The surest route to excellent performance by everyone in your team is to develop their strengths and manage their weaknesses. Here are 7 ways to do that.

1. Understand Strengths Theory. One of the mysteries of the human condition is that we are all born with unique gifts. One estimate argues that we can each do something better than any 10,000 other people. Those who find a way to discover their talents and develop them are often regarded as lucky, gifted or excellent in their chosen field. But we are all capable of following this path if only we are allowed to or shown it. This is perhaps the greatest service that a manager can perform for his or her team.

2. Help People Discover Their Strengths. A strength, or potential, is a natural gift or talent inside us. It is likely to show up as...
· something we love doing and get a kick out of
· something that we learn to do easily and naturally
· something that we can't wait to have another go at
· something that leads to excellent performance
· something that excites us
· something that we are prepared to take risks with.

For managers, discovering a person's strength and building on it means that you are likely to find no resistance to plans to develop it.

In a study of sales people, it was found that the people who consistently achieved the best results were those who found it easy to ask their prospects for the sale. It felt to them like the natural thing to do. Less successful sales people, on the other hand, felt guilty about asking for an order too quickly; preferred to wait for the prospect to approach them; and used the standard sales patter of their organisation rather than their own. For the first group, selling was a strength; but not for the second group.

3. Help People Discover Their Weaknesses. Strengths theory argues that just as we each have unique strengths, so each of us has unique weaknesses. The theory makes three important points about weaknesses...
a weakness can never be turned into a strength, no matter how hard you try
even if you devote all your resources to improving the weakness, it will only ever be improved to the level of average, no more
while all your energy has been devoted to improving the weakness to reach an average standard, you have wasted time and energy that could have gone into improving the strength.

A weakness will always be a weakness; a strength can become the basis for excellence.

A weakness is likely to show as...
something that turns us off
something we dread doing
something that, no matter how many times we try and no matter how much help we get, rarely gets any easier
something that we feel forced to do, a "must"
something that provokes anxiety in us
something that leads to low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy.

4. Get People To Focus On Their Strengths. Many of us go through life playing down our strengths. We might dismiss them as unimportant -- "Oh, that. That's nothing. I've always been good at children's stories, but it's just a hobby." – or think they belong to our personal lives not work, "I love working with children with disabilities but I couldn't make a living out of it".

We can do no greater service as managers than to awaken people to their own unique potential. We can do this either by pointing it out,
"Did you know you have a real knack with children...?" or by asking direct questions at review sessions, "What have you enjoyed doing most of all this year?"

5. Develop People’s Strengths. Developing people’s strengths is the quickest route to top-notch performance. That’s because (a) people don’t find it difficult to do things they’re already good at, and (b) they don’t need any motivation. Some people will work on their strengths for free because that’s what they love to do.

In a three-year study at the University of Nebraska, 1000 students were put through a speed-reading course. Those who were poor to start with, reading at around 90 words a minute, progressed to an average of 150 words a minute. Those who were already good to start with, at 350 words a minute, progressed to a staggering 2900 words a minute. The study is evidence that the quickest route to excellent performance in anything is to do more of what you're already good at.

6. Manage The Weaknesses. If managers concentrate on building the potential of their team they should not neglect the fact that weaknesses cannot be overlooked. An individual may be weak in an area that is essential for the job to be done well. The wise manager recognises when staff have weaknesses which will not be transformed into strengths and manages them. Some of the techniques for managing weaknesses include...
delegating the jobs to others for whom it is a development opportunity
removing them from the person's job
finding ways to get the job done outside the organisation eg by sub-contracting
doing things differently so the job becomes unnecessary.

7. Combine People With Complementary Strengths. One of the ways in which managers can build on employees' natural strengths is to create teams in which people complement one another.
In the consultancy team, Elaine had a natural gift for getting along with anyone; Ali was the ideas man; and Eric the experienced manager. Under the old way of working, everyone in the team made their own customer contacts, devised solutions to suit their customers, and delivered their own packages. After development appraisals were introduced, the working system was changed to suit individual strengths: Elaine led the team on all contact work, Ali became responsible for all new ideas and Eric took charge of the implementation side of things.

Result? A happy team and outstanding performance.

We know from research that the most successful managers are those who devise work around their people rather than get their people to fit in to the work. That’s because when you play to people’s strengths, you cannot help but be successful.

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