Does your team know their strengths? Do you know their strengths? Individually and as a group. Let us tackle individually first. After all, that is what you look at when you select your team members or if you have been assigned an already formed team to handle, right? Why is it important to know your team members strengths (and weaknesses)? Knowing them – what does it tell you really? A lot! One crucial reason is if that person is right for the job. I do not mean skills here but more so, does the person have the disposition to be able to handle the job and the pressures that go along with it. If you have done interviews for potential employees, remember how your human resource department would give you a generic interview sheet on what to look for in an applicant? I have done interviews for so long that I already have the traits-to-look-for on those generic interview sheets memorized. I usually just passed through them and make it a point to add my feedback on what I have observed to be the strengths of the people I interviewed. I jot down a lot that most of the time I ran out of space. By some miracle, the hr staff can understand my sometimes chicken-scrawl-penmanship and vow that in the next interview I do, my penmanship would not resemble a hieroglyphic wall. What is important to me is that I point out the strengths of that person based on how they answered my questions, whether they were personal or in relation to their profession. Then I add to my comments how they would fit the job and work environment.
Another situation where I look at strengths of a person is when I do my training, whether they are new hires or existing employees. When you were not the ones who interviewed the new hires you are training, it does make a difference because you get to only see their strengths once they start undergoing the training with you. I remember at one company I worked for, they would just forward me the names of the new hires I would be expecting on the first day of training. My advice is you have time and get the chance to, ask your hr to give you some kind of a summary of what strengths or even traits they have observed when they interviewed them in order to help you have a background on your trainees. Armed with that, you can have a foundation or basis of what to expect out of them and probably have a starting point to gauge how their performance during the training will be. Will they be able to cope or not? Will they be able to handle the pressure? Will they be a fast or slow learner? How can you help them? So on and so forth. For both new hires and existing employees, once I get a glimpse and grasp what their strengths and weaknesses are, it becomes easier for me to evaluate them at the beginning, during and at the end of the training. I get to give a progress report of how they improved. This not only helps you as a trainer, but it also helps the supervisors in the department where they would be working. Most of all, I make it a point that the trainees themselves have a summarized copy of their evaluation so that they would be aware of their strengths and weaknesses and what they can do to improve themselves and excel even more once they are back in their work environment. If you do this, your trainees would thank you for it and appreciate that you noticed. They thrive on this.
For your team members, you – knowing their strengths individually will help you in how you want your to team to perform. Both as an individual and as a group. Make an inventory of the strengths and weaknesses of each and every member of your team. Then collate your list and see who among your team members have the same strengths and weaknesses and take note of the differences as well. Maybe one or two members may have the same strengths, maybe not. What is important is that you take note of all these. What about weaknesses? Which among them have the same ones? Different ones? In my years of supervising teams, I have always been an avid fan and a steadfast practitioner of what I call the “Buddy-System”. I do this not only on my team members but also on my trainees. What is a “Buddy-System” you may ask (if you have not heard of it before)? It is a simple way of making your trainees or team members to work together and be responsible for each other. How does this relate to their strengths and weaknesses? Easy. If you have one person whose strength is say, confidence in speaking in front of an audience and you have a team member who is not so confident – pair them up! The confident one can give pointers and teach and guide the other until he or she has improved and get the same confidence. Now you have turned a weakness into a strength. Say, in training, you have one trainee who excels in system navigation, pair him or her up with another trainee who is all thumbs. If you have a trainer who speaks well and is lively and outgoing, pair him or her up with the one who speaks in monotones and gets evaluated by his or her trainees as boring. I know the samples I have given here may be simple ones but I know you do get the picture, right? The message I would like to convey here is for you to use the strengths – and weaknesses – of your team that would benefit them not just as individuals but also as a team. This way, you can now identify what the strengths and weaknesses are of your team as a whole. Furthermore, this will assist you on what areas does your team excel at and what areas your team need improvement on. Getting each team member to have the same set of strengths that you feel they need to cope with the job, deal with the job and get the job done is like getting your Dream Team. The effort may be long and hard along the way but the reward – Priceless.
Another situation where I look at strengths of a person is when I do my training, whether they are new hires or existing employees. When you were not the ones who interviewed the new hires you are training, it does make a difference because you get to only see their strengths once they start undergoing the training with you. I remember at one company I worked for, they would just forward me the names of the new hires I would be expecting on the first day of training. My advice is you have time and get the chance to, ask your hr to give you some kind of a summary of what strengths or even traits they have observed when they interviewed them in order to help you have a background on your trainees. Armed with that, you can have a foundation or basis of what to expect out of them and probably have a starting point to gauge how their performance during the training will be. Will they be able to cope or not? Will they be able to handle the pressure? Will they be a fast or slow learner? How can you help them? So on and so forth. For both new hires and existing employees, once I get a glimpse and grasp what their strengths and weaknesses are, it becomes easier for me to evaluate them at the beginning, during and at the end of the training. I get to give a progress report of how they improved. This not only helps you as a trainer, but it also helps the supervisors in the department where they would be working. Most of all, I make it a point that the trainees themselves have a summarized copy of their evaluation so that they would be aware of their strengths and weaknesses and what they can do to improve themselves and excel even more once they are back in their work environment. If you do this, your trainees would thank you for it and appreciate that you noticed. They thrive on this.
For your team members, you – knowing their strengths individually will help you in how you want your to team to perform. Both as an individual and as a group. Make an inventory of the strengths and weaknesses of each and every member of your team. Then collate your list and see who among your team members have the same strengths and weaknesses and take note of the differences as well. Maybe one or two members may have the same strengths, maybe not. What is important is that you take note of all these. What about weaknesses? Which among them have the same ones? Different ones? In my years of supervising teams, I have always been an avid fan and a steadfast practitioner of what I call the “Buddy-System”. I do this not only on my team members but also on my trainees. What is a “Buddy-System” you may ask (if you have not heard of it before)? It is a simple way of making your trainees or team members to work together and be responsible for each other. How does this relate to their strengths and weaknesses? Easy. If you have one person whose strength is say, confidence in speaking in front of an audience and you have a team member who is not so confident – pair them up! The confident one can give pointers and teach and guide the other until he or she has improved and get the same confidence. Now you have turned a weakness into a strength. Say, in training, you have one trainee who excels in system navigation, pair him or her up with another trainee who is all thumbs. If you have a trainer who speaks well and is lively and outgoing, pair him or her up with the one who speaks in monotones and gets evaluated by his or her trainees as boring. I know the samples I have given here may be simple ones but I know you do get the picture, right? The message I would like to convey here is for you to use the strengths – and weaknesses – of your team that would benefit them not just as individuals but also as a team. This way, you can now identify what the strengths and weaknesses are of your team as a whole. Furthermore, this will assist you on what areas does your team excel at and what areas your team need improvement on. Getting each team member to have the same set of strengths that you feel they need to cope with the job, deal with the job and get the job done is like getting your Dream Team. The effort may be long and hard along the way but the reward – Priceless.