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Leveraging Strengths Versus Correcting Weaknesses

By: J. Mark Davis, Managing Principal, Valitus Group, Inc.

As companies continue to search for ways to reduce costs and, at the same time, improve productivity with fewer resources, too many organizations are looking for growth in the wrong places. We hear a lot about the need to be customer-centric; in effect, to be externally focused. As a sales effectiveness consultant, I agree with the notion that you need to understand what customers need and value from your sales force, as well as the degree to which you're delivering on those needs and values relative to the competition. Yes, it is important for the sales and marketing function to understand where are the most profitable customer segments and how do we most effectively penetrate them. A certain amount of awareness and understanding of your external environment is absolutely needed to win.

However, if we're only externally-focused, we're likely missing the opportunity for meaningful change that lies within. I'm not talking about the self-critical navel gazing with which most of us are familiar. Consider for a moment the human species' historic fixation on correcting weaknesses. This is reflected in the fact that psychological study and thought has long been focused on what's wrong with people and how to fix them. It is only with the recent, ground-breaking research and study in the field of Positive Psychology that researchers are starting to look more at what is going right and how to use it to enhance flourishing both on an individual and organizational level. Unfortunately, most organizations today haven't caught on to this Positive Psychology wave and, instead, maintain an innate focus on identifying and correcting weaknesses. In this way, many organizations miss the real opportunities for transformative growth that lie in understanding and building around the inherent strengths of its employees, including the sales force.

Flawed Assumptions

The book, "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. of Gallup, Inc. asserts that most organizations make two fundamentally-flawed assumptions about its human resources:

1. Each person can learn to be competent in almost anything
2. Each person's greatest room for growth is in his/her areas of greatest weakness.

The book goes on to identify some of the common characteristics of organizations that hold to these assumptions:

• The organization spends more money on training people once they're hired than on selecting the right people in the first place
• The organization focuses on the performance of its employees by legislating and emphasizing work style (i.e., rules, policies, procedures, and behavioral competencies) over results
• The organization spends most of its training time and budget on trying to plug gaps in employees' skills or competencies
• Individual development plans are built around "areas of opportunity" (i.e., one's weaknesses)
• People are promoted largely on the basis of acquired skills and experiences.

Following these assumptions, employees' strengths are taken for granted and emphasis is placed on weaknesses or, as many put it, closing "skill gaps." Sound familiar?

Strengths-Based Assumptions

The alternative is to focus on your team's natural talents and develop each employee so those inherent talents are transformed into strengths. This requires changing your assumptions about people. According to Gallup research, the two assumptions that guide the world's best managers are:

1. Each person's talents are enduring and unique
2. Each person's greatest opportunity for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength¹

Certainly these assumptions are counter to conventional wisdom today. These two assumptions explain why the best managers look for talent in each employee and focus on performance outcomes or results as opposed to the process or method of achieving the results. This is why I've said for years that sales compensation plans should focus on results as opposed to activities.

The Upside

In Gallup's research on the engagement of employee strengths they have asked the question, "At work do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?" to over 1.7 million people in 101 companies from 63 countries. Alarmingly, only 20% of surveyed employees answer affirmatively that their strengths are in play every day. The real opportunity here is that when employees answer "strongly agree" to this question, they are significantly more likely to work in organizations with lower turnover, higher productivity, and higher customer satisfaction scores¹. Bottom line: the organization whose employees feel their strengths are engaged every day is more successful.

Do you know the strengths of the people on your team? Do you really understand your own strengths? I've recently gone through the Gallup StrengthsFinder Profile to better understand my own strengths. The StrengthsFinder Profile measures 34 themes of talent to help find where one has the greatest potential for strength. If you're a manager, I strongly suggest taking the StrengthsFinder Profile yourself first and then have your direct reports take it. It will help sharpen your understanding of where your team's strengths lie that can be leveraged into promoting the improved productivity and customer loyalty we're all looking for.

¹Now, Discover Your Strengths, Buckingham and Clifton - Free Press 2001