To lead a top-performing team, you need to do more than direct and delegate task. Truly effective administrators can recognize the unique characteristics of individual team members and optimize all those natural talents. If you’re in a leadership position pondering how to strengthen a team, this might sound like a daunting task, but it’s not.
The first stage is to identify each person’s strengths and then manage around those essential skills. The results will include increased productivity, enhanced performance, and higher employee engagement and retention.
Benefits of Focusing on Strengths
Research from the Gallup Organization’s “State of the American Workplace” found that building on the strengths of group members is much more effective in raising performance than attempting to improve weaknesses.
Gallup also found that employees become 7.8-percent more productive when they become aware of their assets. Teams that focus on strengths every day have 12.5-percent greater productivity. Individuals who use their assets every day are six times more likely to be engaged on the job and are less likely to abandon their company. Taken together, those measures are potent catalysts for higher levels of performance, profitability, and productivity in organizations.
Project managers are in the best position to recognize the strengths of their team members, and managers can empower employees to discover and develop their strengths before positioning those employees in roles where they can excel.
Here are 11 measures pivotal to establishing a diverse workforce with various strengths:
1. Name team member strengths.
Are you eager to learn how to construct an effective team? The first step is simple: Don’t presume that employees know their assets. People often take their most potent talents for granted. Meet individually with team members to discuss how they—and you—see their primary competencies and strengths. Name each strength out loud and ask how those strengths might be applied to your project.
2. Apply individual strengths to accomplish the team’s overall objectives.
Help your team comprehend each other’s unique personalities and strengths and how these talents unify to create a potent picture and enhance teamwork skills. Speak to the assets of individual team members in the presence of project compatriots. Suggest how the team might take advantage of others’ strengths and attend to what the team has to say. Look beyond your initiatives to the wider organization to see whether demonstrated strengths can be used in neglected areas of the broader business.
3. Assign team assignments based on employees’ capabilities.
This may seem evident, as you would never intentionally assign tasks based on deficiencies. However, it’s possible you might neglect team members strengths if they haven’t surfaced yet.
4. Incorporate strengths into performance conversations and assessments.
Once the strengths of your employees are out in the open, it’ll be much simpler to help them set objectives based on their core competencies. Remember that all objectives should be “smart” too!
5. Help employees align their assets with the expectations and responsibilities of their duties.
In the best-case situations, team member strengths will align with expectations, but sometimes things go a little off course. Make sure you nurture and guide individuals to focus on their fundamental strengths and then give them objectives that align with their talent and responsibilities. You’ll have happier, more committed, and more productive team members as a result.
6. Ask your organization for some “strength training.”
Invest in a course to develop skills that identify and optimize the strength of your team members. This form of training may be something your HR department can deliver, or you might find training outside your organization.
7. Open career-growth opportunities or training for your team.
Tell team members that you want to support them if they have a strength they’d like to develop. This encouragement may motivate employees to actively discover their strengths and do what they need to develop their professional abilities.
8. Offer training opportunities for employees who demonstrate strength in particular areas.
Instead of waiting for team members to come to you, you approach them. Let them know what qualities you see in them and make sure they’re willing to cultivate those strengths toward a specific type of career path by sending them to a course or training program. You don’t want to invest in anyone who’s reticent to put in the effort to use their strengths to benefit the organization.
9. Encourage team members to act as “strengths advocates” to help others use their talents and endowments more effectively.
Rally members of your team to be budding leaders and motivators within their positions. Simply stated, it never harms to get your team members more engaged.
10. Consider cross-training among colleagues who have specific capabilities.
Form mentoring relationships by matching powerful employees with colleagues who demonstrate a deficiency in a corresponding area. This cross-training allows powerful employees develop their training abilities, while the mentees receive some excellent modeling and an opportunity to strengthen their skills.
11. Allow strong employees to assume responsibility for their own career opportunities through special assignments or off-site activities.
Let your staff members decide whether to pursue these activities, even if it means rearranging tasks on your project. Don’t press. Developing fortitude begins with initiative and determination. If an employee doesn’t have either, then it might not be worth the investment.
It’s Time to Play to Your Team’s Strengths
Understanding team member strengths and limitations provides a firm foundation for developing individual competencies. This has evident benefits to productivity and team culture, but witnessing team members mature into their duties and develop their abilities can be one of the most rewarding experiences in a career. Not to mention an enormous step toward being designated a top-performing project manager yourself.
