What is the limitation of focusing on “weaknesses” only, without a complementary focus on strengths?

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Focus on developing people's strengths.

Most managers struggle to handle their tasks, and those of their team members, in a way that makes the most of everyone's skills and abilities. Maybe you're one of them!

For example, let's say you have to compile data for a key report, but data has never been your specialty.

Chances are, someone else in your team has precisely the skills you need – and they'd jump at the chance to put them to good use. Strengths-based leadership can help both of you to achieve your goals.

In this article, we explore how you can use this approach to develop yourself and your team members. We also examine its benefits and drawbacks, and see how it can make you a more effective leader.

What Is Strengths-Based Leadership?

Strengths-based leadership is the ability to identify and make the best use of your own and your team members' strengths.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you, or your team, should avoid learning new skills. But you should feel able to delegate tasks that you're not so good at to others who are more skilled or experienced.

In their 2009 book, "Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow," workplace consultants Tom Rath and Barry Conchie argue that the most successful teams possess a broad range of abilities. When you know each of your team members' key strengths, you can apply them in a way that benefits the team as a whole.

Why Is Strengths-Based Leadership Important?

A strengths-based approach can benefit your leadership and your team's performance in several ways.

First, admitting that you need help, and accepting it from your team members, promotes not only effective delegation, but also a consensual or "laissez-faire" leadership style. Asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness, and it enables you to concentrate on what you do best.

Sharing responsibility can also stimulate creativity, innovation, and a sense of mastery and purpose within your team. When you recognize your team members' strengths, you show them that you trust their abilities. As a result, they'll likely feel more confident to speak up and express their own ideas. They'll build expert power, which can further enhance their motivation and self-worth.

Strengths-based leadership can increase team engagement and job satisfaction. A survey by Gallup found that only one percent of employees become disengaged if their managers actively focus on their strengths, while 40 percent become disengaged if their key skills are ignored.

What's more, a strengths-based approach encourages you to hire people based on their individual abilities and aptitudes, not just because their skills and experience are similar to yours. This can lead to greater team cohesion, as team members complement one another rather than compete for the same "territory." It can also produce a more diverse team, with a wider range of strengths, skill sets, attitudes, and cultural values.

See our article on Job Crafting for more information on the benefits of tailoring jobs to individuals' skills and preferences.

The Risks of Strengths-Based Leadership

Despite the benefits outlined above, the strengths-based leadership approach does have some potential downsides.

First, encouraging people to only focus on their strengths can limit their opportunities to grow. Sometimes, pushing your team members to venture into unfamiliar territory can help to reveal skills they never knew they had. Be careful that focusing on individual talents and strengths doesn't cause you to overlook important knowledge or skills gaps.

You can also risk typecasting or "pigeonholing" your team members. As a result, your team members may become bored, frustrated, or resentful that others are developing new areas of expertise, while they aren't. Alternatively, your team members may become too comfortable, and therefore less creative and innovative.

Sometimes, strong team cohesion can lead to groupthink, where team members with dissenting views don't speak up because they don't want to go against the consensus.

This problem can extend to "hiring for fit," where you only bring in people who think like you and have similar opinions, rather than people who bring genuine cultural add.

In some cases, focusing on individual strengths may reduce team cohesion and effectiveness. If everyone "leads" in their own area, you might struggle to define the team's overall objectives.

What are the Key Strengths and Weaknesses for Teams and Leaders?

If you adopt the strengths-based leadership approach in your team, it's important to cover the full range of "soft" skills, as well as the technical and operational abilities that are required to get the job done.

Rath and Conchie identify four broad groupings that combine to produce strong leadership and effective team performance:

1. Executing: the ability to get things done. A good executor is skilled at arranging and controlling tasks, events and people. They are consistent, focused, and prepared to take responsibility for jobs.
2. Influencing: the strength to "sell," influence or persuade others to support ideas, projects, tasks, attitudes, or organizational approaches.
3. Relationship building: the ability to encourage people to work together toward a common goal or ambition.
4. Strategic thinking: a strategic thinker is skilled at analyzing information, seeing links and connections, and thinking both inside and outside the box.

