Are you Harnessing the Strength of your Team?

Have you thought about whether you are truly harnessing the strength of your team?

• Do you know and openly discuss the strengths of each member of the team?
• Do you understand what drives and motivates each person?
• Do you know if your team is happy and engaged every day?
• Have you identified any strength gaps that your team may have?

If you answered No to some of the questions above, then chances are that you are not fully harnessing the power of your team.

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘play to your strengths’. It makes perfect sense, right?

When we play to our strengths, things come easier to us – we work faster, we have more energy, we are happier and we produce better results.

In the world of sport, playing to our strengths is a given.

Coaches take the time to understand and develop each player’s unique strengths and they play them in a position that best exploits these strengths. They then look at the overall needs of the team, identify where key strengths are lacking and look to find those strengths in players on the bench or, in the case of professional sport, outside of the club.

In a business context, strength identification and development is not always given this focus.

But think about it… If you don’t understand the strengths of the individuals within your team, how can you expect to get the best from them?

How can we Harness Untapped Potential?

Here’s a stat that might be a little unpalatable to the managers among us.

According to Gallup’s global study of employee engagement, 67% of employees are ‘not engaged’ on any given day. A further 18% are ‘actively disengaged’.

That means that globally, managers are missing out on the full potential of 85% of their employees every day. (GULP).

Maybe your team is performing well and hitting their targets and KPI’s so you might think, “why should I change what’s already working”? But imagine the possibilities if you were working with higher levels of engagement every day.

The good news is there is an effective solution, one that more and more companies are turning to. It’s called strengths-based development.

What is Strengths-Based Employee Development?
Strengths-based development aligns with the heavily researched principles of positive psychology and advocates companies and leaders to focus on identifying and developing employee strengths to boost overall productivity and business performance.

This approach moves away from fixing weaknesses and moulding employees to fit pre-determined roles. Instead, it aims to identify and cultivate the best in people, matching employees with roles and tasks that allow them to naturally excel.

Bottom line – it works on finding the best in people and getting that to work for the company. A win-win scenario.

How does Team Strength Development work?

Team Strength Development highlights the collective strengths of the team, allowing teams to better understand each other and to use their resources most effectively to achieve best results.

Gallup research shows that while individuals do not need to have a rounded set of skills, teams should.

So, identifying the strengths within a team can also help to highlight potential gaps. This valuable insight gives the manager and the team the opportunity to fill these gaps to ensure better team performance.

Clear Focus Strengths Development Programme 

At Clear Focus, our Strengths Development Programmes are customised to suit the needs of your team. Below is a guideline of what’s involved.

1. Team Needs Assessment
   • Coach meets with the team manager to assess the current state of the team, including roles, responsibilities, goals, dynamics and challenges.
   • The scope and outcomes of the Strengths Development Programme are agreed.
2. Individual Strengths Assessment
   • The starting point of Team Strength Development is to identify individual strengths within the team.
   • Each team member conducts a Strengths Assessment to identify their unique strengths and receives an individual Strengths Report.
3. 1-2-1 Coaching
   • Team members are then coached through a process to help them identify how they currently use their strengths and how they can harness them further to make a greater impact in their role and to their team.
   • Weaknesses are not ignored but are only deemed important if they get in the way of the person actually doing their job. In this case, solutions are explored with the coach.
4. Team Strengths Workshop
   1. Following individual coaching, Team Strength workshops enable the team to share their strengths, to review the overall strengths of the team and to identify any strength gaps or challenges that may exist.
   2. A plan is put in place to harness the existing strengths of the team and to deal with any gaps identified.

Why is Team Strength Development Worth Considering?

Following more than 40 years of research, Gallup has shown that when leaders focus on people’s strengths, it results in substantial improvement in employee engagement, retention and performance.

Employees who use their strengths in their job are more likely to be intrinsically motivated, simply because it feels less like work to them.

According to Gallup, organisations that use strengths in their mission, values and processes see better outcomes in metrics that matter to leaders:

• 7% higher customer engagement
• 29% higher profit
• 73% lower attrition

Of course it takes intentional effort to get to these results and CEO and manager buy-in is key.

But the fact that ‘more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies have used strengths-based development in their workplace culture’ is compelling evidence to put this on your priority list.

To find out about our Strength-Based Development Programmes, contact us. today.

• Source: Gallup’s 2017 State of the Global Workplace report
• Strengthsfinder 2.0 (Gallup & Tom Rath, 2017)

Clear Focus is a business strategy, culture and people development consultancy. Through effective collaboration, communication, alignment and coaching, we can help your company and your team to focus, grow and thrive.