What sets apart great managers?
There are as many styles of management as there are managers. There are likely hundreds of books on leadership all with a different recommendation for success. But there is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: they discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it.
Great managers focus on strengths.
In other words, a great manager can translate an employees’ strength into performance. That manager also understands that not everyone has the same strengths.
Investing in an employee’s strengths (instead of focusing on fixing weaknesses) brings about many dividends:
Getting more done – when people exercise their strengths they are hugely productive.
Enjoying more accountable employees – people ‘own’ what they are strong at.
Stronger teams – each member of the team complements one another.
More creativity – teams with customized roles based on their strengths bring about a healthy degree of disruption that promotes creativity.
What is a strength?
Let’s start with the basics. A strength is an activity where you are strong, and is defined primarily by your natural talent + knowledge + skill. A skill is something you can learn. A strength is a natural talent you are born with.
Strengths are more often than not defined by certain activities such as:
How you interact with people
How you take action
How you organize and understand information
How you influence others
The key to investing in strengths is to identify them precisely. A strength is not well formulated if we say, “She is good with people.” That is overly broad and unhelpful to building a strengths-based team. Instead, the strength might be: “She is strong at building new stakeholder relationships.”
Are you interested in learning more about strengths? Read my blog here.
What does focusing on strengths look like if you are a manager?
Let’s take an example. You are in the role of a manager. You have two staff people reporting to you who couldn’t be any different. Joe who has great follow through and is dependable. You give Joe a task and he will do it. He is very literal. You’ve noticed he is less capable when it comes to brain-storming discussions including long-term planning, strategy, and program design. And then you have Andrea. She couldn’t be any more different than Joe. She understands communication and enjoys talking about where things can be in the future. She is always full of ideas at meetings. But seems less effective at program management. You have an instinct that Andrea might be good at long-term strategy an thinking but aren’t sure.
As a great manager, you understand Joe is different than Andrea and they have different strengths. Asking them to do the same role makes little sense. The old and outdated model of management will ask, “How can I fix the weaknesses of my staff?” The strengths-based model will ask, “How can I put my staff in roles where they can thrive?”
With these two different staff people, you start to think about dividing responsibilities to specifically put their strengths to work. You may decide to give Joe more responsibility at following through on projects. You may decide to give Andrea more responsibility to explore ideas on what a long-term plan might look like.
The example above is, of course, an oversimplification. But, in general, great managers focus on capitalizing on differences. Average managers will focus on how to ‘fix’ where each staff person is weak. Great managers will focus and lean into their employees’ strengths.
If you have a staff person who seeks public recognition, create opportunities to profile that staff person within the office or even publicly.
If you have a staff person who seeks to take command and want ownership of a project, give them a specific project where they can truly lead.
If you have a staff person who is strongly analytical and works with data, then let them have a role where a strong portion of their job allows them to do this work and also oversee others who are doing this work.
Capitalizing on what is unique about each person also builds a stronger sense of team, because it creates interdependency. It helps people appreciate one another’s particular skills and learn that their coworkers can fill in where they are lacking.
Where do I start?
If you are interested in strengths based leadership, you must start with one question. What are my team’s strengths? And to know your team’s strengths, you will want to start with each individual.
There are three things you must know about someone to manage her well: her strengths, the triggers that activate those strengths, and how she learns.
Key questions:
What is her strength?
How can he best activate this strength?
What is their learning style?
As a manager, how can I understand my team’s strengths?
If there is one thing you can do to understand your team’s strengths: Listen. To truly unearth how each of your team member’s tick, you need to be curious and listen. You want to watch reactions. You want to take notes about what certain staff are drawn to what they struggle with. Start with two simple questions:
“What was the best day at work you’ve had in the past three months?”
“What was the worst day you’ve had at work in the past three months?”
Bringing curiosity to your team is a strong first step to taking a strength-based approach to your team. You can also consider providing your team a strengths assessment (e.g. Clifton Strengthfinder) and engaging expert support such as through a coach.
To learn more about strengths-based coaching and workshops I offer to managers, contact me.
For more in-depth reading, go to this Harvard Business Review article.
