From the course: A Strengths-Based Approach to Managing Your Team

Why you should manage your team using strengths

From the course: A Strengths-Based Approach to Managing Your Team

Start my 1-month free trial

Why you should manage your team using strengths

- I don't want to be considered a soft leader. That's an objection I hear a lot when I first talk to leaders about managing their teams using strengths, but managing with strengths does not mean you're soft. You can still focus on all the same metrics and goals you're using now. You're just giving your employees a more efficient and energizing way to get there. Your employees will naturally perform better when they do more of what they're already doing well because they're analyzing their wins and learning how to recreate them. There's nothing soft about a leader with a high performing and engaged team. Speaking of engagement, that's become a muddled concept because we've heard that word so much at this point. Engagement simply means an employee is performing their best work for the company and they're enjoying the process of getting there. As a manager, your number one job is to make sure your employees are engaged. But according to Gallup, only 33% of employees working at organizations in the United States are actively engaged in their work. And if you look at employees across the globe, that number goes down to 15%. The great news is Gallup also tells us that employees who are managed according to their strengths are six times as likely to be engaged in their work. So why aren't more managers trying this approach? One of the biggest struggles I hear from managers is that they just don't have the time to develop their employees. They want to help their employees grow, but between managing a team and getting their own work done, there just aren't enough hours in the day to have coaching conversations. But we're going to flip the script and have employees analyze for themselves what has made them successful in the past. Then, they can start to channel those habits and behaviors towards specific goals. This approach to talent development is energizing for employees and it gives you a lot of time back because you're not having to create and recreate individual coaching conversations. You're simply creating the space and the structure for employees to coach themselves. I conducted a team strengths meeting for one executive's direct reports recently. He found this approach so eye-opening that he requested individual workshops for every sub-team within his department. He told me, "Once my team members became aware of their strengths, "they started looking for ways to repeat them "when I wasn't even around." You don't need a strengths coach to manage your team using strengths. You can do it all by yourself. This will require some time and effort upfront, but once you've done the legwork, you'll find managing your team using strengths streamlines your talent development efforts and maximizes your team performance.

Contents