The prevailing way of thinking involves designing a job and asking someone to just do it. This is a mistake. There are many benefits to understanding an individual’s strengths and matching them to their work.
Q: I’ve heard about the benefits of considering employee strengths at work. How do I incorporate this into my work and my team?
ACE Advises: Gallup has extensive data about using employee strengths. The data demonstrates that when humans work within their top 10 ranked strengths, they feel like the work is aligned with their purpose.
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The prevailing way of thinking involves designing a job and asking someone to just do it. This is a mistake. There are many benefits to understanding an individual’s strengths and matching them to their work. The strengths concept is a shift in which you look at the individual, what they’re great at and adjust the work to utilize their strengths.
Let’s be realistic. In business, we have jobs that need to get done and molding everything around one person may not be efficient. However, data shows that everyone wins when small shifts are made to work with an employee’s strengths. It isn’t that a human needs to be doing work within their top 10 100% of the time. Rather, if it happens some of the time, impressive things happen.
A first step as a leader is to take the strengths assessment. There is an online assessment for about $60. It will open your eyes to how parts of your work match (or do not match) your natural tendencies. Take note of the awareness of your ranked strengths and how they correlate with your work.
In doing this, you will experience the process, benefits, and how you can use it to benefit your team.
Angela Hansen, an ACE member, is the co-founder and chief business officer at Range Culture Co., provides practical tools for employers to retain valuable employees. Range Culture Co does workshops offering essential skills like communication and collaboration, conflict management, employee coaching, relationship building, change management, and hybrid workforce management. Angela can be reached at angela@rangecultureco.com
