I was recently listening to a podcast by Adam Grant about strengths. He was saying that not using your strengths intelligently can be detrimental. It got me thinking about what it means to use strengths intelligently and how managers can help their team members do this. When managers do annual reviews the tendency is to focus on the "room for improvement" items and leave what is good alone. A missed opportunity, as mentioned is the podcast, is the chance for managers to help their team members also improve on their strengths. So how do managers do that? Identifying what made a team member successful as a particular task or objective is a starting point. But taking it a step further is analyzing the task or objective and identifying what could have made the task or objective even more successful if the the team member's strength would have been better leveraged. Using the team member's strength more intelligently would have made the difference and helped the team member better leverage their strength. Say a team member is good at solving complex challenges but solving challenges without the ability to implement the solution is not very useful. In today's environment most team members do not work in silos and must be able to work within a group. If the team member who is great at solving complex challenges would get input from other team members while the solution is being developed, the solution would be implemented properly and fully accepted. So what does that look like? Asking for feedback from other team members who will need to help implement the solution is good. Getting those team members involved is even better and enabling the best option to win and not the solution of the loudest team member to win is even better. So whether you are looking at your own strengths, or helping others look at their strengths, remember that using strengths intelligently is the best way to use and leverage a strength fully.
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AuthorBaruch Hecht is a management consultant, experienced COO, the founder of Management Shop, and an avid reader of business literature. Archives
December 2019
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