Organizations that use a strength-based strategy understand the value of maximizing their employees’ strengths. Building on strengths will ultimately benefit the company and its employees in the long run.
A strength-based approach to team development doesn’t necessarily entail ignoring weaknesses. You can and should work on your weaknesses as a team member. However, you’re likely to succeed in a role that complements your strengths. Plus, there’s no limit to how proficient you can be at something you are already competent at if you practice continuous learning.
For the strength-based strategy to be successful, it must be embedded in the company’s culture, mission, vision, values, and processes. The primary objective of all managers, supervisors, leaders, and team members should be to maximize one another’s strengths. Therefore, leaders will make most decisions based on their team’s strengths.
If you’re having difficulties with this, below is a guide to developing a strengths-based team.
Develop Shared Values
Your team’s shared values help ensure everyone is on the same page despite individual strengths and weaknesses. Shared values are the unifying principles that inspire a team to accomplish its objectives. They can also be seen as interpersonal principles that strengthen ties among team members.
Being part of a team means that you’ll have to work with other people towards the same goal. It’s not always easy for leaders to manage team members because people have different personalities, skills, and viewpoints. For this reason, team members can clash. However, successful teams tend to put their collective interests before individual interests. Consequently, shared values may prevent misunderstandings brought on by unreasonable expectations or individual differences by learning to appreciate and acknowledge each other’s talents and weaknesses.
Identify Your Team’s Strengths
The next step is for you to identify the individual strengths of your team members. As mentioned previously, all your employees are unique and will have different attributes. Since you’re taking the strength-based approach, you want to play to their strengths, not weaknesses.
However, identifying people’s strengths may take time. Therefore, you may need to conduct some team development assessments to determine the strengths of each team member. Assure the team that there are no better or worse ways to respond to the survey’s questions. Remember, competencies are only one aspect of strengths. Another part of an individual’s strengths is what drives them to accomplish their objectives. Nevertheless, knowing this information can help you to assign appropriate roles to team members.
Delegate Duties Based On Strengths
The role of a manager or team leader is to delegate tasks to your subordinates. You could use various criteria to determine how to delegate work to subordinates. But, if a strengths-based culture is in place, delegating tasks is easier because you make decisions based on your team’s strengths. Employees are likely to thrive doing jobs they’re good at instead of those they aren’t.
Know Your Strengths As The Leader
It’s said that if a blind shepherd leads the sheep, both will fall into a pit. It is also true for team leaders. Leaders must identify their strengths and weaknesses to lead with better clarity. This self-awareness enables leaders to be sympathetic toward others and encourages them to put their subordinates in positions where they can prosper.
When you’re self-aware of your strengths and weaknesses, you’ll be able to make better judgments and decisions. You’ll also be able to surround yourself with people who complement your strengths and weaknesses.
Assign Roles Based On Their Strengths
Once you’re clear on the individual competencies of your team members, you should assign them roles that best complement their strengths. For example, if someone is excellent at financial analysis, it may not be a good idea to put them in a marketing position. Instead, you could appoint the person as financial manager since it complements their strength.
Set Realistic Goals
If you want your team to succeed, you need to establish clear strength-based goals. It becomes easier to set strength-based goals when all your team members know their strengths and understand the team’s shared values. When setting up a team, the leader should ensure that each member’s unique strengths balance others’ weaknesses to create a well-rounded team. But it’s also equally important to set realistic goals. Setting unrealistic goals can certainly affect productivity and could lead to burnout.
Burnout is common when building high performance teams because they often push themselves hard, leading to chronic stress, which may be hard to detect. Ideally, people in your team should work and move together at a controlled pace so that others don’t get left behind. With such a dynamic, it’ll be easier to distribute the workload among team members.
Furthermore, there may be instances when you may need to encourage your employees to work harder to meet project deadlines. However, even though there are times when pushing your team members is justified, as the team’s leader, you must also take into account their mental and psychological well-being. Therefore, it becomes crucial that you set realistic goals for your team to prevent burnout.
Provide Development Opportunities
To effectively utilize your team member’s strengths, you must provide development opportunities. Your organization should provide employees with a challenging but positive work environment to develop their strengths. The more your team members build their skill sets, the more effective and motivated they’ll become. It could, in turn, help to reduce employee turnover.
Therefore, you should consider appraisal programs to help team members be more effective at what they do. Appraisal entails analyzing all internal programs and identifying areas that you can improve. It would also be ideal to conduct regular training and seminar workshops just so your team members can sharpen their skills and become better at what they do at work. These programs could also allow employees to manage their weaknesses and strengths effectively. Remember, investing in continuous learning and development for your employees is good for both them and your organization. So, your human resources team should endeavor to avail as many development opportunities as possible for your team.
Conclusion
There are many ways in which you could try to promote business growth. However, fostering a strengths-based culture is the ideal approach to unlocking people’s potential, strengthening employee loyalty, and developing future-proof agile teams. Creating a strength-based team allows you to get the best out of your employees. It can also be a great source of motivation because it gives employees a chance to shine at things they’re good at. Moreover, while the strength-based approach may not actively address people’s weaknesses, it does provide the opportunity to create the best outcomes for individuals, teams, and the company at large.
Casey Brandt is a business consultant based in Canada with twelve years of experience in the field of industrial psychology.
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