5 Effective Ways to Manage People's Strengths

Today is an exciting day at Green Growing Things plant store. It’s annual review time! Annual reviews are important. The owner Bernice calls in her employees. She asks each to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Together, they come up with a personal development plan to shore up their weaknesses. 

But why? Although business results come from day-to-day management, Bernice has all of her people working on fixing their weaknesses. That’s the wrong way to go about it.

Annual reviews aren’t very effective. We think they are, but we’re gullible, aren’t we? A 1998 meta-analysis found that annual reviews were more about people having their voice heard and less about changing their performance. In other words, annual reviews are for kvetching. Let's take a look at a better way—effectively managing people by using their best qualities.

1. Focus on strengths.

Consider Bernice’s employee Europa. Europa's emotional intelligence is off the charts. She is the secret overlord of the Eastern Bloc, which she holds together through sheer force of personality (augmented, of course, with control of a small arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons). But when it comes to computer skills, she still thinks of a mouse as cat food. 

Although Europa’s development plan could concentrate on shoring up her weaknesses by sending her to computer class, at the very best, she’ll never be more than mediocre. Focusing on weaknesses is a great way to produce people who are mediocre-to-average. 

If, however, she concentrates on taking her already-impressive persuasion skills and boosting those, she’ll be absolutely world-class before long. 

And her personal development plan doesn’t have to focus on building her skills; she could spend her time applying her strengths in new ways. Dominating the Western Bloc, for example. 

2. Decide which strengths framework to use.

There are different frameworks you can use to help you determine your strengths. The Gallup Organization studied thousands of managers and published their book StrengthsFinder. The research was clear: having people concentrate on their strengths was better for both the people and the organization.

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