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The strengths-based approach to people development offers an alternative to the training gap model. Rather than identifying people’s weaknesses and helping them to overcome them, the strengths-based approach focuses instead on people’s innate talents and turning them into strengths.
When people are given the opportunity to do what they do best every day at work, their organization is more likely to have:
- 50% higher retention
- 38% more productivity
- 44% better customer satisfaction[1]
Yet only 20% of employees in large organizations feel that they use their strengths every day at work.[2]
According to Marcus Buckingham and Donald O Clifton, the authors of ‘Now, Discover Your Strengths’, organizations focus too much on fault and failing, which, although well intended, reveals little about people’s true strengths and potential. As everybody has their own natural and unique talents, organizations should, they believe, capitalize on the fact that everyone is different rather than trying to fit all employees into the same mold.
Excellent performance in a role does not necessarily mean being well rounded, claim the authors. Often, the best performers have strengths in a few key areas, and to help people develop to their full potential, managers must capitalize on these strengths. This means managing everyone differently according to their unique strengths.
They acknowledge that weaknesses cannot be completely ignored and must be minimized so that they don’t undermine people’s strengths. However, they stress that focusing solely on improving weaknesses, as in the training gap model, is merely ‘damage control’ – a poor strategy for building a successful organization, they argue.
The book is based on research surveys undertaken in conjunction with the Gallup Organization. From the statistics, the authors identify a link between people feeling that they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day and productivity and retention. The authors believe that motivation is increased when people feel that they are using their strengths in their work, and point out that in many organizations, these strengths are taken for granted rather than consciously developed.[3]
In the book, the authors set out to dispel what they believe to be the most common myths about people. They claim that many organizations have two flawed assumptions:[4]
- Each person can learn to be competent in almost anything.
- Each person’s greatest room for growth is in his or her areas of greatest weakness.
The strengths-based model offers two alternative assumptions that will help to build a successful organization:[5]
- Each person’s talents are enduring and unique.
- Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his/her greatest strength.
The difference between strengths and talents in the book is important. The authors’ definitions of these two terms are quite specific and distinct from each other. They define them as:
Strength – ‘consistent, near perfect performance in an activity’.[6] The key here is ‘consistent’ – for something to be a strength, they must be able to demonstrate it over and again.
Talent – ‘naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior’.[7] These are people’s innate abilities; the ‘raw materials’ for building strengths.
The key to building a successful, strengths-based organization, according to the authors, is to focus on these natural talents, which might not necessarily be currently recognized or used, and turn them into strengths. They offer a diagnostic questionnaire, based on 34 key areas of talent identified as a result of 2 million interviews conducted with employees in various organizations across the globe. It helps people to identify the five areas or ‘signature themes’, in which they have most potential for growth and success.[8]
The authors stress that the questionnaire is intended to identify areas of greatest potential rather than labeling people or ‘anointing’ them with strengths. Instead, it is intended as the first step in the process to becoming a strengths-based organization, and encourages self-awareness and self-confidence to help people understand where their key talents lie so that they can build on them.
The authors also offer a model, building on their two key assumptions above, which provides guidance on putting in place some of the systems and processes that will help to build a strengths-based organization. The three key areas of the model are:
1. Strengths-Based Selection System
Invest a great deal of effort in finding the right people with the right natural talents in the first place, rather than trying to fit people into the mold. The five key steps here are:
- Create a system for measuring talent in the selection process.
- Study the best performers in each role to identify the key talents against which you will measure candidates.
- Encourage an awareness of the strengths-based model with managers throughout the organization to help them make the best decisions about selecting candidates. Also, list the talents in recruitment advertising to help reach the right audience.
- Build a talent profile of the whole organization to help align the human resources strategy with the business strategy and help people to develop in the right direction.
- Gather data to identify a link between measured talent and subsequent performance to help gain business buy-in to the strengths-based approach.
2. Strengths-Based Performance Management System
Focus less on policies, procedures and outcomes and concentrate instead on measuring outcomes and helping people to find their own way towards achieving these outcomes. The four key steps are:
- Decide how to measure the desired outcome that every role should produce.
- Build a balanced scorecard for every employee, outlining what success should look like and giving an objective analysis of their performance.
- Encourage managers to: manage performance individually based on each employee’s unique talents; make people aware of their talents; and find ways of building them into strengths.
- Encourage managers to hold regular performance discussions (at least one hour per quarter), to help them get to know their employees’ key strengths.
3. Strengths-Based Career Development System
Help employees to develop their career in a way that allows them to make best use of their strengths, without necessarily promoting them up the corporate hierarchy. Power is not the only way of gaining prestige – prestige can come from having specialist knowledge and being empowered without necessarily being a team leader or manager. To give people a range of career options, follow these two steps:
- Define three basic levels of progression within each role to create more opportunities for development.
- Give people incentives to progress by, for example, reviewing pay structures and job titles.
The success of the strengths-based organization depends to a great extent on the buy-in and commitment of line managers, so it is essential to get them on board to disseminate and implement the values throughout the organization.
The strengths-based model offers an alternative perspective to the training gap model, although it cannot replace it entirely. As the authors themselves acknowledge, weaknesses must also be managed to ensure a minimum level of performance in a job role. Instead, the model offers a balanced approach to people development, encouraging an awareness of people’s strengths as well as their weaknesses.
References[1] According to surveys carried out by the Gallup Organization and published in: Marcus Buckingham and Donald O Clifton, Now, Discover Your Strengths (Simon and Schuster, 2002), p 5.
[2] Now, Discover Your Strengths, p 6.
[3] See statistics quoted at the beginning of this article.
[4] As above, p 8.
[5] As above, p 8.
[6] As above, p 25.
[7] As above, p 29.
[8] The questionnaire can be found
here. Guidance on using it can be found in the diagnostics section of the toolkit in this unit.
