Imagine this: you are on fire with a dream! It keeps you up at night. You are excited, on a mission, and you have over 12,000 people around the world joining your rallying cry. You’re alive with it, and the burn inside you fills every single day with high energy, enthusiasm, and the highest productivity and performance you’ve ever had in your entire lifetime. Not to mention, that you are surrounded by the most brilliant team you’ve ever worked with, and the most fulfilling relationships you’ve ever known.
Now, consider also that included in that dream is this amazing book you’ve been writing, so that people everywhere can be benefited by the joy you have found in studying, researching, and learning truths about how to ignite and release strengths to change the entire human experience. You have spent four years and over 2,000 hours writing this book and another three years researching it. You are especially excited about it because it brings to light over two dozen new ideas that almost no one has ever heard before, complete with new models, and transformative translation of the ideas back to the real life of those who have experienced it.
In fact, two publishers fought over the right to publish it, including the top-rated publisher of all leadership books. You also have hair-raising stories to tell, like the story of your son, who survived a bear attack and overcame all fear through understanding and applying his strengths, or a saved suicide attempt that leveraged an understanding of how strengths don’t just inform contributions, but also needs connected to them. Imagine that a few thousand people have read the first chapter, followed enthusiastically the tiny morsels and tidbits that show up on social media about it.
Then the day finally arrives and your manuscript is finally done. You are ecstatic! It is time to share what you’ve written and release it to the world, so they might benefit from it. But, this completion also happens to coincide with the revelation that comes from your strategy and research teams: you’ve written the wrong book!
The data was in: over 10,000 individuals had participated in quantitative and qualitative research. Over 200 of the best-selling books in business, psychology, leadership, and self-help had been analyzed. The top marketing reports had been assessed for the past five years, and over 1,000 practitioner articles were all telling you the same thing. All of them pointed to a handful of patterns that showed up over and over again, and your business and book reflected only one-third of a critical 3-part solution. You had part of the story right – but there was more.
What do you do?
This was the dilemma we faced as we came to the end of writing “Unlocking Strengths – Accelerating Performance, Energy, and Relationships.” We had a good book. It had some great stories and very compelling ideas, but when we realized that it did not match the business model that evolved out of the research, we realized we needed to release a different book first, one that could tell the story of how the seven most common pain points in the world could be released through shifting how well you, “clearly see and effectively optimize the value, capabilities, and positive untapped potential of self and others.”
This is the definition of an emerging science and ideology known as People Acuity™, and according to Top 50 Global Leadership Coach, Steve Jeffs, it may be “the most important personal, interpersonal, and leadership competency of the 21st century, since it leads to every other competency.” It is also all the root and core of the problems that plague most individuals and organizations, including things like: leadership (of self or others), enthusiastic engagement (at your job or in life), or teamwork/relationship dysfunction, often resulting from diversity or irreconcilable differences; and, add to this productivity and performance, and energy and well-being and you have the things that trip most people up at work and in life.
People Acuity is also the title of the new book that is emerging right now, some of it out of the previous manuscript. Precisely, it will be called: People Acuity: Revolutionizing Results and Relationships, since creating life-altering transformation of results and relationships is exactly what People Acuity does. It is being written (or re-written!) to help you to:
- Respond wisely to these most common challenges of our day.
- Feel grounded in your own inherent value; and to thus, be better able to add value to others and the situations you are in, and be more likely to create relationships and situations where you feel valued.
- Live on purpose, including aligning your responses around three critical levels of purpose: first, your impact on others (relational impact); second, your specific role/work purpose (a more task-oriented impact), and third, wisely-discerned situational purposes, including seeing how to align others toward engaging with you toward them.
- Empowering yourself and others to navigate the ever-changing complex situations you face every day in a more grounded way, with higher energy and performance, and to respond in ways that lead to repeated outstanding results and relationships.
If you had previously downloaded the first chapter of Unlocking Strengths, and liked it, you won’t want to miss out on the chance to check out the first chapter of People Acuity. You can get it here: http://peopleacuity.wpengine.com/people-acuity-advantage/.
NOTE: this article was written by DeAnna Murphy, Lisa Gregory, and Steve Jeffs, the People Acuity thought leader team.
DeAnna Murphy, a 23-year organizational development veteran and CEO of People Acuity, has led the 7-year research process with the People Acuity Analytics team. It has involved over 10,000 individuals around the globe participating in original qualitative and quantitative research, exploration of over 1,000 academic and practitioner articles, top-rated marketing reports, and analysis of 200 of the best-selling books in leadership, self-help, business, and psychology. People Acuity, an affiliate of Strengths Strategy, is in 31 countries, and includes over 300 practitioners across the globe.
Lisa Gregory is a thought leader and Manager of Product Development and Delivery at People Acuity. With 17 years of business experience as a trainer, coach, advisor, entrepreneur and corporate leader, Lisa has extensive experience in learning and development, at both strategic and implementation levels. She has worked with leaders in 80 percent of the Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies and has broad and deep knowledge of the challenges facing top executives, employees, and managers as they strive to bring their best to an organization and to their own lives.
Steve Jeffs is the Chief Scientist, Senior Faculty and is co-leading the international expansion of People Acuity. Integral to the People Acuity Analytics team, Steve recently presented the validation of our Foundations of Interdependent Teams Scale at the World Congress of Positive Psychology. He is a registered Psychologist, multi-award winning Executive Coach, energetic facilitator and scientist. Fascinated by interdependence and synergy, Steve is completing his Doctorate in this field, and applies this learning, consulting with organizations and in Executive Coaching with Senior Organizational Leaders around the world. Steve lives in Dubai, UAE, and operates globally.