Strengths-based leadership September 11, 2018

What is strengths-based leadership? Strengths-based leadership is a method to maximize efficiency, productivity, and success by focusing on and continuously developing the strengths of organizational resources, including people. The underlying belief is that people have several times more potential for growth building on their strengths rather than fixing their weaknesses.

What is strengths-based leadership? A strength is the ability to exhibit near-perfect performance consistently in a given activity. A strengths-based approach to leadership doesn’t ignore weaknesses—it focuses on building talents and minimizing the negative effects of weaknesses. In other words, strengths-bases leaders don’t try to “fix” their employees. Instead, they focus on their strengths and their passions.

Remember Your Role as a Manager… “Management is the opportunity to help people become better people. Practiced that way, it’s a magnificent profession.” “People leave jobs, and it’s up to managers to design jobs that are too good to leave.”

How do you identify strengths? Strategic Thinking: How do you absorb, think about and analyze information and situations? Executing: How do you make things happen? Influencing: How do you influence others? Relationship Building: How do you build and nurture strong relationships?

Strengths Finder Examples Strategic Thinking Context: People enjoy thinking about the past. They understand the present by researching its history. Futuristic: People are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future. Executing Achiever: People have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive. Focus: People can take a direction, follow through, and make the corrections necessary to stay on track. They prioritize, then act.

Strengths Finder Examples Influencing Competition: People measure their progress against the performance of others. They strive to win first place and revel in contests. Woo: People love the challenge of meeting new people and winning them over. They derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection with another person. Relationship Building Includer: People are accepting of others. They show awareness of those who feel left out, and make an effort to include them. Harmony: People look for consensus. They don’t enjoy conflict; rather, they seek areas of agreement.

How do you identify strengths for free? Ask yourself and your team member… What does a given person do better than anyone else? What unique capabilities and resources does the person possess? What do others perceive as the person’s strengths? What unique personal resources can the person access? Which of the person’s achievements are he or she most proud? What are the compliments that the person most often receives? http://blog.readytomanage.com/strengths-based-leadership-development-does-it-work/ https://www.score.org/blog/how-strengths-based-culture-can-make-your-small-business-stronger

How do you identify strengths for free? Once you know your employees’ strengths, use them to match employees to the best tasks and projects. Identify ways to deploy a person’s strengths more often and in ways that compensate for any weaknesses or less developed skills that the person may have.

Strengths vs. Weaknesses Appreciating a person’s weaknesses is just as important as understanding strengths; we need to understand what our weaknesses are, how they impact us and whether or not they are holding us back. What tasks does the person dislike or avoid because he or she may lack confidence? What do others perceive as the person’s weaknesses? What are the person’s less impressive work habits? Where does the person show most resistance? What style / personality traits may hold the person back? How does the person get in his/her own way? http://blog.readytomanage.com/strengths-based-leadership-development-does-it-work/

Which strengths make the best leaders? The most effective leaders are not well-rounded at all, but instead are acutely aware of their strengths and use them to their best advantage. "What great leaders have in common is that each truly knows his or her strengths -- and can call on the right strength at the right time. This explains why there is no definitive list of characteristics that describes all leaders." -- Donald O. Clifton

Benefits of strengths-based leadership Improved employee engagement. Focusing on strengths increases team member engagement. If a manager primarily focuses on an employee’s weaknesses, the likelihood that employee will be actively disengaged is 22%. Increased productivity and retention. Employees who say they use their strengths every day are 8% more productive and 15% less likely to quit their jobs; among employees who received strengths feedback, turnover rates were 15% lower than for those who did not. More effective and diverse hiring. You can use strengths-based leadership to develop your team by hiring people based on their individual strengths, not because their skills and interests align with your own. Improved delegation and teamwork. Working with experts in areas where you are less experienced is a sign of strength. You accept others' expertise, focus on what you do best, and promote effective delegation.   https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/124214/driving-engagement-focusing-strengths.aspx https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236177/strengths-based-cultures-vital-future-work.aspx

Pitfalls of the Strengths-based Approach

There’s no evidence that it works. Absence of evidence does not necessarily imply evidence of absence. But there’s no scientific proof that this approach works. For instance, meta-analytic evidence shows that negative feedback and lower self-estimates of ability do improve performance. High-performing leaders tend to get better by developing new strengths, not just enhancing old ones.

It risks focusing on individuals out of context. Any serious take on competence should examine a person’s capabilities in the context of the organization. That is, individual qualities should be considered strengths if they align not only with the individual’s role or job, but also with the organization’s goals or competency framework. Strengths approaches focus too much on the individual out of context. 

It can give people a false sense of competence. The strengths-based approach equates to telling everybody that they are great in their own way. It can convey the illusion of ability even to those who lack it. Since most people already have an inflated self-concept (especially leaders, who tend to be more narcissistic than average), it is likely that strengths-based feedback will only enhance people’s deluded self-views.

It risks wasting resources on the lowest performers. Strengths-based approaches argue that every employee deserves to be developed because everybody is talented in their own way. However, since top performers are many times more valuable than other employees, organizations will see the highest ROI if they focus their development resources on their high-performing and high- potential individuals--the people who account, or have the potential to account, for most of the organization’s output. That means focusing on the 20% of people who are responsible for 80% of the profits or productivity—not all employees in the organization.

Strengths have downsides, too. Even positive qualities will become toxic if they are overused or expressed in excess. For example, conscientiousness and attention to detail turn into counterproductive perfectionism and obsessiveness. Confidence becomes overconfidence and arrogance.

Putting the Strengths-based Approach into Practice

Remember: You’re a Coach—Not a Boss Moving from performance management to performance development requires managers to think of themselves in a new way: as a coach, not a boss. Effective coaches… Take the time to notice each employee’s strengths and help them understand them Help employees do what they do best and strengthen connections to their role, team, and organization to produce results Develop and implement professional goals to build upon the employee‘s strengths

Align Strengths with Tasks Instead of forcing team-members to work on projects that need to be done, ask “Who wants to take on this one?” Look at the skillsets of your employees, talk to them, and identify the best fit. Sometimes it’s as easy as asking. And sometimes you need to reshuffle your team and fill in the gaps.

Build Diverse Teams Don’t just hire “yes” people. Hire those who will be able to bring different strengths to the team, thus creating grounds-breaking thinking. Their success will enhance your success.

Don’t… Don’t use stereotypes as a basis for strengths. (For example, not every millennial employee loves technology) Don’t ignore weaknesses. Just because an employee is strong in one facet of their job doesn’t mean they get a pass on the others. Require a reasonable level of overall competency. Don’t use strengths to pigeonhole people. Strengths give us a quick shorthand for understanding people — but that can also limit employees if you’re not careful. For example, suppose certain employees are more innovative than others. It’s tempting to have those employees take charge of all the most challenging problems, but if you do that, the rest of your employees will lose out on a chance to learn and grow.

Next Steps Provide feedback on today’s webinar! Schedule September coaching call if you haven’t done so already Start practicing what you’ve learned! Ask for help if you need it

Resources Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow Four Essentials of Strength-Based Leadership Gallup’s 34 Strengths Building a Strengths Based Organization Strengths Based Coaching Can Actually Weaken You