SOAR

AliSalmanAAlhejab.pdf

Helping Individuals and Teams

Build Capacity from a

SOAR-based Perspective

Note: Your SOAR Profile Results contains an abbreviated version of the SOAR Profile Guide to help you interpret and understand

your results. Please refer to the SOAR Profile Guide for in-depth and detailed descriptions of the topics addressed in this report.

SOAR Profile Results for: Ali Salman A Alhejab

HRM3023 Fall2019

Your Name:

Event/Sponsor/Referral:

November 10, 2019Profile Completion Date:

What is Capacity?

What is Strategic Thinking (ST)?

What is Strategic Planning (SP)?

What is SOAR?

Strengths:

Opportunities:

Aspirations:

Results:

Introduction

SOAR is best known as a profoundly positive approach to strategic thinking and planning that allows

an organization to construct its future through collaboration, shared understanding, and a

commitment to action. 5 This approach is represented by the acronym SOAR, which invites you to

approach a series of strategic conversations based on:

The capabilities to do something well. What can you build on?

The innovations to achieve strategic goals. What are stakeholders asking for?

The achieveable outcomes. What are indicators to know we are succeeding?

Today’s challenging business and economic climate makes it necessary to create strategic thinkers and

build teams that perform well together and deliver results. Traditional ways of thinking about

strategy may limit one’s ability to effectively address and adapt to the ever-changing conditions and

turbulent environment in which organizations exist today. 1 A McKinsey Quarterly study of 1,300

global executives echoes this sentiment. Their research found that the highest performing

organizations had a clear purpose, an understanding of strengths , shared aspirations , and leaders who

knew how to unleash ideas (opportunities ) with a result -driven process. 2

The SOAR Profile is a rapid assessment instrument to help you understand and learn about your

natural capacity for strategic thinking, planning, and leading that can improve individual and team

performance. The SOAR Profile is developed from the theory and empirical research on SOAR. SOAR

stands for: Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results.

“Strategic thinking is an innovative, creative, and right-brained process that encourages an open

exchange of ideas and solutions to meet the dynamic, often unpredictable challenges faced in today’s

economy”. 3 Strategic thinking involves both a disciplined focus on the desired outcomes of the

organization, and leveraging relationships among strategic elements to achieve these outcomes.

Strategic thinking identifies organizational purpose and goals, builds relationships to drive the

organization towards its purpose and goals, and identifies leverage points for organizational change.

The strong desires to achieve strategic goals. What do we care deeply about?

Strategic planning "maps out where a company is headed, establishes strategic and financial targets,

and outlines the competitive approaches" applied in achieving results. 4 A strategic plan includes the

organization's values, vision, mission, objectives, internal and external assessment of its environment,

strategy, and implementation (action plan and resources to allocate).

Capacity is the ability or potential to mobilize resources and create action to achieve objectives. It

provides all that is necessary to construct relationships and develop capabilities needed to achieve an

organization's vision, mission, goals, and strategy.

How Can SOAR Help You?

How Can the SOAR Profile Help You?

1 Selsky, J., Goes, J., & Baburoglu, O. (2007). Organization Studies , 28 (1), 71-94.

2 Isern, J., & Pung, C. (2007). The McKinsey Quarterly, 4 , 1-12.

3 Haycock, K., Cheadle, A., & Bluestone, K. S. (2012). Library Leadership & Management, 26 (3/4), 1-23.

4 Collins, D., & Rukstad, M. (2008). Harvard Business Review, 86 (4), 82-90.

5 Stavros, J. & Hinrichs, G. (2009). Thin Book of SOAR , p.2, Bend, OR: Thin Book Publishing.

6 Cameron, K. (2013). Practicing Positive Leadership , pp.2-3, San Francisco, CA: Berrett Koehler.

7 Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity. New York: Crown Publishers.

8 Dewitt, J., Covey, S., & Merrill, R. (1998). The Nature of Leadership , Franklin Covey Publishers. For more

information on Dewitt Jones research and videos, visit http://www.dewittjones.com

1) identifying and building strengths

2) creating innovations in the form of opportunities

3) encouraging individuals and teams to identify and share aspirations

4) determining results to know you are succeeding

References

What the Research Shows

Research confirms what you may know intuitively: that positive emotions resulting from a focus

on strengths and opportunities promote successful individual and team performance in

organizations. Empirical research by positive organizational scholars confirms that positive

practices and leadership improve organizational performance and individual physiological

health and well-being. 6 The research supports that high performing teams are more positive in

nature, ask appreciative questions, and are more outward-focused in order to help others. 7 These

are the attributes of SOAR.

SOAR is a way to help you learn how to have a more strengths-based and opportunity-focused

inquiry on the aspirations and the results desired for the team. A SOAR-based perspective

includes relevant stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, etc. In his research

on principle-centered leadership, and his two award-winning videos, Celebrate What’s Right with

the World and Focus Your Vision , Dewitt Jones advocates using a positive mindset to deal with

change. Dewitt says “connect with a vision that opens us to possibilities and gives us the

courage to soar!” 8 This reaffirms the attributes of the SOAR Profile .

