The Strengths Revolution:!!How a strengths-based approach is transforming performance and changing lives!

Private & Confidential

Sally Bibb!

Strengths-based development!

•  What is it?!

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•  How is it different from traditional approaches?!

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•  Why are organisations adopting it?!

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•  The impact!

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•  How does it work?!

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The idea is not new!!

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“One cannot build on weaknesses. To achieve results one has to use all the available strengths – these strengths are the true opportunities. The role of the leader is to make the weaknesses of the organisation irrelevant.”

Peter Drucker (management consultant, educator and author) 1909 – 2005

“Your work is going to fill a large partof your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the onlyway to do great work is to love what you do.”

Steve Jobs

What is a strength?!

A strength is something that a person:

- Loves doing!

- Is good at !

- Is energised by!

People who play to their strengths tend to:!

- Be productive and successful!

- Be satisfied with life and their work!

- Have the greatest growth potential!

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(Unspoken) assumptions that are challenged by the strengths approach!

That people!

•  Can be all-rounders!

•  Don’t have enough strengths!

•  That you need to be different to be better!

•  That progression means climbing ‘the ladder’!

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That excellent performance comes from!

•  Fixing weaknesses!

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The difference!

Pre-strengths•  More is spent on training and development than

selection

•  Attempting to develop the undevelop-able (new development approaches can make things worse)

•  No distinction between weaknesses that matter and weaknesses that don’t

•  Focus on legislating behaviour

Mindset = greatest reward comes from developing everyone’s competencies

Strengths-based•  Development focused on building on strengths

•  Overcoming weaknesses = damage limitation

•  Money, time and effort spent understanding strengths of high performers and selecting more of them

•  Focus on understanding and stretching strengths

Mindset = greatest reward lies in understandingand leveraging strengths

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What makes for top performance?!

ü Strength/motivator – your innate pattern of thought, feeling or behaviour!

ü Knowledge - what you know/understand!

ü Skills - the ‘how-to’, technique or steps!!

Given equal skills and knowledge, strengths differentiates superior performers from the restwh

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Strengths

Aspiration / Motivation

World-class Performance

Competencies (knowledge,

skill)

Performance management…!

When you talk to your manager about your performance what do you spend most of your time talking about?

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24% - talk about my strengths!

36% - talk about my weaknesses!

40% - We don’t talk about that stuff at all!

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20% of employees in large organisations feel they use their strengths at work every day!

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!Source: Gallup!

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Strengths-based development!

•  Adding skills and knowledge to strengths to create strong capability!

•  Clear understanding of each person’s strengths!

•  Understanding that excellent performance comes from leveraging strengths not fixing weaknesses!

•  Enhancing performance by using under-used strengths!

•  Understanding and avoiding impact of over-done strengths!

•  Knowing how to manage/mitigate weaknesses!

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“People are more engaged – taking more ownership oftheir development”Team Leader, Saga

Why do organisations adopt it?!

They want:!

•  To understand how to maximise performance!

•  Their people to take ownership!

•  A way to deploy their talent effectively!

•  A motivating and energising approach!

•  An alternative to the soul-lessness of competency approach!

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“The Engaging Minds Strengthsmatch tool is a fantastic way to help people to consciously understand what they really enjoy doing, what they’re really good at and what they would thrive on in the future. These kind of insights are of huge value to managers and team leaders as they seek to effectively steer the work of their teams, improve their staff’s welfare and promote a culture of high motivation”Simon Coote, Head of Energy Industries and Innovation, Scottish Government

Case study: SABMiller!

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Strengths-based leadership development!

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Impact!

•  100% engagement and support from stakeholders!

•  Buy-in and excitement from participants – “you mean you want to talk about my strengths?”!

•  First time that global understanding of how leadership development contributes to business performance!

•  Observed shift in leadership behaviours!

•  Double-digit growth in Nigerian market!

•  50% premium offered by buyer due to leadership capability!

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“Our partnership has been gold-dust in ensuring that the leadership framework has been implemented across the business. It is no accident that Anheuser-Busch InBev offered a 50% premium for SABMiller’s shares on the back of confidence in the leadership capability of SABMiller”.

Samantha Rockey, Global Head of Leadership Development

Some feedback!

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“Sales have gone up!”Team Leader

“People are more energisedand productive”Manager

“People understand what drivestheir performance”Team Leader

Strengths-based performance management!

Principles

•  Performance reviews focus on leveraging strengths (CLC research shows performance increases by 36%) !

•  The manager’s role is to explore, using specific questions, people’s realised strengths, unrealised strengths, overdone strengths and weaknesses !

•  It’s not about ignoring weaknesses but differentiating the ones that matter and the ones that don’t. Then knowing what can be trained in and what can’t!

•  Reward for ‘how’ as well as ‘what’!

•  Used to improve individual performance and team performance!

Process

What does a strengths-based performance management process look like?!

1.  Managers are trained in the strengths approach (includes assessment of their own strengths)!

2.  Workshop for managers includes how to have the conversation (it’s very different)!

3.  Deciding what to do about people who are genuinely in the wrong job!

4.  Stretch those who are already great to leverage their strengths to improve their own !

and the team’s performance!

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“It creates a much more constructive climate - people understand what drives their performance” Team Leader, AA

Strengthsmatch™!

Realised strengths

The person uses them regularly though may not value them/takes them for granted!

Weaknesses

Things they are not good at & drain them.!

Unrealised strengths

The person doesn’t know they have them or use them!

Overdone strengths

Which become a problem!!

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The before and after!

From this…•  Behavioural competency frameworks

•  Trying to make everyone all-rounders (thus focusing on weaknesses at expense of strengths)

•  Attempting to develop the undevelop-able

•  Performance management focus on process

•  Organisation primarily responsible for people’s careers

•  Primarily deficit approach to performance management

•  Thinly spread development resources

Mindset = greatest reward comes from developing everyone’s competencies

To this…•  An understanding deeper than behaviour

•  Development focused on building on strengths

•  Performance management focuses on strengthsand results

•  Individual primarily responsible for their own careers

•  Leaders who understand strengths based principles

•  Leaders as enablers

•  Focus development resources on making the best better

•  Teams that are a coalition of strengths

•  Communication is personal and straightforward

Mindset = greatest reward lies in understandingand leveraging strengths

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Summing up!

•  Competences are a ‘ticket to the game’!

•  Strengths are the performance differentiators!

•  Our greatest growth potential lies in building on our natural strengths!

•  Builds engagement: key driver or business performance, healthy climate and commitment!

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“It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity.”

Peter Drucker

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sallybibb@engagingminds.co.uk