Getting a Team to Leverage their Strengths to Collaborate

I was asked to enable a team to use their strengths to improve their collaboration as a team with the help of the CliftonStrengths assessment.  

Love that thought - especially since I'm a certified Strengths Strategy Coach.

This team were the leaders of R&D and had teams reporting in. So yes - their average experience per person would between 18 to 20 years.

The challenge - covering a lot of content along with reflection and discussions within a short time.  Specifically I was given a day, after a lot of negotiation. There's many dimensions to CliftonStrengths that have to covered before a participant is able to understand how strengths manifest, as well as how they can be triggered, unconsciously and consciously.  This is true for group settings as well as one-to-one strengths coaching.

The base workshop design was from my Signature Workshop "Decode your Strengths", and I included a lot of pre-work and post work - i.e. articles to read and exercises for self-reflection.

The participants were wonderful and invested their time to complete the pre-work assigned to them, in addition to completing the CliftonStrengths assessment.  Their participation during the workshop definitely enhanced the learning experience for everyone.

We covered the 34 Strengths, Great Wall of Talent, Theme Dynamics, how collaboration happens when weaknesses are negated by complementing strengths, and ended the day with short case studies of how strengths, when understood, can be used to manage different situations at work.

What's next? Practice and Reviews.  Let's see how they go.

Here's some of the action from the day.

Building the Top 5 Great Wall of Talent

The Great Wall of Talent

Creating the Team Domain Map

Do connect with me if you wish to build a Strengths-based Team or Organization that can use their strengths to effectively collaborate with each other.

Who are you, really?

I came across this superb song on YouTube some years ago.  It made me reflect a lot on what I was doing, why, for whom, and so on. 

Recently, it showed up again on my playlist.  The reflection started again.  These lines made me rethink what I am focusing on in my life and my work.  I gave some focused thought to my strengths and whether I was actually using them at work and at home. How am I being perceived when I do this? Am I fully aware of myself? Is there something for me to let go? Add on? Continue doing? 

What next for me? Perhaps a little more clarity on who I am, what I do....

You can listen to it here.

Leave a comment and let me know what you came up for you after you heard the song, or maybe just read these words on the picture.

Don’t bother working on weaknesses. Success lies in playing to strengths

This article is why I use Strengths in my work as a career transition coach and as a trainer / facilitator. 

Here's a line from that article:

"Encouraging a focus on knowing and building strengths is the route to a vibrant, happy workforce giving their best."

On a personal note:

Too often I have seen talented people stuck in roles that are not aligned with their strengths.  They are in their current career / job, because they were guided by someone who had their best interests and safety at hear. They are not at their most liveliest during the interview.  They seem to be going through the motions at work.  They're reluctant to make a transition to the career that is better aligned with their strengths, perhaps because of loans to pay, fear of the unknown, or fear of what people will say.

You might say - but we all have weaknesses, and we can't really say no if our work involves that.  

That's true.  What you can do is understand the weaknesses they have that matter in relation to the job in hand, and see how it can be complemented by a colleague's strengths - AND vice-versa.

Read the details in article here.

To know more how to leverage your strengths, please view my articles:

Strengths-based Career Conversations

Setting Your Goalsetting Conversation

9 Critical Aspects to consider when setting goals

How do I develop my Strengths?

And I am NOT! - How to leverage your strengths for Resilience?

Why 'Any Job' will not be appropriate for you?

Leadership expectations - 2022 and beyond

Here is another list of #expectations of #skills and capabilities that a #leader should have / develop. Read the article here.

I don't personally see anything new in this list (Read the book "How Did They Manage?" for more about leadership management). Here's what I know: The Strategically Smart leader knows that he cannot know and do it all, so he hires a team that complements his weaknesses with their #strengths and hires a Strengths coach to support them all.

Using Clifton Strengths as a Filter / Lens to see the world

Here's an excellent article that will help you gain more clarity about your strengths.  This is also a part of what I learnt during my Strengths Strategy Coach Certification.  My teacher and strengths mentor, DeAnna Murphy, and her team at Strengths Strategy (People Acuity) had created a Strengths Lens tool, among many other tools to help coaches like me work with our clients.

Just another reminder for me about why I chose to become a Strengths Strategy Coach.

Read the article here

Want to understand your unique lens of viewing the world? Contact me here or at +919820155778 for an appointment.

My Igniting Performance Certification

 Another new certification I obtained is the Love Your Work: Igniting Performance and Energy from #PeopleAcuity - A Strengths Strategy Company.  Strengths Strategy Inc is where I studied for my Strengths Strategy Coach Certification.  

It was easy to decide to sign up for this course, because it also ties in with my work to help my clients improve their performance.  I wasn't disappointed.  I liked the course and the exercises of self-reflection were really powerful.