Read Also : Shania Twain • Robert John Lange • Marie Anne Thieb
Ola Hansen 
To lead a top-performing team, you need to do more than direct and delegate task. Truly effective administrators can recognize the unique characteristics of individual team members and optimize all those natural talents. If you’re in a leadership position pondering how to strengthen a team, this might sound like a daunting task, but it’s not.
The first stage is to identify each person’s strengths and then manage around those essential skills. The results will include increased productivity, enhanced performance, and higher employee engagement and retention.
Benefits of Focusing on Strengths
Research from the Gallup Organization’s “State of the American Workplace” found that building on the strengths of group members is much more effective in raising performance than attempting to improve weaknesses.
Gallup also found that employees become 7.8-percent more productive when they become aware of their assets. Teams that focus on strengths every day have 12.5-percent greater productivity. Individuals who use their assets every day are six times more likely to be engaged on the job and are less likely to abandon their company. Taken together, those measures are potent catalysts for higher levels of performance, profitability, and productivity in organizations.
Project managers are in the best position to recognize the strengths of their team members, and managers can empower employees to discover and develop their strengths before positioning those employees in roles where they can excel.
Here are 11 measures pivotal to establishing a diverse workforce with various strengths:
1. Name team member strengths.
Are you eager to learn how to construct an effective team? The first step is simple: Don’t presume that employees know their assets. People often take their most potent talents for granted. Meet individually with team members to discuss how they—and you—see their primary competencies and strengths. Name each strength out loud and ask how those strengths might be applied to your project.
2. Apply individual strengths to accomplish the team’s overall objectives.
Help your team comprehend each other’s unique personalities and strengths and how these talents unify to create a potent picture and enhance teamwork skills. Speak to the assets of individual team members in the presence of project compatriots. Suggest how the team might take advantage of others’ strengths and attend to what the team has to say. Look beyond your initiatives to the wider organization to see whether demonstrated strengths can be used in neglected areas of the broader business.
3. Assign team assignments based on employees’ capabilities.
This may seem evident, as you would never intentionally assign tasks based on deficiencies. However, it’s possible you might neglect team members strengths if they haven’t surfaced yet.
4. Incorporate strengths into performance conversations and assessments.
Once the strengths of your employees are out in the open, it’ll be much simpler to help them set objectives based on their core competencies. Remember that all objectives should be “smart” too!
5. Help employees align their assets with the expectations and responsibilities of their duties.
In the best-case situations, team member strengths will align with expectations, but sometimes things go a little off course. Make sure you nurture and guide individuals to focus on their fundamental strengths and then give them objectives that align with their talent and responsibilities. You’ll have happier, more committed, and more productive team members as a result.
6. Ask your organization for some “strength training.”
Invest in a course to develop skills that identify and optimize the strength of your team members. This form of training may be something your HR department can deliver, or you might find training outside your organization.
7. Open career-growth opportunities or training for your team.
Tell team members that you want to support them if they have a strength they’d like to develop. This encouragement may motivate employees to actively discover their strengths and do what they need to develop their professional abilities.
8. Offer training opportunities for employees who demonstrate strength in particular areas.
Instead of waiting for team members to come to you, you approach them. Let them know what qualities you see in them and make sure they’re willing to cultivate those strengths toward a specific type of career path by sending them to a course or training program. You don’t want to invest in anyone who’s reticent to put in the effort to use their strengths to benefit the organization.
9. Encourage team members to act as “strengths advocates” to help others use their talents and endowments more effectively.
Rally members of your team to be budding leaders and motivators within their positions. Simply stated, it never harms to get your team members more engaged.
10. Consider cross-training among colleagues who have specific capabilities.
Form mentoring relationships by matching powerful employees with colleagues who demonstrate a deficiency in a corresponding area. This cross-training allows powerful employees develop their training abilities, while the mentees receive some excellent modeling and an opportunity to strengthen their skills.
11. Allow strong employees to assume responsibility for their own career opportunities through special assignments or off-site activities.
Let your staff members decide whether to pursue these activities, even if it means rearranging tasks on your project. Don’t press. Developing fortitude begins with initiative and determination. If an employee doesn’t have either, then it might not be worth the investment.
It’s Time to Play to Your Team’s Strengths
Understanding team member strengths and limitations provides a firm foundation for developing individual competencies. This has evident benefits to productivity and team culture, but witnessing team members mature into their duties and develop their abilities can be one of the most rewarding experiences in a career. Not to mention an enormous step toward being designated a top-performing project manager yourself.
Read Also : Shania Twain • Robert John Lange • Marie Anne Thieb