Encourage your staff to play to their strengths

You’ve probably heard the phrase “play to your strengths”. The most famous proponent is arguably Marcus Buckingham, the New York Times best-selling author of books such as First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, and Now, Discover your Strengths.

His premise is simple: if you want to motivate employees, help them build on their strengths rather than hound them about their weaknesses. If you ask someone to do something they excel at, chances are it’s also something they like doing. And when people like what they do, they tend to work harder and voluntarily build expertise.

However, in an attempt to create well-rounded leaders, we are often told it is imperative to identify areas for development. It is an approach that we are all used to, ever since we received our first school report. But think about this for a moment. If one of your team is great at analytics, but doesn’t like presenting, what is the most likely outcome from sending that person on a presentation course? That team member will probably find the training excruciatingly painful and at best become a mediocre presenter.

Consider the alternative, where instead, you encourage your employee to become an expert in data analytics. Your investment will be multiplied as your team member now independently reads around the subject to find innovative ways to improve productivity. You have created a natural, positive cycle that results in superior business outcomes.

This is why some global firms are now changing the way that their staff are evaluated. Accenture made news in August, when it announced that it was shifting away from traditional, annual employee performance reviews and planning to move its more than 358,000 global employees to a new approach that we call “performance achievement”. This calls for managers to give timely feedback, on an ongoing basis, throughout the year.