It is not easy managing a team. Conflicts, Egos and Power games are all too common in every workplace. Most leaders spend countless hours on team building lessons and books to be able to hone their skills, but if they were to focus on a single-most trait with the purpose of building a great team, it would be STRENGTH.
“Your strengths have an I-can’t-help-but quality to them. You can’t quite articulate why, but you find yourself drawn to certain activities repeatedly. Even though you may be just a little scared to do them, just a little nervous—‘Maybe I’m not good enough, maybe I’ll fail’—you nonetheless feel a pull toward them.”
The biggest trouble we face as leaders and even individuals is identifying strengths. They are skills and abilities that are so easy and some team members make it seem so effortless and difficult to spot. If you have heard of StrengthsFinder, it is a revolutionary assessment technique that makes strength mapping a breeze, and the best part – they are all self-assessed, so the team members discover their own strengths!
Buckingham identifies four SIGNS of a strength:
- S=Success. You succeed at activities in which you’re strong.
- I=Instinct. You instinctively know how to accomplish a task.
- G=Growth. You grow each time you perform a strength.
- N=Need. You feel a need to be involved in a activity.
Clarify and confirm your own and your team’s strengths by examining the conditions that make an activity particularly engaging:
- Does it matter why I am doing this?
- Does it matter for whom I do this?
- Does it matter when I do this?
- Does it matter what this activity entails?
Perhaps public speaking is one of your strengths—but only when it involves large groups, on a topic you know well, with the goal of closing a sale or entertaining your audience.
Once you clearly identify your team’s strengths, you’ll be better equipped to design projects and tasks and set the stage for excellence. If, however, you’re struggling to be able to pinpoint strengths very easily, work with a leadership coach to gain important insights.
Learn with Horses has developed cutting edge leadership and team building programs that combine the power of Strengths Finder and Horse guided development to create mind-opening experiential learning.
