Tips to practice talent management and strengths-based leadership
(chapter 39 THE CONNECTION QUOTIENT — Marco Buschman)
Personal introduction
I look back on my time with the Dutch Royal Air Force with great pleasure. But, my ambitions lay elsewhere. I much preferred to go from one department to another as an internal interim manager, implementing changes based on a personal vision and a clear-cut organizational goal.
Even then, early on, I was already trying to connect people in different places in the organization, putting into practise the ‘integral management’ that was so often being talked about at the time. For me, this concept means that you can lead a department regardless of the formal speciality that has been assigned to you.
It’s about you daring to choose managers based on their qualities and ambitions, without focusing too much on the ‘coding’ or their background. Why, for example, could a business economist not become head of helicopter maintenance? Or, couldn’t an air traffic controller become head of Management Information Systems?
My airbase commander at the time, who was aware of my attitude and ambitions, decided to have an open and honest chat with me about my career. Ultimately, he saw two options for me.
First, there was the option of staying with the air force and becoming an advocate for my vision. At the same time, he showed me how far ahead of the pack I was. It would mean, amongst other things, that I would meet a lot of resistance. I would have to take into account that the organization would move one step forward and then one, two or even three steps back. I would probably end up feeling fulfilled and being frustrated at the same time, yet it would support the organization moving forward.
The second option that he saw for me was to leave the air force and go into the consulting industry, where I would have more opportunities to make use of my ambition and drive. The first option would primarily be good for the organization, while the second would be mainly good for me. He left the choice down to me.
What I appreciate enormously to this day is that he went into our conversation with openness and sincerity. Like a good sparring partner, he looked with me at my qualities and my ambitions, and together we explored how I could use these in a way that suited me best. That was far preferable to starting to reason based on the question: how can I retain him for the air force?
For me, this is why the commander remains such a source of inspiration and an example of strengths-based leadership. To this day I am grateful for that talk, because it heralded an important turning point in my career.
Do work that is suited to you
The Gallup agency conducted a worldwide study in which 198,000 people were asked the question: ‘Does your work take full advantage of your skills and training?’ Combining the answers with data about the performance of the departments in which these people worked produced clear insights.
Where people answered ‘definitely agree’, there was:
• 50% more chance that they worked in a department with very little employee turnover
• 38% more chance that they worked in a more productive department
• 44% more chance that they worked in a department with a high degree of employee satisfaction
This relation persisted after follow-up research. Where departments were able to improve their scores for productivity and customer loyalty, and where there was less employee turnover, more employees answered the question with ‘definitely agree.’
Based on these insights, it appears that it pays to allow employees to do work where they can make use of their strong points. The bad news, however, is that followup research by Gallup (2006) showed that only 17% of the employees during an average working day feel they’re particularly able to make use of their strong points.
What would happen to the productivity and profitability of companies if they were able to increase this percentage to 30%, or even 60%? What would happen if managers were to actually make decisions and manage based on making use of their employees’ strong points?
Motivation on the work floor
In 2008, Gallup again conducted research into the degree to which employees felt motivated at work. Here too, several clear-cut insights came to the fore.
In a work environment in which the manager first focused on the strong points of his employees, and secondly encouraged them to implement these strong points in their work (strengths-based leadership), 73% of the employees indicated that they were motivated. By contrast, in an environment where the manager focused on those areas where employee needed to improve (repair focused leadership), just 9% of the employees admitted to being motivated.
There are several more interesting insights to be distilled from the in-depth interviews Gallup has conducted over the past thirty years with more than 80,000 managers worldwide.
The results show that there are two assumptions that the world’s ‘best’ managers make: first, that the talents of every employee are unique and permanent. There was a sense that employees cannot acquire competencies in everything. Additionally, these managers assume that the strong points (and therefore not the weak points) of an employee offer the most potential for growth. These managers spend a lot of energy in finding the right talent for each role. They focus on the result to be achieved (the what and the why) rather than prescribing the rules and activities that have to be executed (the how). They also spend most of their time with their employees, and everyone is managed and treated as individuals.
Making conscious choices
Are you making use of the strong points of your employees and colleagues? And are you making use of your strong points, in a way that is aligned with what you consider to be important in this world?
Someone who made a conscious decision to do this is Narayanan Krishnan. This talented and highly decorated professional chef saw an old man on the street one day eating his own faeces. He was so shocked that he resigned from his job within a week to care for and feed the homeless, elderly and mentally ill.
Of course we don’t need to make such world-shattering decisions in our own lives. Yet, wouldn’t it be wonderful if people did work that made optimal use of their strong points so that they had a maximum impact in the world?
A final insight from the Gallup studies: most people sign up for the organization, yet they leave it because of their manager!
Tip how to strengthening your development
What are your strong points and to what extent can you make use of them in your day-to-day work? Does your focus lie in developing your strong points, or are you trying to learn competencies that are less developed (and that are perhaps not appropriate for you)?
Take your time to formulate the answers to these questions. Do so first on your own, and then with people in your direct environment who you trust, and in whose company you can completely be yourself and can say what you really think.
Finally, go to your manager. Do you have the guts to stand for what genuinely motivates you and really suits you?
Focus on developing the strong points of your employees instead of the competencies they are only moderately good at.
Drs. Marco Buschman
