Your Harmony Talent: The Power of Consensus

On this Theme Thursday Season 3 webcast, Jim Collison, Gallup's Director of Talent Sourcing, and Maika Leibbrandt, Senior Workplace Consultant, talk about Harmony with guest Ed Baklor.

You look for areas of agreement. In your view, there is little to be gained from conflict and friction, so you seek to hold these to a minimum. When you know that the people around you hold differing views, you try to find the common ground. You try to steer them away from confrontation and toward harmony. In fact, harmony is one of your guiding values. You can't quite believe how much time is wasted by people trying to impose their views on others. Wouldn't we all be more productive if we kept our opinions in check and instead looked for consensus and support? You believe we would, and you live by that belief.

When others are sounding off about their goals, their claims and their fervently held opinions, you hold your peace. When others strike out in a direction, you will, in the service of harmony, willingly modify your own objectives to merge with theirs (as long as their basic values do not clash with yours). When others start to argue about their pet theory or concept, you steer clear of the debate, preferring to talk about practical, down-to-earth matters on which you can all agree. In your view, we are all in the same boat, and we need this boat to get where we are going. It is a good boat. There is no need to rock it just to show that you can.

As an individual, Harmony is about finding the most peaceful way forward; as a leader, it is about creating the most peaceful way forward. Leaders with dominant Relationship Building themes have the ability to build strong relationships that can hold a team together and make the team greater than the sum of its parts.

As a leader with Harmony, you provide peace and calm for others. And not just as a means to an end, but as a way of leading. "Peace is not nearly a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You help people buy in to collaboration. Harmony is a theme that will help you mediate and help you help others be heard. As a leader, you have your own opinion and voice, and you will get those heard by collaborating with other people. A couple of good questions to ask as a leader with Harmony: What style of collaboration do you have? Do you find your best way forward after you've a group meeting or from one-on-one meetings? Are there situations or relationships in which consensus is more clear to you? And how can you spend more time in that area?

As a leader, you can help people connect the power of consensus to bigger goals. What does Harmony drive forward for you? Consensus might get you closer to your accomplishment -- closer to winning.

Ed Baklor's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Positivity, Relator, Responsibility, Arranger and Discipline.