What are the benefits of managing based on the strengths and talents of the group?

Benefits when managing based on the strengths and talents of employees

Improve self-confidence

When you recognize the strengths of your team members, you show them that you believe in their abilities. Therefore, they will feel more confident to express their own opinions. They are also inspired to use those strengths to help the team be more creative and innovative.

Improve productivity and satisfaction

If you give your team members the freedom to use their strengths, this will drive them towards higher performance, which in turn helps improve employee satisfaction at work. This type of work environment will help form a strong team that can more effectively and successfully respond to challenges and tackle obstacles.

Better attitude and mental health

When you leverage the strengths and talents of your employees, work becomes enjoyable instead of a source of stress. If employees spend more hours of their day using their strengths, they are less likely to experience mental health problems such as anger, sadness, anxiety, nervousness, and stress. On the contrary, they are more likely to be happy and have a positive attitude at work.

Improve engagement

Focusing on strengths will improve team cohesion and contribution. In fact, only 1% of employees become distracted when their managers actively focus on their strengths while up to 40% of employees will become bored if their key skills are ignored.

Developing strengths is faster and easier than improving weaknesses

It's easier and faster to build on your strengths than to try to fix your weaknesses. There's less stress because employees have mastered what they do, you're just helping them get better.

Conversely, if the focus is on improving a weakness, employees will be reluctant to make the change, especially if the change is contrary to their natural talents. As a result, this approach can be a long and arduous journey, resulting in you getting frustrated and giving up.

“It is better to give employees tasks that match their strengths and aptitudes than to try to put them in the wrong positions.”

How to manage based on employee strengths?

To help a team perform at its best, you need to do more than direct and delegate tasks. Truly effective managers can recognize the unique strengths of each team member and optimize all those "gifts of nature".

If you're wondering how to leverage your team's strengths and talents, here are some suggestions.

Get to know team members

This is obvious, but for successful employee strength management, you need to get to know your team on an individual level.

Take the time to chat face-to-face about past roles, favorite projects, skills, and accomplishments. This will help you understand what areas they are interested in and which tasks best align with their strengths.

Help team members understand each other's strengths

Team members who are aware of each other's strengths and talents will work better as a team. Let's take an example: The more vocal member of the team may be frustrated that member B doesn't seem to be contributing at all. However, if A knows that B has strengths that are important to the projects they work on but haven't played well, A will rate B better, leading to improved team cohesion.

Give employees the opportunity to use and develop their strengths

A manager's job is to assign employees to tasks and projects where they can best use their strengths.

If you've followed points 1 and 2 above, you should have no trouble assigning tasks and projects to your team members based on their strengths. However, just assigning jobs according to their forte is not enough. You must also:

– Give them advice on how to overcome obstacles at work, give feedback and encourage them to work on their strengths and develop new skills.

– Incorporate employees with complementary strengths into teams so they can learn from each other.

- Encourage employees to set career goals that align with their strengths and passions.

- Provide training programs to help employees develop strengths.

While focusing on an employee's strengths and talents helps them become more confident and productive while trying to improve on a weakness that results in a negative experience, that doesn't mean ignoring the flaws. Make employees aware of their weaknesses so they know what is holding them back so they can take improvement steps to increase job satisfaction and support the team to grow stronger.