Strengths-Based Leadership: How To Optimize Your Team’s Ability

At the back of your mind, you would have a question about how leaders ensure that the people working for them would achieve the company’s top objectives that will create business growth.

Understanding how to get individuals to operate in alignment with one another is undoubtedly a challenging task.

Leaders must navigate various personalities, opinions, skill sets, values, and other leadership qualities while growing a team.

Doing that also helps them understand what position a person plays and the duties that they can perform to serve the group perfectly.

One of the most valuable ways to do this is by practicing strength-based leadership. Strength-based leadership focuses on finding the strength of every person in the group so that the group thrives together ideally.

What Do You Mean By Strength-Based Leadership?

Strength-based leadership is a scientifically proven way to optimize teamwork based on ever-growing research evidence

The strength-based team is understood as a team of talented and different individuals who are known for their strengths, and they compensate for the shortcomings of their team members. Every team member has unique strengths and competencies.

The key to leading a strength-based team is all about understanding how the power of some of the team members can compensate for the weakness of other team members.

Team members should be aware of their talents and skills to sustain motivation and confidence. Strength-based team members are also mindful of the team members’ limits and talents.

In addition, they understand what their colleagues are most likely to feel, think or act on the job.

What Are The Importance Of Strength-Based Leadership?

There are several reasons why strength-based leadership is in the leader’s interest to practice. From people knowing their strengths and how they can contribute in the perfect way to the team and company to understanding the executives’ stress by understanding which employees they can delegate some responsibilities to, this type of leadership serves different purposes, minimizing leadership errors.

Some of the fantastic benefits of strength-based relationships are mentioned here.

Removes unrealistic expectations

The best part about strength-based leadership is that it is perfect for those who oversee the team.

It is because it will pressure individuals to be great at whatever they are doing. When leaders or employees feel they must do their best in all parts of the business, they are most likely to go through emotional fatigue or work burnout, or work anxiety.

It is difficult for any person to manage; instead, they should focus on one part and be successful in that part of the business.

It helps in understanding the missing qualities that a team member needs

It is challenging to understand why a team is performing poorly if a team leader knows their members’ strengths and weaknesses.

For instance, when leaders understand what their team members are perfect at, they can give them the work in. which they can excel.

When a team member might be excellent at strategic thinking but bad at finishing projects, in this case, it would serve the company well to hire an individual who would be perfect in this area.

They ensure that the right people are doing the right job with their strengths and weaknesses and team up to function with minimum errors.

Improves the team bond

Leaders who go with strength-based leadership train the teams to rely on each other to fill in all the places they are weak.

Furthermore, this allows the employees to learn how to depend on each other to drive perfect momentum and make a lot of difference in their life.

When they do so, the groups will achieve all their objectives together, which they could not achieve alone.

It is relationship-building work that forges close bonds among team members by encouraging them to play to each other’s strengths.

Build optimum confidence

Bringing to light people’s strengths also helps in building confidence. This can make employees feel inspired, motivated, and engaged at work.

For example, it is validating to hear valuable feedback and feel the contributions are appreciated, recognized, and needed.

When this type of positive psychology is followed, you can see tremendous results in your workplace. When the leaders discuss the right things that their employees end up doing, they also help team members understand their purpose in the company and life.

This results in optimum happiness, fulfillment, and joy at work.

Leads to Excellence

Instead of spending too much time fixing somebody’s weaknesses makes them less impactful.

For example, if you spend a lot of time trying to be good at everything in your company, you will never be good at anything.

While society encourages people to be all-rounded, this approach breeds mediocrity worldwide. Hence one of the most common misconceptions is that one must be a well-rounded leader.

When the leaders only focus on growing strength, they can set the team up to perform optimally.

How Can You Implement Strength-Based Leadership?

There are diverse ways as a leader you can start incorporating strength-based leadership and guide your team.

You can begin to reflect on the strong suits through the strength-based leadership test to start doing the same thing.

You can also have some team members take the strength-based leadership test to help you understand the top qualities.

Learn about the different domains of various strengths

You must understand the strengths and your team’s strengths at the same time.

Executives do this through the strength-based leadership test, which will identify which of the four domains they fall under, like executing relationship building, influencing, and strategic thinking.

Additionally, to understand the strength of your current employees, the results will also tell you what is missing in your team.

For example, if 80% of the people you hire fall under the category of relationship-building strength, then your team needs coverage in other parts of the get categories.

Well-rounded teams must have at least one person in each quadrant.

Executing

People in the executive leadership domain are strong enough to drive and fulfill all the strategies and plans. They do not go around just philosophizing about what can be done.

Instead, they end up developing the action course that they want to pursue instantly. They are also perfect management, so you do not have to stress about whether they will be completing their work.

Furthermore, people with this specific strength also take on a lot of responsibility. They are looking forward to giving positive results because of the same thing.

