Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence

Rhiannon Gallagher • July 14, 2023
a woman at a counter with a boiler full of goat's milk and various cheesemaking ingredients.

AKA Missing my mom

It’s Tour De France time, which means I miss my mom a little more this month. She watched every second of Tour coverage. She loved the breakaways, the sprint finishes, the teamwork and the strategy. But she also loved the chateaux and the cathedrals and the beautiful countryside. She died before I started diving into Positive Psychology and VIA Character Strengths, but I know I got this strength from her.


Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence is my top VIA Character Strength. It is defined as “responsive to these three types of goodness: physical beauty, skill or talent (excellence), or virtue/moral beauty.” It explains why I love watching sports or arts performances, participating in meaningful volunteer activities, and reveling in a good view. It also explains why I love talking with people about what they enjoy in their work, what they're good at, and what they're proud of. Those conversations help me frame organizational changes in ways that celebrate team members instead of detracting from them.


VIA Character Strengths have been around for more than 20 years. There are 24 strengths organized into six virtues. ‘Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence’ is in the most slippery of the virtues: Transcendence. Transcendence is about meaning-finding and connection to the universe. Other strengths in this virtue are gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality. There’s a free test you can take to find yours. Link in the comments. And, like me, you probably won’t be too surprised by your top strengths. You live them, breathe them, and celebrate them every day, whether you know it or not.


We use VIA Strengths in our cross-functional leadership activities as a foundation for both personal and team missions. Too often, missions, visions, and 'values' are based on intangibles: the founders' values, the organization's traditions, or (most often) a few trendy and ambiguous words that seem like they’ll sound good to clients and potential employees.


Instead, we base our missions on strengths. What makes us unique and valued as individuals? What strengths do we have in common as a team? What are we building this work from and with? How can we ensure that our 'values' center the strengths of our team members? This is a different and powerful way to weave our mission and vision. We go forth into the hard stuff celebrating who we are and what we are each bringing to the table.


One of my mom’s favorite things about bike racing was the multiple ways to win. You can be the first on a given day, best at climbing mountains, great at sprint finishes, or most aggressive in the breakaway. You can be a great domestique, always there for your leaders. There is room for all sorts of different strengths in this sport.



And there should also be room for all sorts of different strengths in our teams. Our strengths give us unique perspectives, passions, and insights that help us achieve more and innovate more.

Cognitive Bias

By Rhiannon Gallagher • August 25, 2023
Notice and activate the team

Make 'In-Person' Meaningful

By Rhiannon Gallagher • August 12, 2023
Because it's respectful

Zest. A Strength to Explore

By Rhiannon Gallagher • July 18, 2023
A tribute to walkers

If Murray Isn't Happy, No One Is Happy: Value Your Social Nodes

By Rhiannon Gallagher • June 16, 2023
Murray wasn't happy. He was sure this new initiative would fail, just like all the others. 'I've been here for 31 years,' he'd say. 'They almost always fail.' But Murray was a planner, coordinating schedules and materials for teams across the entire organization. He talked to almost everyone, and he talked a lot. We had to get him on our side. Digital transformations succeed or fail for many reasons, big and small. Most of those reasons are people-related. But sometimes the reason is a person. One person. Or just a few people. People who, if you looked at them on a hierarchical chart, wouldn’t seem to have a bunch of power. But WOW, they have a lot of influence. We call these folks social nodes, and few actions will support your transformation success more than finding them, knowing them, honoring them, and getting them on the side of change. On factory floors, sometimes, they are social nodes because their role is so far-reaching. Planners, tooling designers, and in-process inspectors who talk to everyone and know everything are often social nodes. Union officers may be social nodes as well. But they could also be social nodes because they are simply people who connect well. The person who organized the chili cookoff or the person who always seems to be chatting in the breakroom. The person who reads all the company newsletters and emails and knows what’s happening outside the day-to-day. Social nodes often have strong opinions. They are loyal on multiple levels, but they’ve often been around for a few ‘transformations’ and can rattle off what went wrong in every one of them. Once we know who they are, we can build communication to support them. In various projects, I’ve given them special briefings, created a place in the project updates that comes from them, given them access to early information they could disseminate, or checked in with them regularly to learn how implementations are going. For Murray, we created a special column in the project newsletter called 'Murray's Musings' and recorded and transcribed a little interview every month. We asked about the problems with the old processes and checked in on new ones. We asked about his history with the company. We let him know that everyone, including the C-Level folks, was getting the newsletter and reading his words. Murray is retired now, but his stories are recorded as company history. And the initiative succeeded, partly because we recognized Murray as a social node and got him on board.