The Psychology of Strengths
A team members strengths, their natural way of thinking, feeling, or behaving are their own, innate natural talents, the things they are just good at. Strengths are one of the things that make us unique. Unlike skills, strengths are not learned (although training may be used to enhance them). Team member strengths provide the ability to deliver consistent, near-perfect performance in a specific task, simply by using talents. Strengths when multiplied by the investment in time spent practicing and developing them, result in a personal and unique knowledge base.
A team's awareness of their mutual strengths is more important than the specific composition of those strengths. In other words – a team member just knowing their strengths, as well as the strengths of the other team members, leads to higher engagement and performance. When team members value each other's strengths, they more effectively relate to one another and avoid potential conflicts. Understanding each other’s strengths, boosts group cohesion and creates positive dialogue. When you have people in roles that fit their strengths and talents, their energy and passion can fuel their own great performance and inspire the same from their colleagues. Team members who know and use their strengths are better performers; they require little if any external motivation. Once each team member's strengths are aimed at the same purpose and the team is aligned on the same goals, this is where true excellence and success happens.
Team members must be able to:
· Name and understand the individual strengths of everyone on the team.
· See a clear connection between each other's strengths and behaviour, see the link between strengths and success.
· Form partnerships that encourage their mutual strengths development.
· Use their knowledge of each other's strengths to plan, strategize, analyse, and direct their actions.
· Understand that excellence is not achieved in isolation. Excellence is created through the merging of team member differing strengths.
· Encourage collaboration among team members who have complementary strengths.
In one study of 65,672 employees, Gallup found that those who received strengths feedback had turnover rates that were 14.9% lower than for employees who received no feedback (controlling for job type and tenure). A study of 530 work units with productivity data found that teams with managers who received strengths feedback showed 12.5% greater productivity post-intervention than teams with managers who received no feedback. And in a study of 469 business units ranging from retail stores to large manufacturing facilities, Gallup found that units with managers who received strengths feedback showed 8.9% greater profitability post-intervention relative to units in which the manager received no feedback.
Strengths examples:
Accurate, Ambitious, Compassionate, Creative, Communicative, Analytical, Determined, Enthusiastic, Knowledgeable, Perseverant, Strategic, Action-oriented, Gusto, Alacrity, Planning, Scheduling, Leading, Curious, Focussed, Persuasive, Decisive, Presenter, Sales and Problem Solving.
Download a Team Member Strengths Questionnaire
Individual Strengths equals individual Uniqueness
Identifying and capitalizing on each person’s strengths identifies their individual uniqueness. Capitalizing on uniqueness makes each person more accountable and builds a stronger sense of team because it creates interdependency. It helps people appreciate one another’s’ particular strengths, skills and learn that their co-workers can fill in where they are lacking. In short, it makes people need one another. When you capitalize on a team members uniqueness you introduce a healthy degree of disruption as this in turn causes a shuffling of hierarchies, a change in existing assumptions about who is allowed to do what and a change of existing beliefs about where each person’s true expertise lies.
It ordinarily takes time and effort to gain a full appreciation of a team members strengths. A great manager spends a good deal of time outside of their office just walking around, (MBWA- Management by Walking Around) watching each person’s reactions to events, listening, and taking mental notes about what each team member is drawn to and what each team member struggles with. There’s no substitute for this kind of observation, but you can obtain a lot of information about a person by asking a few simple, open-ended questions and listening carefully to the answers. For example, the question I use is “What are your top 3 issues?”.
Self-Assurance, Strengths, and Weaknesses
Research by Albert Bandura, the father of social learning theory, has shown that self-assurance is the strongest predictor of a person’s ability to set high goals, to persist in the face of obstacles, to bounce back when reversals occur, and, ultimately, to achieve the goals they set.
Focussing on strengths reinforces self-assurance. When a person succeeds, telling them that they succeeded because they are good at deploying their specific strengths, reinforces a team members self-assurance making them more optimistic and more resilient in the face of future challenges. And what if the employee fails? Assuming the failure is not attributable to factors beyond control, always explain failure as a lack of effort, even if this is only partially accurate. This will obscure self-doubt and give a team member something to work on as they face up to the next challenge.
Repeated failure, of course, may indicate weakness where a role requires strength. In such cases, there are four approaches for overcoming weaknesses. If the problem amounts to a lack of skill or knowledge, offer the relevant training, allow some time for the team member to incorporate the new skills, and look for signs of improvement. If performance doesn’t get better, the reason is because they are missing certain talents (strengths), a deficit no amount of skill or knowledge training will fix. This gives insight into how to best manage the team member.
The role of Recognition
A person’s strengths aren’t always on display. Sometimes they require a precise trigger to turn them on. Squeeze the right trigger, and a person will push himself harder and persevere in the face of resistance. Squeeze the wrong one, and the person may well shut down.
The most powerful trigger is Recognition. Great managers refine and extend this insight. They realize that each team member plays to a slightly different audience. To excel as a manager, you must be able to match the team member to the audience they value the most. One audience might be peers; the best way to praise them would be to publicly celebrate an achievement. Another audience might be you; the most powerful recognition would be a one-on-one conversation where you tell the team member quietly but vividly why they are such a valuable member of the team. Another team member might see the best form of recognition as some type of professional or technical award. Yet another might value feedback only from customers.
Conclusion
A manager’s most precious use of time is learning exactly how each team member is different and then to figure out how best to incorporate their idiosyncrasies into an overall team plan. Great managers don’t try to change a person’s style, they know that their team members will differ in how they think, how they feel, how they behave, how patient they are, how much of an expert they need to be, how prepared they need to feel, what drives them, what challenges them, and what their goals are.