Using strengths to engage employees in turbulent times
With staff costs typically representing the bulk of an organization's expenditure, businesses will need to find more cost-effective ways of engaging top talent for when the recession is over. In this article, James Brook suggests a five-step approach that moves away from large, quick-win engagement campaigns and instead, addresses the root cause of disengagement and solutions to it.
In many businesses, there's been an overriding assumption that people respond in the same, or at least in similar ways, to motivation and engagement programs and practices. Strong emphasis is placed on rolling out “one size fits all” solutions that may appeal to some employees, but generally fall short of the vast majority of individuals. The prevailing thinking in most organizations is that a high performance culture is created by identifying competency “gaps” against competency requirements and then closing these as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.
HR processes and practices, from selection processes to training and development to managing performance conversations, are all designed to identify and "fix" employees weaknesses. The latest studies by Gallup, however, show that weakness-fixing does not lead to outstanding performance, it only prevents failure (Buckingham and Clifton, 2001).
Hiring for strengths, managing to weaknesses
In their attempt to energize employees and motivate outstanding performance, organizations typically offer costly performance-related commission and bonus schemes, a host of perks and incentives and a menu of training and education programs. These can be simplistically referred to as “carrot” approaches to motivation and performance improvement. More ominously named “stick” techniques are used just as often. These include formal reprimands and sanctions for performance shortfalls as well as more sinister and demoralizing coercion and bullying tactics. It's always a mystery to us why companies hire for strengths, then manage people to their weaknesses by applying such tactics in such an indiscriminate, energy-sapping manner.
We're not suggesting that “carrot and stick” practices, when used appropriately, are without merit and measurable benefit. However, they often involve significant costs and fail to take account of the most critical aspect of employee engagement – the unique way an individual approaches their job, team and work environment, including those areas they find particularly energising and meaningful.
Rather than seeking quick-fix, generic ways to improve engagement, the starting point should be to understand employees’ unique strengths and talents.
Our experience suggests that rather than seeking quick-fix, generic solutions to improved engagement, the starting point should be to understand employees’ unique strengths and talents. We define strengths as “underlying qualities that energize us, contribute to our personal growth and lead to peak performance” (Brook and Brewerton, 2007). By helping employees explore and understand activities, relationships and work conditions which enable them to perform at their peak, organizations will be building strong commitment as well as a more durable competitive advantage which will last well beyond the next bonus or commission cycle.
Five steps to a high-engagement culture
So what are the practical steps to implement a high engagement culture?
1. Build awareness of strengths and talents
Because people typically don’t get much feedback on their strengths during their life and career, they frequently don't understand their strengths as well as their weaknesses. Many even experience anxiety, discomfort and embarrassment when talking about their strengths as they've learned to fear complacency, failure and being too different from the rest of the "pack". There are many ways to build self-awareness about strengths, including reflecting more on one's conscious experience, and feedback from colleagues and other stakeholders. However, we've found that the best is to use an objective strengths assessment tool such as ©Strengthscope (www.strengthscope.com). The benefit of such an assessment is that it provides a common language for people to start exploring their strengths and enables them to focus their energies on relevant opportunities to apply these more fully.
Like professional athletes, talented employees need to practice positive routines or ways of doing their work which reflect who they really are.
2. Act to make strengths and talents productive
Self-awareness is crucial, but not sufficient. As part of ongoing performance reviews, managers and their employees need to work in partnership to explore how these strengths can be made more productive, not only in the person’s current role, but in tasks and projects outside the role. Like professional athletes, talented employees need to build and practice positive routines or ways of doing their work which reflect who they really are and what comes most naturally to them. When practiced regularly and applied appropriately, these action routines result in successes which in turn reinforce the person’s self-confidence and determination to strive even harder; a “virtuous circle” develops which contributes to a culture of winning and success.
3. Minimize toxic routines that undermine performance
Toxic thought patterns and action routines rooted in a person’s weaker areas conspire to undermine confidence and performance. It's important for employees to understand these toxic routines and to mitigate them wherever possible. For example, if a person is generally disorganized and not energized by planning and organizing, (s)he should find someone who is organized to help, thereby compensating for this weakness. Moreover, the individual can look for and implement tools, systems and techniques to ensure this weakness doesn’t become so toxic that it derails his/her career.
But toxic routines don’t only originate from areas of weakness. Toxic routines can also stem from misprioritizing or unintentionally ignoring the issue at hand. For example, if a manager is too persuasive, (s)he may try to influence arguments in his/her favour regardless of the importance of the issue. (S)he may tend to engage in intellectual debate for debate’s sake rather than focusing on co-workers’ real interests and concerns. It's important to help employees manage these strengths in overdrive by setting clear expectations and providing corrective guidance and coaching at an early stage.
4. Learn to adapt strengths and talents to new situations
To get the most from his/her strengths, the employee has to learn to use them with agility, flexing them to suit the needs of different situations.
We have found that good performance is a function of a person’s strengths, the skills they have to fully leverage this strength and the agility they develop to flex their strengths and skills to the needs of the situation. Skills training will help employees develop the necessary skills and knowledge to unlock their natural strengths and talents. However, they will also need regular and constructive feedback and on-the-job "stretch" opportunities to perform outside of their natural comfort zone.
5. Measure progress and communicate successes
Putting in place robust, multi-method systems to measure the success of strengths-focused interventions and ensuring successes and learning are widely communicated in the organization, is crucial to the success of a strengths-focused people management strategy. Important questions to ask include:
- To what extent do employees believe that an increased awareness of their strengths and how to use these productively is contributing to their performance and sense of engagement?
- To what extent are strengths-focused approaches helping build more versatile, cohesive teams which promote the use of different strengths and talents to achieve business goals?
- To what extent are the new programs contributing to key performance indicators, including financial results?
Achievements, even small ones, should be captured, recorded and shared widely in the organization to build a sense of achievement, confidence and hope, which will drive further successes.
Talent is the lifeblood of most private sector organizations, particularly during the difficult market conditions we now face. However, many organizations still struggle with dated and ill-conceived approaches to engage their workforce. Like professional athletes, individuals and teams who focus on core strengths and perform tasks that are intrinsically rewarding will be more engaged and successful that those who are offered only extrinsic rewards based on the traditional “carrot” and “stick” approach. Matching employee strengths to organizational goals and priorities offers a cost-effective and energizing way to boost loyalty, resilience, flexibility and results.
Have your say
The level of engagement at your organization will be tested when the economy gets back into shape and the job market picks up again. Will your most talented employees remain out of loyalty and commitment, or walk out of your door and into your competitors, knowing that they'll be better valued elsewhere? How are you motivating employees in your organization when budgets have been cut? Is engagement something that has been factored into the strategy or are there simply more pressing issues to devote attention to? Let us know below.
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