How Strong is Your Team?

We are our most effective when we lean on and support each others' strengths.

How are you assessing your team and their capabilities? Does your organization apply personnel development to identify capability gaps and fix areas of deficiency or do you broaden, refine, and develop your employees’ strengths?

It is fairly common for organizations to focus on what is wrong with their teams rather than what is strong. When assessing your staff this way, the personnel development strategies naturally become about fixing rather than strengthening.

The challenge with focusing on what is wrong is twofold. First, consider the impact to the morale of the employees and the team. When we talk about training and development in terms of trying to fix what is wrong with people, this reduces confidence and trust in each other and leadership. Second, consider the actual efficiency and effectiveness in training or retraining employees to build acumen in areas they may not have natural strengths and capabilities.

An alternative approach would be to create your teams and personnel development programs around your employees’ strengths. This can be done from the very beginning when interviewing candidates for a position and with existing employees. There are a variety of assessment tools that are available for an organization to choose what makes sense for them.

“My belief is that support equals success. We are so much more powerful when we surround ourselves with people we can learn from and draw support from.”

Gallup StrengthsFinder 2.0 is a tool I have used extensively working with companies looking to identify their employees' strengths. We look at the top five strengths of each member of a team and then map out the strengths of the entire team. This map provides the information needed to create a strategy designed to develop and train the staff individually and as a team on how to tap into and amplify those strengths for success.

The information enables leaders to effectively assign roles and tasks, adapt communication for maximum impact, and create well-rounded teams. These are just a few additional benefits of clearly understanding employees’ strengths.

Based on a Gallup study, organizations with strength-based development programs have employees that are:

· 3 times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life

· 6 times more likely to be engaged at work

· 8% more productive

· 15% less likely to quit their job

As you review your training and development programs for next year, consider what benefits a strength-based approach might have for your staff and, ultimately, organizational success. If you would like to learn more about my Strengths Development Program, please send me a message here on LinkedIn or email me directly at kelly@teamleadsolutions.com.