Executors look forward to coordinating with the team members on how to get going and reach all the company objectives.

Influencing

People who are perfect at influencing can get people to do what they are doing. Some people might say they are persuasive, but they develop followers based on how they treat others.

They practice the transformational leadership style. They are engaging, make the team feel wholly seen, understood, and heard, demonstrate better emotional intelligence, and work as motivational figures that inspire and support people to accomplish huge objectives.

They are perfect storytellers who know how to paint the portrait of a massive vision while capturing the heart of their target audience.

It is because they generate the emotional hook and are successful at having people answer all calls to action.

Relationship building

People who have strength in building relationships are gifted at connecting with all others. Their primary focus is ensuring better bonds between people around them.

They are perfect at growing trust and improving a sense of belonging, besides creating a vast community. It is because relationship management is one of the major domains of emotional intelligence.

People with specific strengths have more emotional intelligence. It allows them to make the most of developing interpersonal relationships with their teammates.

Whether they show empathy during any challenging moment or deal with any workplace conflicts between arguing team members, they do what they would do to ensure the team remains perfect.

Strategic thinking

Analytical thinkers have foresight. It means they can see where the company would go and how to get there.

They are naturally solid at making some sense of complex situations and simplifying them in actionable steps.

It means that the team must follow those steps, and they will look at logic and facts before reaching any conclusion.

Even though this is not as emotionally engaging as other parts, they surely add balance to the teams because they are perfect at bringing overzealous people down to earth.

Tips for leading your strength-based team

• Identify shared values of team
• Encourage job crafting
• Delegate based on strength
• Identify leader’s strength
• Identify team member’s strength
• Assigned roles based on strength
• Set goals on strength wise
• Provide development opportunities
• Celebrate achievements

Identify the shared values of your team.

When a team understands their shared values, it will ensure that they are heading in the same direction or on the same page, irrespective of their strengths and shortcomings.

Shared and use are the common factors motivating the team members to achieve the goals collectively.

This does not refer to any organizational values addressed during the hiring or onboarding process because of the relationship values that create the bonds between the team members.

Shared relationship values also help understand the team members’ attitudes towards working together for shared success. Understanding and respecting each other’s strengths and weaknesses help relationships avoid misunderstandings that are caused due to unrealistic expectations.

Delegate based on the team members strengths and weaknesses and encourage job crafting

Leading the team helps delegate the tasks and responsibilities to those able to fulfill them. Some team members might be experienced entirely in performing functions that do not clear their strengths.

For instance, you might have a financial planner who is a perfect communicator. So, if the accountant is great at authoring the report or creating graphics, you must encourage job crafting to convey all the information.

Job crafting is all about people who tailor the jobs in a way that gets the work done and provides perfect fulfillment.

Assign all the strength-based rolls to the team members

Ensure all the team members have a role assigned to them per their unique strengths. There is no point in asking any excellent researcher to make the sales pitch or marketing strategy.

Every team benefits from the perfect blend of talent rooted in other personality types. For example, the team can have you as a leader, a motivator, an ideal communicator, and a person with a vision for the project.

A perfect team needs a mix of all the personality types, which includes experts’ planners’ collaborators, communicators, creatives, and others, for some people will have some strengths that cover more than another personality type.

Set the strength-based objectives for the team

Once the team members have a transparent picture of their strengths and weaknesses, it is easy to set strength-based objectives.

When organizing a team, the leader must ensure that the members’ different strengths offset other members’ shortcomings so that they are a well-rounded team.

When setting goals, you must ensure that you are clear about what you want to achieve in the medium, short, or long term.

You must set goals at the team level and encourage individuals to use their objectives with the team using a framework including SMART goals.
When people start using their dreams in ways that meet the team’s goals, they are most likely to achieve them quickly. You also must set deadlines and track your progress regularly.

Provide strength-based feedback

Experts say that regular strength-based feedback is effective at improving performance and steering a good amount of professional development instead of addressing any weaknesses or deficits.

The method is essential because when you provide feedback to any of your team members, they will consider it a stepping stone and will work perfectly in the next project.

Conclusion

You need to understand your signature strength and weakness in the leadership style.

Besides that, you must understand the strength of your team members and ensure that you have a balanced team covering all the personality types.

You must assign the roles to team members based on their strengths and clarify the workplace relationship values.

Finally, you must set all the strengths based on the short, long, and medium-term objectives.

FAQ’s

More To Explore:

• Why Is Employee Reward And Recognition Important For Your Team?
• What Is Transformational Leadership: Unleashing The Power Of Influence
• Team Alignment: A Guide, Meaning, Importance And Examples
• How to Develop Team Strategy Planning With Tips & Definition
• Exploring Belbin’s Team Roles Theory: Enhance Team Dynamics