When I started my own company two and a half years ago, some people felt I was being ‘brave’ and taking a (big) risk.  Perhaps that was a reflection on their perception of me!  Yet for me (and my immediate family) it felt the ‘right’ thing to do.  Yes, there was risk involved compared to the alternative of staying in an employed role in a relatively stable organisation.  But there was also the ‘risk’ of not daring to take the opportunity and see where it would lead, of missing out on the ‘what if’ and ‘if only’.

Risk also features in another of Marcus Buckingham’s books that I am currently reading: ‘Go put your strengths to work‘.  There is an inherent risk in trying to identify your own strengths and then use them.  You might get it wrong – what you think is a strength may be an illusion or a delusion!  You may correctly identify strengths but then be unable to use them in your current situation – what then?  Do you negotiate a new role, or look for a new organisation to work for, or step out on your own?

The book offers a six-step approach to capturing, clarifying and confirming your strengths.  By noting what you love and what you loathe in your tasks over a week and then analysing exactly what made you love or loathe it, you build up a picture of when you excel and when (and why) you don’t.  Buckingham offers other tools to help confirm those really are your strengths.

Then comes another risk.  Can you stop doing those things that are not your strength – that you really don’t like doing and are not good at doing?  What is the risk to you, your reputation, your team, your organisation?  Is there someone else who can do well what you can’t do very well?  Or does it need doing anyway?

In previous organisations where I worked, the greatest challenge was to ask “what can we stop doing?”  There is almost always more to do – but to stop doing something?  And of course, if you just take on more and more, that’s a certain route to burn-out.  It’s a critical issue for many not-for-profit and charitable organisations faced with ever increasing demands on limited resources, both human and financial.

What is a risk worth taking for you today?

Ref: Go put your strengths to work. M Buckingham (2007). ISBN 0743263294

So what makes the difference?  Can you distinguish good managers from bad?  More importantly, what do excellent managers do differently compared to the rest?  The polling organisation Gallup have used their vast quantity of organisational survey data to see if there are answers that stand up statistically.  They identify what ‘rules of management’ these excellent people managers break all or most of the time (see the reference to Marcus Buckingham’s book below).

Firstly, the best people managers select for talent.  Talent is defined as

a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behaviour that can be productively applied

The more general management rule is to select for experience, qualifications and skills.  However, experience is not always relevant nor necessarily an accurate predictor of future performance.  Qualifications can be obtained through training and skills can be learnt.  Talent is either there or not.  Talents required vary with the role – so you need to know which talents are most critical in any given role, and how to identify them

Secondly, the best managers define required performance outcomes and do not dictate how employees achieve those outcomes.  That way, management control is more hands-off – remote control – and employees can use their own strengths and take responsibility for delivery.

Thirdly, excellent people managers focus on employee’s strengths.  That is far more effective than the usual ‘rule’ of fixing weaknesses.  Individual development plans that highlight where staff are performing badly is not a great motivational tool.  Managers should manage around weaknesses and as much as possible, make those weaknesses irrelevant.  It’s better for managers to spend time with their best people and identify why they are so good, rather than the common practice of spending large amounts of time with poor performers, who may never be very good.

Lastly, the best managers take time to identify where people fit best.  The usual promotion route is not the best for everyone – Laurence Peter’s Principle that people are promoted to their level of incompetence occurs far too frequently.  Organisations need to be creative in rewarding people for what they do best and not set a hierarchy and corresponding increasing salary scale that moves people outside their real expertise and excellence in performance.

At an organisational level, the quality of people management can be ascertained from a simple employee survey of just 12 questions.  It’s not difficult – but it does take courage to break the standard rules.  Isn’t great performance worth that risk?

Ref: Buckingham, M (2005). First, Break all the Rules. Pocket Books. ISBN: 1-4165-0266-1

To flourish means:

to blossom; to grow vigorously, succeed, thrive, prosper;

to be at the peak of development, activity, influence, production etc;

to be in one’s prime

Three real company case studies were presented at the conference – from a large multinational, a medium-sized family firm and a small highly successful new technology company.  In each case, there has been a deliberate emphasis on recruiting and employing people to use their strengths.  If a workplace is filled with people who know what their strengths are and are using those strengths in their day-to-day work, they and the organisation will almost inevitably flourish.

The smaller company had devoted time to clarifying its direction and purpose – to provide 10/10 customer service, to have a happy workforce and to avoid waste.  That’s it.  Using three ‘pillars’ of freedom, support and feedback, workers are able to play to their strengths.  Stripping away a rules-based approach of control over overtime, expense claims and paper-chasing appraisals, the company has increased in profitability, size and achievement of customer and industry awards.

The multinational has dispensed with a complex competency framework and adopted strengths-based recruitment.  If you can identify applicant’s strengths and place them in a role where they can use those strengths, then they are likely to flourish.

