Building On Strengths
September 8th, 2010
TweetMarcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman wrote “First, Break All the Rules” and later followed with Marcus and Donald Clifton writing “Now, Discover Your Strengths“. This gave birth to the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment administered by our friends at Gallup. So?
Most of our lives have been focused on improving our deficiencies. Your parents marveled at your “A”s on your report card, but commented that you needed to improve those B’s or C’s. So the focus was on getting those grades up, the path of most resistance. Our fixation on deficits affects young people in the home and classroom. At work, many performance reviews focus on “development plans” to help you be a more rounded person.
The truth is each person has greater potential for success in specific areas, and the key to human development is building on who you already are! The key is for you to be aware of your potential AND your limitations.
Tom Rath now has taken it to a new level with Strengths Finder 2.0 which includes a code to take the StrengthsFinder assessment. Not a bad deal for $13. You can find out your top five strengths of the 34 themes.
So what?
We talk a lot about employee engagement (or at least I do!) and the impact on business outcomes. After surveying 10 MILLION people, Gallup concluded that if you don’t have a chance to use your strengths at work, you’re SIX TIMES less likely to be engaged in your job. In other words, “you dread going to work, have more negative than positive interactions with colleagues, treat your customers poorly, tell your friends what a miserable company you work for, achieve less on a daily basis, and have fewer positive and creative moments.” Well, THAT’s what!
Talent (a natural way of thinking, feeling or behaving)
X Investment (deliberate practicing, developing skills, building knowledge) =
Strength (the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance)
Some of my clients and I are working on building a Strengths-Based culture and are looking at other companies as models who have already used this approach. By next year, we should have some surprising results to share. It’s radical, but it makes good business sense to maximize our talent development & deployment strategies!
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