The Benefits of knowing your Team Members Strengths

Your Strengths are your natural, innate talents, the things that you are just good at, for example:

·?????Public speaking.

·?????Managing.

·?????Leading.

·?????Planning.

·?????Organizing.

·?????Selling.

·?????Socialising.

·?????Presenting.

Unlike Skills, Strengths are not learned but may be enhanced with training.

Managers who delegate and assign work based on a team member's Strengths to improve not only an individual’s performance but also produce a compounding effect on the whole of the team’s performance. Strengths-based work benefits include:

·?????Greater productivity, creativity, and innovation.

·?????Promotes collaboration.

·?????Increases individual and team engagement.

·?????Sustaining good mental health.

·?????Experiencing less stress with greater positivity.

·?????Feeling more confident with enhanced self-esteem and self-confidence.

·?????Greater work and job satisfaction.

·?????Increased feelings of belonging to and wanting to remain with the team.

·?????Team members are far more likely to ask each other for help.

To gain these benefits (and any team can) a team must learn about and therefore know each team member's strengths. This allows team members to partner with each other to capitalise on their strengths and to also assist each other in compensating for weaknesses or lack of knowledge.

How to do it – Use a Team Strengths Questionnaire

This questionnaire captures each team member's strengths, their natural way of thinking, feeling, or behaving, that is their natural talents, the things they are just good at. Unlike skills, strengths are not learned. Team member strengths provide the ability to deliver consistent, near-perfect performance in a specific task simply by using innate talents. Strengths when multiplied by the investment in time spent practising and developing them, resulting in a personal and unique knowledge base.

A team's awareness of their mutual strengths is more important than the specific composition of those strengths. In other words–a team member just knowing their strengths, as well as the strengths of the other team members, leads to higher engagement and performance. When team members value each other's strengths, they more effectively relate to one another and avoid potential conflicts.

Understanding each other’s strengths boosts group cohesion and creates positive dialogue. When you have people in roles that fit their strengths and talents, their energy and passion can fuel their own great performance and inspire the same from their colleagues. Team members who know and use their strengths are better performers; they require little if any external motivation. Once each team member's strengths are aimed at the same purpose, and the team is aligned on the same goals, this is where true excellence and success happens.

Team members must be able to:

·?????Name and understand the individual strengths of everyone on the team. See a clear connection between each other's strengths and behaviour, and see the link between strengths and success.

·?????Form partnerships that encourage the development of their mutual strengths. Use their knowledge of each other's strengths to plan, strategize, analyse, and direct their actions.

·?????Understand that excellence is not achieved in isolation. Excellence is created through the merging of team members' differing strengths. Encourage collaboration among team members who have complementary strengths.

Strengths Questionnaire

• To be completed by each team member.
• Then presented to the whole team for discussion.

?FREE Mini Guide