This doctoral dissertation reports a multiple case study through interviews of eight degreed child protection frontline team leaders working in United States public agencies. The research question asks their experiences with strengths-based leadership. Strengths-based approaches are valued in client-focused social work, positive psychology, and leadership coaching. Psychologists have long taken interest in child protection problems: decision-making, turnover, etc. Psychology in general, and workplace psychology more specifically, have not contributed much in the way of strengths-focused literature to the pressing social issues of child protection; nor have they significantly integrated the expertise of social workers. Strengths-based leadership was experienced by these participants as making respectful inquiry into strengths, listening and hearing with an open mind, and responding directly to what they learned with caring and goal support, which includes situational resources. A fourth theme was that experiencing leadership in that way brought workers' existing strengths to life and energized their work motivation and ability to continue working in child protection. The last finding points toward a need for further research to explore productive ways to integrate flexible, compassionate, strengths-based leadership with the well-developed theory and practice of goal-setting for solving persistent problems in child protection agencies. Further investigation is recommended to integrate meanings of strengths-based leadership in the workplace, as definitions at this point vary among and within business leadership, industrial-organizational psychology, coaching, and social work applications. Suggestions for future studies also include the possibility of integrating pragmatic social work theory with goal-setting theory for leaders in other complex organizations.