Today, we live in the age of strengths, which is in stark contrast to how it was earlier — of concentrating more on rectifying weaknesses.
The age of strength seems to be an offshoot of the momentum of positive psychology, that has picked up in the last two decades. This involves focusing on what people can do, not on what they cannot. For a very long time, managers were trained to invest in a belief system that people in organisations deliver their best when managers have an accurate grasp of their weakness and provide feedback on the same so that they can be fixed.
Why you shouldn’t focus on weakness
However, most recent studies have exposed the futility of the weakness-focused approach to people development. Management guru Peter Drucker has written a whole chapter in his book, The Effective Executive on “making strengths productive.” He had the foresight back in 1967, when the book was published. The key messages from his work are:
Focusing on weakness is only damage control, not development. Development is possible when managers focus on their people’s strengths.
There is nothing called an “all-rounder” — people endowed only with strengths and no weakness.
Wherever there are peaks, there will be valleys. Everyone one has towering strengths and a few weaknesses as well.
Great mangers focus on leveraging strengths, not eliminating weaknesses. However, managers do work on how to make the weaknesses irrelevant, so work performance is not impacted.
Gallup studies subsequently confirmed the above truisms, with more data and evidence. Their seminal work has some of the following key messages:
People become more of what they already are — which means only strengths can be developed.
Managers who focus on strengths and create possibilities for its use, often get the maximum performance from their teams.
Low employee engagement
Gallup has some startling statistics to share: Globally, only 20 per cent employees working in large organisations surveyed, feel that their strengths are in play everyday. This, perhaps, answers the enigma of our times of why employee engagement continues to be low, and is not getting better, despite sincere efforts.
Benjamin Franklin sums up this in his beautiful observation: “Wasted strengths are sundials in shade.” Earlier, performance appraisal systems emphasised identifying and fixing weaknesses. Managers seldom discussed strengths, how they can be enhanced and leveraged. Not surprisingly, people left these discussions more disengaged than motivated.
Recognise strengths
Therefore, the message for leaders and managers is loud and clear — it is important to recognise their strengths and work on strengthening them — take up assignments that exploit and enhance their strengths. And do the same thing with direct reports.
It is also important to remember that identifying strengths does not need an advanced education in psychology — only observation and discussion with people. Often, asking employees to describe when, in the last one week, they experienced a “high” or “flow” at work, they will describe the work that gave them “high.”
Interests and strengths develop over time, and we have seen this with kids. When they are forced to go in for courses that do not fit their interests or strengths, they do not ‘shine’ as well as they did in school. It is pretty much the same at work. When roles are designed for people, it is critical to factor some of their strengths and anchors so that they enjoy and engage with what they do.
Engagement is not what we do for our people. It is the result of what we do to our people every day. And focusing on strengths is a major factor in making it happen.
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