In another workshop, ‘multiple scaling’ was introduced as a simple concept to be used in performance and coaching conversations.  On a scale of 0 to 10, where would you rate your overall competence?  Choose 2 or 3 specific competences required to do your job and rate those on a scale of 0 to 10.  Then discuss a scale of your choice and talk about why you think you perform at that level.  What has helped you perform at that level?  Comparing that to another scale, what’s the difference?  What are you doing differently at the higher level?  What would other people notice about you that was different?  And if you were at 10, how would you and other people know?

Having reflected with Jan after the conference, we realised life situations are not so simple.  It’s obvious that we all have weaknesses.   So just to talk about strengths can be misleading for people and for organisations.  However, can we use our strengths to combat our weaknesses?   If we assume that all required competences for a particular role to be performed well need to be at 5 or above, what about those we rate below 5?

For example, someone rates their IT skills at 3.  But they rate their strength to learn through someone else at 8, especially if that includes hands-on learning.   So they need to use their strength of rapport in identifying someone who is strong in IT skills, learning from a manual, summarising it and coaching them in a hands-on, encouraging way.  Their IT skills soar to 5!

If another person’s strength is high (say, 7) in talking through issues while it’s low (say, 4) in sitting down in a room on their own to write an essay, can they use their strength in vocal discussion to combat their relative weakness in written work through using a digital recorder, for example?

People succeed, thrive and prosper – we flourish – when we use our strengths, apply them to strengthen those weaknesses we cannot ignore, and when we are in an enabling environment.  Who will you strengthen and encourage today?

For more information on CAPP see www.cappeu.com and for more on scaling see The Solutions Focus

The essence of prudence is practical wisdom. Now that sounds more interesting.  To be wise in a down-to-earth way, to decide what to do and when – and what not to do and why – feels business-like.  Having the prudence to decide to go to that meeting or to plan how to chair it – well, that could make a significant difference in the workplace.

Jennifer Fox Eades in her book ‘Celebrating Strengths’ recalls Aristotle’s definition of prudence:

The prudent individual is neither reckless nor rigid, neither impulsive or compulsive, but balanced and flexible. A prudent person is one who considers what life is for and how this may be best achieved, one who balances short term pleasures against long term goals.

The idea of taking time to make reflective choices, to imagine a future and work towards its attainment – that does sound like practical wisdom.  Add the concept of synchronicity and life becomes full of possibilities.  Synchronicity is the sense of going with the flow.  Sensing opportunities and being prepared to risk their exploration.

Joseph Jaworski, with Peter Senge, refer in their book ‘Synchronicity’ as it being the ‘inner path of leadership’.  It combines skills and experience with creativity and vision – all earthed in the reality of business and home life.  To put it another way, it’s prudence dressed up in colour, psychedelic and exciting, full of ‘what if’ and ‘I wonder…’.

Here’s to prudence and synchronicity – useful attributes in difficult times.

Note: I’ve added the two references to the 3D HR Book Store

So much of our work life and possibly our home life as well is about dealing with weaknesses.  The appraisal as an opportunity to point out someone’s short-falling or be given (yet again) the personal development plan to work on that weakness.

We tend to have a wide vocabulary relating to weakness – ‘could do better’, ‘room for improvement’, ‘rise to the challenge’, ‘opportunities for development’, etc.  But how big is our strengths vocabulary?  Can you readily define a strength?  How many strengths do you have?  How many do you regularly use in your work situation?

The Centre for Applied Positive Psychology or CAPP is headed up by Alex Linley.  In his book ‘Average to A+’, Linley defines a strength as follows:

A strength is a pre-existing capacity for a particular way of behaving, thinking or feeling that is authentic and energising to the user, and enables optimal functioning, development and performance.

So it’s something that is already there within our psyche, even if latent and/or underdeveloped.  It may be something we have inherited or developed very early in life.  We are predisposed to using that strength.  When we use a strength, it feels ‘real’ – that we are being true to ourselves rather than acting or showing learned behaviour.

Using our strengths is energising in that we have more vitality, less burnout and swifter recovery.  It recharges rather than exhausts us.  When we use our strengths, we perform and function better.  We tend to feel more in the flow, we learn and develop faster and we are most likely to excel – rather than be average. To be A+ or A star rather than C.

Linley points out that we need to realise our strengths in two ways: to identify those we have, to recognise and appreciate them; and to make use of them, to realise their potential.

CAPP is developing strengths-based interviewing to help organisations identify individuals whose strengths match the requirements of the role. So often organisations focus on the gap analysis – what is missing in the applicant and how it can be bridged.  Just asking interviewees:

• “when are you at your best?”
• “what can I count on you for the most?”
• “what are the things that most energise you?”

will quickly begin to identify strengths.  That is not saying ignore weaknesses.  But a focus on strengths makes many weaknesses irrelevant.  It gets away from the ‘curse of mediocrity’ where we can all do everything or be anything we want to be…

Strength spotting is a fun exercise, especially for anyone who wants people to flourish in the workplace.  Alex Linley’s book is available through the 3D HR Book Store or from CAPP.