—Kevin Lobo, Chair and CEO of Stryker

“I loved reading this. It made me think deeply about people and strategy decisions I made in my career and how they could have been improved or, in some cases, how spot on they were. If you allow yourself to absorb the lessons in this book, there is no hiding from the truth and what is the right thing to do.” —George Borst, Retired President and CEO of Toyota Financial Services

“The Five Talents is a practical unlock around the dominant strengths that define truly standout leadership and takes this framework to how you can recruit for the five key talents using the same rigor you would use to make other critical decisions.  It’s a highly efficient and well-researched work that will take your impact as a leader to a new level.”
 —John Clendening, Founder and CEO of Earned Wealth

“Conchie significantly advances the science of leadership prediction and performance development.”—Connie Rath, President of The Clifton Foundation

From the Publisher