There's a reason why managers’ focus on strengths and weaknesses is so important.
Most businesses are obsessed with fixing weaknesses. They conduct performance reviews, 360-degree assessments and the like to evaluate how well employees and managers are measuring up to predefined goals and competencies.
Managers are instructed to look at an employee’s assessed gap and coach for greater performance in areas of weakness. But such assessments usually pay only cursory attention to an employee's strengths.
Performance reviews and subsequent remedial programs focus almost exclusively on weaknesses.
Focus on What Works
Too many managers assume that employees need to be good at many things, rather than excellent in the key areas.
Recent studies have firmly established that focusing on what works, followed by a program to scale it to greater levels, is a more practical and efficient approach to developing people and their performance.
Managers who take a strengths-based approach help employees identify strengths and align their talents with their work.
These managers don't ignore employee weaknesses, but fixing them isn't their primary focus.
These managers don't ignore employee weaknesses, but fixing them isn't their primary focus.
Managers who focus on strengths enjoy superior team performance, as opposed to managers who focus on weaknesses.
It’s not enough to wait for performance reviews and project completion to deliver feedback.
Praise must be frequent, ongoing and specific to current behaviours — not vague or general.
Sadly, we’re predisposed to look for the negative: in ourselves, in others and for external events. We rarely scan our environment and ask:
· “What’s working right now... and how can we do more of it?”
· Instead, we look around and ask: “What’s broken—and how can we fix it?”
The problem-seeking mindset is one of the brain’s shortcomings, while also serving as a protective device to spare us from danger and making mistakes.
In Switch: How to Change things when Change is Hard(2010), Dan and Chip Heath write about “finding the bright spots” in our work and lives. After extensive research, the two business school professors have documented how we’re wired to focus on bad over good.
It’s no wonder performance reviews and feedback are usually aimed at what’s not working. Yet, some successful individuals can override this brain tendency and focus on the positive, at least enough to create successful relationships both at work and home.
John Gottman, a psychologist who studies marital conversations, finds that couples who sustain long-term marriages use language that reflects five times more positive statements than negative ones.
In fact, he calls this “the magic ratio” and claims it will accurately predict if a marriage will last.
He urges managers to use a ratio of 5:1 positive statementsin conversations with employees.
He urges managers to use a ratio of 5:1 positive statementsin conversations with employees.
With thanks: Coach2Coach newsletter, August 4 2010.
