Leveraging Team Strengths

I attended the 2018 Minnesota ICF Awards honoring organizations and business that are integrating coaching into their culture. Each nominee spoke of the importance of focusing their development efforts on improving their organization’s culture in order to improve results.

Aligning the right people with diverse strengths to problem solve and execute a plan is essential. Focusing on your people and the unique strengths they have to contribute is foundational when building a strong Culture of Trust.

This is part 2 of the 3-part series on Building a Culture on Strengths by Diana Gabriel, Certified Strengths Strategy Coach.

Structuring teams with a diverse set of gifts and talents feeds synergy, innovation, and motivation. Click To Tweet

In today’s dynamic environment, leaders get great benefits by grouping their people into multidisciplinary teams to make the most of their strengths. Structuring teams with a diverse set of gifts and talents feeds synergy, innovation, and motivation. When paired with other strengths mindsets, people inspire one another, learn from each other and collectively get things done. The sense of unity reduces barriers and creates a collective drive to solve problems with creative, innovative solutions. As a leader you are better able to forge a focus on results rather than specific work assignments, leading to a higher rate of engagement, inclusion, innovation, and productivity.

When everyone is responsible for contributing their gifts and talents for the greater good authority is distributed throughout creating an empowered team. People develop a greater spirit of self-sufficiency and decision-making, providing higher levels of ownership, pride, and enthusiasm in their work. They contribute their strengths and empower their teammates to use theirs as well. They apply their strengths to embrace challenges and have a more positive outlook when they’re given the autonomy to perform at their best.

You can utilize your peoples’ strengths even more by creating workplace layouts that maximize collaboration and communication within each team member. A combination of private and common spaces, with appropriate noise abatement and elbowroom, yields maximum engagement. Team members are naturally led to combine their strengths with the different disciplines and backgrounds of their teammates, allowing them to get to know, trust, and influence each other. The power of interdependence can compensate for a lack in certain strengths.

Aligning People’s Strengths With Projects
When you select projects for the strengths of your people you have a far greater possibility of success than those who simply dole out work without considering strengths. Intentionally crafting projects that specifically challenge the strengths of a person or team are also more successful. Your people are more inspired and innovative when invited to contribute their strengths, especially when they are pushed to their limits.

Do you know your people’s strengths? How have you strategically leveraged your teams’ strengths? Do you routinely match projects to the strengths of people and teams? I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me here and on LinkedIn.