The best-led organizations know that the direct path to individual, team, and organizational strengths begins with a primary investment in their employees’ greatest talents. Find what’s naturally right with your people, and build on it. All organizations seek to perform with strength. To get there, many follow conventional wisdom: Focus on fixing weaknesses. Find what’s wrong with your people, and try to correct it. Unfortunately, that “wisdom” leaves the organization struggling on the path to mediocrity.
A growing number of strength-seeking organizations have learned that although weaknesses must be avoided and managed as necessary, a fixation on weakness is a mistake.
What happens when a person is not operating from strength? He or she is quite simply less fulfilled and less effective. In the workplace, an employee is six times less likely to be engaged in the role.
A person not able to use his or her strengths at work probably:
• dreads going to work
• has more negative than positive interactions with coworkers
• treats customers poorly
• tells friends he or she works for a miserable organization
• achieves less on a daily basis
• has fewer positive and creative moments
The Manager’s Focus
Of the people who felt their manager focused on their weaknesses, 22% were actively disengaged as employees. When people felt their manager focused on their strengths, only 1% were actively disengaged.
These are the results of a Gallup Q12 workplace poll conducted in April of 2004 (n=1003). These items were used in addition to the standard Q12 items: “My supervisor focuses on my weaknesses or negative characteristics” and “My supervisor focuses on my strengths or positive characteristics.”
Organizations that start by investing in an individual’s natural talent — and then add the pertinent knowledge and skills — experience a much greater return on every hour and dollar they spend developing people.
Strengths Development Results in Higher Levels of Employee Engagement
Client groups that received strengths development intervention experienced greater increases in engagement than did
groups with either no intervention or only standard engagement intervention.
Loyalty Effect of Focus on Strengths
Employees who felt they were able to focus on their strengths in their jobs were found more likely to:
• recommend the organization’s products and services
• intend to stay with the organization for a long period of time
Source: Gallup Poll data of U.S. working population aged 18 and older, April 2004
Gallup's Competitive Ege
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