Do You Have the Right People in the Right Roles Based on Their Strengths Bringing Their Best Self Everyday?

I once had the opportunity to work with a CEO of a small but highly influential organization that enjoyed impacting at the highest levels of business and politics in the United States. One of the organization’s key players was an individual who had extraordinary intuitive abilities to ‘connect the dots’ about random concepts and ideas and to see the patterns and trends underlying what appeared to be random events or situations.

When I began working with this organization, this executive’s role was to develop ideas and execute and operationalize these ideas. However, this executive’s results cam at a high cost to the organization.

As human beings, we don’t necessarily have weaknesses. We certainly have opportunities for growth. However, those opportunities for growth are most often because we have simply over used our strengths to the point that they have become a liability. In other words, we have the volume turned up too high on our own strengths and gifts. When we do this, we tend to get ourselves and our organizations in trouble. 

For example, if a leader values the relationship with the customer and has the ability to develop powerful relationships with his company’s customers, he might get himself and his company in trouble when he gets the volume turned up too high and wants to give away the store to a favored customer. Another example would be when a leader values growing people from within his organization. He might get the volume turned up too high and over-estimate people’s abilities or under-estimate the amount of structure and support they will need to be successful in their new roles. My favorite example is the leader who cannot stop lead. He leads everywhere and in every situation; with his children and grand-children, with his neighborhood association, with random community groups and of course, within his own organization. When he gets the volume turned up too high on this gift, he no longer has a life. He’s too busy providing leadership to everyone but himself.

In the influential organization where one of the key executives had the ability to connect the dots and who also had the responsibility to do this as well as to execute and operationalize the new initiatives that developed, chaos, confusion and frustration among staff reigned. The basis for the high degree of frustration and poor morale among all employees was this leader’s gift, with the volume turned up too high. Because she could ‘connect the dots’ and intuitively see what was possible for her organization, whenever she got into the role of executing and delivering results she would most often get the volume turned up too high and her approach was too harsh for her colleagues. She was too confrontational and aggressive about the details for others to feel safe with her. She simply could not engage and enroll people in executing her vision in accordance with her expectations in a manner that was empowering and supportive of all parties. She clearly had the volume turned up too high and was giving too much focus and attention to the details of the plan.

After she gained clarity about what her unique strengths and gifts are, and she saw how she had been driven to get into roles that were outside of those strengths and gifts because she was energized by getting credit for executing, she was able to get herself into the most appropriate roles within her organization.

It wasn’t easy at first. Initially she balked at the idea that she had any special or unique gifts and strengths. Then it was hard to let go of her vision of herself as an effective executor. Of course, she also had to determine other ways to get her need met for that ‘credit’. 

Once she started to experiment with keeping herself in the right role, she noticed immediately that her ability to connect the dots and generate even greater ideas was occurring more frequently. When she got her organization properly staffed with exceptional managers who could execute her ideas, she found that she was even more effective in both connecting the dots and enrolling others in her ideas. The organization benefited tremendously. The ideas she generated resulted in increase customer satisfaction, increased revenue, decreased employee turnover and poor morale and substantially increased the influence the entire organization enjoyed.

Other clients I’ve had the opportunity to work with have realized similar quantum leap results from this same experience. When people get themselves into roles that are aligned with their strengths, effortless success occurs consistently. Some of my clients report that work no longer feels like work. It simply feels like getting to engage everyday with people they respect about issues that are important to them. Once people have this clarity, they can create new roles for themselves or move sideways or even backwards into a role where they had previously been more successful. With this kind of clarity about one’s strengths and gifts and how they heretofore have found themselves in trouble by getting that volume turned up too high on these strengths and gifts, you can design your work and your life in a manner that supports you in being your best self everyday and in every situation. Gone are the personality conflicts and negative water cooler conversations. Everyone is stepping up and speaking up. Others start to replicate your success by creating roles for themselves that are also in alignment with their own strengths and gifts.

When the entire organization or leadership team can have this awareness about each person’s gifts and, what I call ‘gaps’ that occur when they over utilized their strengths, the team can support each other. If we are human beings, we will get the volume turned up too high on occasion. The opportunity for growth comes about in determining how quickly we can re-calibrate the volume to the correct and appropriate level. When our colleagues have this information about our own gifts and gaps, they can help us recalibrate in the moment. After years of frustration, with some clients it can be as much as 25 years of history being frustrated with each other, they can now say in the moment during a meeting or conversation, ‘hey buddy, do you think you might have the volume turned up too high right now about this situation?”. They say it without any charge or emotion. It’s just a neutral question that allows the individual to stop and catch themselves. With this awareness, the shift, or re-calibration, can occur almost instantly with just a chuckle and quick recognition.

If you are interested in creating a workplace that fosters this level of self awareness and social awareness, ask yourself these questions:

1.   Do you have clarity about your own strengths?

2.   Do you know how those strengths align with your values?

3.   Do you get the volume turned up too high on your gift and stop throwing people the ball in a way they can catch it?

4.   Do you have a sense of the cost to your organization from a lack of this clarity?

5.   How might you help everyone in the organization gain this level of clarity individually and collectively?

(C) The Halpin Companies, Inc. 2020