Are line managers focusing on strengths?
Posted by
Here’s an interesting question – do you know the strengths of the people in your team? Or, if you’re a Talent Manager, do you know the strengths of the people on your programme?
The extensive Gallup research into hundreds of thousands of high performing employees proved that the most engaged people in the workforce are those who are playing to their strengths. Yet, in the work we do, we often find line managers don’t truly understand their team’s key strengths.
When sussing out people’s strengths, most people have a limited ‘vocabulary’. They measure people against their own strengths, and become irritated when people don’t do things they themselves consider important. Sometimes they spot people who have a strength that they lack, which is great, as the strength is then more likely to be used. More often, managers spend development discussions focusing on people’s weaker areas, rather than how they can use their strengths more.
Most managers are firstly engineers, or operations managers, or customer service people, or accountants. They don’t have a comprehensive way of analysing people’s best strengths. This means that many employee strengths are not being recognised, nor are these people being given the opportunity to use their strengths to the fullest extent. This causes the organisation to lose out, and team members to be less engaged.
How can you get managers working with a wider range of strengths? There are a number of online report-based systems such as Realise2020 or Strengthsfinder, backed up by books. Also there are a range of psychometrics, like Myers-Briggs and SDI which focus on personal style. Most of these appeal to individuals interested in finding out more about themselves, and people who enjoy reading to get the full picture. It’s actually not easy for managers to develop their strengths vocabulary quickly, in a very practical context.
With this in mind we’ve been developing and trialling a really simple strengths toolkit that educates managers about how to identify and use strengths, based on a practical card sort exercise and discussion done with individual team members. Why do we feel this goes a step further than the usual Strengths Inventories that are on the market?
Most strengths inventories make their money via online questionnaires; great for the website owner, but not so good for your employees – because an online questionnaire rarely creates a really powerful, dynamic conversation that leads to sustained action. Why is this?
Most importantly, online questionnaires involve the team member answering a series of questions; these are processed automatically to generate a generic computer-produced report. There is a disconnect between ‘what I put in’ and ‘what I got out’, a mysterious process that keeps the expertise online. This process doesn’t educate the manager, or do much to develop their whole ‘strengths vocabulary’ – their ability to spot and diagnose strengths. And the process of completing an online questionnaire rarely engages their team members; they lose the key sense of personal control and choice they have when considering and sorting cards that they will share with their manager.
Secondly, the act of sitting down and spending time together in discovery and discussion is lost. The most important part of line managers working with strengths is to create the chance for the manager to talk to the employee. To discuss your team member’s best strengths, ask simple questions to find out about what the team member loves doing, and perhaps share your own profile. Online questionnaires make this discussion a follow-up activity – the discussion starts with the report, and not with the identification of strengths, whereas a card sort puts working to put the jigsaw puzzle together right at the heart of the action.
Finally, with online questionnaires – every time you get a new team member, you have to pay for a new report. This is why strengths inventories typically get done at a team build, prompt a flurry of activity, but rarely end up as a sustained practice. Giving line managers their own talent toolkit encourages them to use it continually in small ways.
With the Talent Profile and strengths cards, we find managers really engage with the tools and start using them in unexpected and creative ways. For example, managers have sent team members out with the strengths cards to get 360 degree feedback on their 5 best strengths and 3 weaknesses. And again, the real value comes from the discussion this prompts; the chance to give and receive feedback. Other managers have paired up members of the team to better understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Some managers have shared their own strengths and weaknesses, and conducted problem-solving with the team to work out how to manage the weaknesses. Managers have even analysed the strengths of their whole team ahead of recruiting a new team member. They’ve identified weaknesses in the team profile – so that they can recruit someone with the strengths that will create a more rounded team.
What is fascinating to us is how managers of all kinds show a huge appetite for working with strengths. They get involved in working out their own strengths, their boss’s strengths (and weaknesses!), their customers’ strengths – as well as their team members’ strengths. And each time they use the cards with a new person, they enrich their vocabulary and understanding.
Take Away
We need managers to understand and use strengths; we can’t afford to keep this knowledge with HR, or in books, or online questionnaires. Managers are the people who have the power to use this knowledge to directly impact the working lives of all our employees – getting them to use more of their strengths every day. How can we get ordinary managers to really understand and use strengths thinking?
If you want to know more, see our website. T&P’s Talent Profile and strengths cards are used in our Talent Manager workshops, in the module – Think Strengths! We also find them great as a toolkit when we need to raise energy with a large group of people – for example at engagement conferences and career conferences.