Reprinted by permission of Gallup, Inc.. From "Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams and Why People Follow," by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. Copyright © 2009 by Gallup, Inc..

The modern strengths-based approach to managing people has been around for nearly 20 years, although many of the central principles and ideas were first introduced by management gurus like Peter Drucker and Dr Bernard Haldane long before this. The central premise is that focusing on strengths is a more powerful way of accelerating learning and performance in organisations because it unlocks people’s passion and energy, helping them achieve excellence in areas more aligned with their natural strengths and personality.

>> Learn how Strengthscope® provides a clear picture of each employee’s strengths at work

Today, strengths-based approaches are one of the fastest growing trends in human resources and for good reason as research shows they can yield significant improvements in employee engagement and productivity of around 40%.

Yet, one of the big mistakes companies make when bringing in this approach, fuelled by the US market leader, Gallup, and other companies working in this area, is to ignore people’s weaker areas and other performance risks.

This is likely to significantly undermine the value of the approach to businesses and result in unfair scepticism and critique by managers, executives and the press.

What happens when strengths-based approaches only focus on strengths?

A host of problems can arise for both the individual and company when there is a myopic focus on strengths without any consideration of weaknesses and other risks to performance. Some of these include:

• A work culture where people think they only need to focus on their natural strengths to be effective resulting in an abdication of responsibility in areas of non-strength.
• An avoidance of performance problems and fatal flaws that can derail a person’s performance and career.
• A failure to improve in areas of non-strength to achieve one’s full potential.
• Lopsided development where people use their strengths too much or in the wrong way, leading to overdrive behaviours and poor performance (this is discussed in more detail below).

Why the strengths approach is so powerful at dealing with weaknesses?

The strengths approach, when implemented in the right way doesn’t ignore weaker areas and other performance risks (including overdone strengths and psychological barriers such as poor self-confidence). In fact, it is far more powerful in helping to deal with these for a variety of reasons:

1. It promotes more solutions-based performance and development conversations about how to tackle weaker areas and other risks to peak performance. We coach people to consider creative ways to use their strengths, and those of co-workers, to deal with weaker areas and the breakthrough thinking and response we get is always fantastic.
2. Focusing on strengths in a development conversation results in a less threatening, awkward conversation; reducing defensive barriers to talking about weaker areas. One of the underpinning principles of the approach is that we are all ‘spiky’ possessing great strengths and also great vulnerability. We always emphasize this at the outset of a coaching or feedback conversation which encourages people to talk more openly and honestly about their weaker area and other risks/blockers to performance.
3. The strengths approach activity encourages people to partner with others who have strengths in areas where they are weaker. This complementary partnering not only helps reduce the impact of weaker areas, it also builds a strong team culture within the organisation.
4. The strengths approach is unique in helping people become aware of and reduce strengths that are overdone, or used in the wrong way, at the wrong time or in the wrong combination resulting in disappointing outcomes. For example, people who are too confident may become arrogant and brash, managers that are too compassionate may find it difficult to be directive and tough with staff when required and those that are too creative might overlook obvious, common-sense solutions. The damaging effects of overdone strengths was found in research conducted by Centre for Creative Leadership in the 90’s and should be well established and practiced by now. However, because of the competency and weakness-based nature of most training and development, the vast majority of people we deal with have never had feedback on or considered what happens when their strengths are overplayed. Helping them understand and manage the triggers and limiting effects of overdone strengths is an integral part of the strengths-based approach.

The strengths approach offers tremendous potential and it appears that we are now reaching a ‘tipping point’ where the majority of leading organisations are implementing, or piloting, this approach to people and talent management. However, a sole focus on discovering and optimising people’s strengths will not yield sustainable improvements in engagement and performance. To be effective, a strengths-based HR/talent programme needs to also help people find innovative and powerful ways to reduce their weaker areas, strengths in overdrive and other performance risks, especially when these are limiting the performance and growth of the person, team and/or company.

For more details on how to design and implement a strengths-based strategy that works, please contact us.