We have found SOAR to be a useful framework for creating strategies and implementing

strategic directions and leadership for teams and organizations. Our intention is to have you use

the SOAR Profile to help you improve individual and team performance by developing your

capacity for strategic thinking, planning, and leading based on the following capabilities:

strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results.

By understanding your SOAR capacity and SOAR capabilities you will know if you are naturally

best at strategic thinking, planning, and leading based on:

What the SOAR Profile Tells You about Your AI Perspective

SOAR and the SOAR Profile leverage the foundation of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to build capacity

for strategic thinking, planning, and leading. AI is a positive philosophy with an organizational

change approach (the 4-D Cycle of Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny) that builds on the

strengths of the organization and seeks to understand the whole system by including the voices of

relevant stakeholders and accessing solution-oriented perspectives. The whole system approach

tries to understand the integration and dynamics of the many relationships and interactions

among people in the organization and even stakeholders in the external environment. The whole

system approach helps stakeholders understand and appreciate at a high level how the system

works and where their unique contribution makes a difference. AI is also a method of dialogue

that reframes traditional managerial problem solving, such as, an organization is a problem to be

solved, into, an organization is a solution to be embraced. AI assumes every organization has

something that works well, and these organizational strengths provide the starting point for

collaborative relationships, generative conversations, and open communication to create positive

change through shared dialogue.

Your AI perspective scores shown in Figure 1 indicate that your AI-based mindset is beginning to

be naturally inclined for a solution-oriented approach. You are encouraged to develop your AI-

mindset so that you see the whole system and approach stakeholder needs through solutions,

collaborative relationships, generative conversations, and open dialogue in your team or

organization.

5 4

Collaborative

Relationships

Generative Questions

Open Communication

Positive FramingSolutions

Stakeholder Needs

Whole System

Figure 1

What the SOAR Profile Tells You about Your SOAR Capacity

Empirical evidence shows that when positive factors are given more attention, individuals and

teams tend to flourish. In building a high performance team and organization, each member of

the team can contribute to the organization’s success by understanding where their natural

SOAR-based capacity lies. Some people naturally think from a strengths-based perspective by

focusing on the talents, skill sets, and competencies they do well. Some people naturally identify

and create innovations for stakeholders. Some people have strong desires that are aspirational

towards achieving goals. Finally, there are other people who are good at completing tasks,

achieving outcomes, and obtaining results to implement new solutions. As shown in Figure 2,

your SOAR capacity scores suggest the following:

Your Strengths score is 6 or higher. You are naturally paying attention to Strengths.

Continue to identify and build strengths in yourself and others.

Your Opportunities score is 6 or higher. You are naturally paying attention to Oppor-

tunities. Continue to create innovations in the form of opportunities in yourself & others.

Your Aspirations score is 6 or higher. You are naturally paying attention to Aspirations.

Continue to actively focus on aspirations and sharing them with others.

Your Results score is less than 6. Work to naturally pay atttention to Results by determining

results to know if you are succeeding.

Strengths

Opportunities

Aspirations

Results

Figure 2

You are beginning to understand the

importance of achieving results that

reinforce and/or activate the motivations,

resources, and commitments of yourself

and others to achieve the desired outcomes.

What the SOAR Profile Tells You about Your SOAR Capabilities

On a ten-point scale (1 = low and 10 = high), your SOAR capabilities scores indicate the following:

You are beginning to understand the

importance of inquiry into the strengths of

the system and how to leverage capabilities

to develop and achieve goals and

objectives.

You are beginning to identify how ideas

and innovations create new opportunities

that achieve results. Continue to remain

open to hearing new possibilities within a

favorable activity of exchange.

You are beginning to understand the

importance of the voices of stakeholders

and what people care deeply about

(aspirations) to achieve desired results; this

allows you to focus on the values, vision

(future direction), and the mission (present

purpose).

Strengths

AssetsCapabilities

Opportunities

IdeasPossibilities

5 1

Aspirations

DesiresValues

Figure 3c

Results

Completed

tasks Outcomes

Figure 3d

Figure 3a

Figure 3b

What the SOAR Profile Tells You about Your

Strategic Planning

Inclusiveness of Strategic Elements

The concept of capacity building supports all the elements of SOAR by conceptualizing strategy

that allows an organization to build the internal relational components of the organization so it

can better use its resources (i.e., people, time, and money) to achieve its mission, attain its vision

and goals/objectives, and sustain these over time.

In evaluating your strategic elements scores shown in Fugure 4, you focus on leading with key

SOAR-based strategic elements scored 6 or higher. These elements should be included in your

strategic thinking and planning process. Over time, you want to use all 9 of these strategic

elements to create organizational resilience.

What the SOAR Profile Tells You about Your Natural Approach to Strategy

Strategic Thinking and Strategic Planning are distinct but interrelated, and both are necessary for

effective strategic management. Your score suggests your natural tendency for strategic thinking

and planning is geared more towards strategic planning than strategic thinking. Strategic planning

is about analysis while strategic thinking is about synthesis. Strategic planning in this case means

breaking down a goal into steps, designing how the steps may be implemented, and estimating

Dynamic Capabilities

External Environment

Mission (Purpose)

Organization's Value

Set

Positive ChangeStrategic Inititatives

Strategic Position

Trust Building

Vision (Future)

Strategic Thinking You

Figure 4