As a manager, should you focus on your employees’ strengths or push them out of their comfort zone? They were hired based on their skills, talent, and strengths, but should you further develop their strengths or encourage them learn new skills? It’s a balancing act, with both approaches having their advantages.
“Get out of your comfort zone, that’s where the magic happens!” That’s what we all are being constantly told in order to improve our skills and achieve personal success. However, figuring out the most meaningful way to do that can be a difficult challenge. Luckily, for example this Lifehacker article breaks it down very well. Have a look at it if you want advice on how to get you closer to the magic zone, but in short:
Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone increases your creativity, enhances productivity and makes you more adaptable. Thus, pushing one's limits sounds like the perfect advice for every individual as reaching out to new situations keeps us learning and expanding our skills. Yet, research conducted by Gallup shows some impressive figures (just to mention few) for companies focusing on their employees’ areas of strength:
Focusing on people’s strengths can have an amazing impact on the team’s performance. A while ago, a junior sports team I coached improved their rank from regional top 10 to regional #2 and to national #9 in just one year, when I started leading the team based on the players’ individual strengths. The team was in a challenging position as most of the clubs had a formed representative team in the age group whereas our team was formed based on the time they started playing, thus having a wider range of skills.
Our success originated in that all players had the chance to feel they were able to contribute towards the team’s performance. While the first two lines had capability in scoring and thus the largest impact in the team’s results, the third line was very skilled in defense, giving valuable recovery time for the first two lines. Focusing on defense and achieving excellent results in it gave a remarkable boost to those players’ self-confidence. They weren’t able to score, but they were an important part of the team, received continuous positive feedback on their efforts and were able to develop as players. Targets worth pursuing at every workplace. Harnessing employee strengths will increase employee engagement and create a solid foundation for team success.
In the workplace creating a culture boosting employee strengths surely is not quite as straightforward as in sports. A way to get started is to:
The difficulty is balancing between utilizing areas of strength and pushing people's limits. A good rule of thumb is to share the responsibilitis between individuals and managers. A manager’s job is to ensure the team’s success, so naturally they should cultivate their employees’ strengths. Getting out of comfort zone should be mainly everyone’s own responsibility. After all, the limits how far one can push out of comfort zone is personal and varies over time. During stressful times, it’s better to take small steps and have confidence boost by operating in areas of strength.
If you are able to promote a culture where people’s strengths are identified, it’s far easier to use self-organized teams. As our earlier post explains, it’s the highest-performing team mode. When people understand their co-workers’ strengths better, it will be easier to appreciate each other’s differences and expertise. Creating a workplace where unique strengths flourish is certainly a leader’s job.
Even though getting out of comfort zone is everyone’s own responsibility, we all sometimes need a nudge to start pushing our limits. A stretch assignment every now and then is just what we need. If you forget to develop new strengths to people, they will find a place where they can grow their expertise. A friend of mine, talented professional, was hired to a position where he was able to use his strengths in a new context. His employer, focusing too much on using his strengths forced him eventually to find a new employer as he had too little room to develop new strengths in that position.
Outperforming your competitors requires individuals and teams who excel in their work, so you’ll go far by cultivating the strengths of your employees. Relentlessly developing people will give you competitive advantage and adaptability, and you’ll gain the most of it by nudging your people out of their comfort zone every now and then. Just remember to focus on the lessons learned, when people fail in their experiments while they are out of their comfort zone. How to do it is worth a post of its own, so luckily we have Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes who shared his experiences in this great article.
And what happened to our team? In the end, our team’s advancement was cut out against a team with excellent counterattack tactics. We still tried to play with our strengths even when they weren’t working. We had lost our adaptability.
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