The Values-centered Leadership® model developed more than 25 years ago by the Secretan Center, describes the shift in values we must adopt if we wish to be inspiring leaders, One of those is a shift away from concentrating on our weaknesses so that we turn our energy and attention to building on our strengths. Researchers claim that during an average business meeting each idea introduced is met with nine criticisms. According to Dr. Marilyn L. Kourilsky, former dean for teacher education at UCLA’­s Graduate School of Education, 97% of U.S. kindergarten children think creatively, only 3% form their thoughts in a conforming, structured manner. By the time they complete high school, the balance has begun to shift 46% to think creatively while a more rigid, structured style is preferred by 54%. The process of losing our individuality, passion and creativity is completed in the workplace: by the time we are 30, a mere 3% enjoy the freedom of practicing holistic, original thought processes, while 97% of us subject all our thinking to a structure which screens for orthodoxy and social correctness of group-think. In other words, we begin our lives honoring the magic of questions but eventually, by overlooking questions and only being open to answers, we fall under a spell of spiritual impotence. We do not start out thinking like traditional managers it is something that we acquire. By criticizing, judging and jeering we suck the self-esteem from the souls of individuals and therefore organizations. When we get the financial statements, we immediately hunt for the red ink, the brackets, and the negative performance data. Too seldom, do we celebrate our strengths or study and perfect our successes. By mistakenly placing our faith in the Aristotelian notion that by attacking ideas we will strengthen them, we have perfected our mechanical skills of rational thinking and criticism. But imagine if every person and every organization devoted as much passion and time to building on their strengths: our souls would begin healing until we became awesome.

Psychologist, James Loehr, has helped to train, among others, tennis great, Martina Navratilova. Loehr has studied what the best tennis players do when they take a 20-second break between points during a match. Loehr discovered that mediocre players use that time to react to the previous point scolding themselves, after a missed point, for example. The best players, Loehr found, spend the time preparing for the next point, relaxing, energizing themselves, planning their strategy and tuning their minds.