Doing this course has uncovered new insights for me in improving my own performance and the performance of my clients, especially those who want to design a career based on their strengths.  Thanks @DeannaMurphy for this amazing course.

Before stepping out of your comfort zone

 

Designing a Career based on your Strengths

Here's a superb, concise article that gives you great tips on improving your career - via your strengths. Click the link here

As you will see, it talks about searching for careers quite differently i.e. from a perspective of strengths & tasks.

If you want to know how to design a career that's based on your strengths, I am India's First Strengths Strategy Coach and will definitely be able to coach you on this.  So, write me a note here or at ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or call me at +919820155778.

The Relationship between Feedback and Learning

 https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-feedback-fallacy?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr

An outstanding detailed article on #givingfeedback to your team. Here are two lines that made me think, among others - "Excellence seems to be inextricably and wonderfully intertwined with whoever demonstrates it." and "Focusing people on their shortcomings or gaps doesn’t enable learning. It impairs it."

#cliftonstrengths #strengths #strengthsdecoder #strengthscoaching #feedback #learning #teamcoaching #teammanagement

Your Career Path

It's important to find your own path, or how will you know what your capable of? You will never discover your strengths and limits if you walk someone else's road.  So if you need help defining your career path, write to me on ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or call +919820155778 for an appointment.  Both Domestic and international inquiries are welcome.  Sessions conducted in person and on Zoom / Skype / Gtalk.

What Coaching can do for you?

"You can now use a coach to get your personal life together, set and reach goals, start and expand a business, get ahead faster in a corporation, improve your job performance, and communicate better with everyone. There are literally hundreds of things you can use a coach to help you solve, master, achieve, or develop." Thomas J. Leonard


The Strengths Strategy Coaching approach I offer will provide sustained results and enable you to consciously use your strengths.

Call me on +919820155778 or leave me a message here if you want to know how to decode and leverage your strengths.

Setting your Goalsetting Conversation

While stretch Goals can be useful in forcing people to break old rules, and do things better, they’re worse than useless if they’re totally unrealistic, or if the people who haven’t met them aren’t given the chance to debate them beforehand and take ownership with them 

-          From the book  Execution by Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy

I’m currently reading this book 'Execution' and came across this line.  I was reminded of a time during my corporate stint when the management decided to set targets for the next year at a number that was 3X of the previous year without any discussion or debate with the teams concerned.  The various heads didn't receive any inkling on how the target was arrived at, or the basis for it. While they continued to drive their teams towards this aspirationally stretched target, one could see that actual energy was missing – because they didn’t own the targets. A key reason for this was that the targets were considered unrealistic, and not in sync with market conditions.

Why am I writing about this now?  The world is in a state of chaos thanks to COVID 19, and with social distancing norms, lockdowns and travel bans world wide, many businesses don't know if they will survive this.  Without this crisis, there’s a tendency among some managements to grudge the permission of leave among their employees, irrespective of the reason for the leave.  With the current lockdown in India and other parts of the world, business is pretty much at a standstill. In India, the government has asked organizations not to lay off employees, and pay their dues.  Employers will naturally be considering how to make up their lost business when things return to normal.  They will feel that they have to push their employees extra hard since there’s a lot of catching up to do.  And the first thing they will do is increase the targets above the norm in an effort to make up for lost time. It could be a stretched goal or an aspirational goal.  Such targets are usually handed down, with a minimum of discussion. The discussion on “how to reach the goal” is not open or encouraged, since "there's no time because there's so much to do". This is one example of how it looked in a Dilbert cartoon strip (Thanks to Scott Adams for his kind permission).

In a world economy which is already slowing down since the past 6 months, such a strategy that doesn’t take this into account when setting these new goals, is going to get limited results or find the strategy backfiring.  A limited result would be akin to wanting to win a hundred meter race that is being held at a height of 15000 ft above sea level.  It is extremely tiring and draining and things will only get worse from there, if persisted.  

A strategy that backfires would mean that -

1. The unrealistic aspirational target can demoralize the employee morale since they may get a feeling that the organization doesn’t care for them or their work-life balance
2. The demoralization is further accentuated when the “how” of a stretched / aspirational goal is not articulated sufficiently.
3. The stretch /aspirational goals may encourage employees to "do what it takes to get it done", and may indirectly encourage unethical behaviours (small and large). This will negatively impact the quality of the output, and the culture of the organization.
4. Employees at all levels (who are also quite smart) will quickly recognize that the target is quite unrealistic (they do know what stretch targets really are), and would do their work at a little above lip service to save their jobs.  In other words, they will be quite disengaged, which doesn't serve the organization well.
5. Excess stress will hit those who are working wholeheartedly on the target, leading to burnout and perhaps more unplanned leave, if not resignations due to high work pressure or layoffs for not meeting the targets.
6. The organization’s systems and processes will be heavily strained, causing errors, a dip in quality out and service, possible breakdowns and further delay in meeting the targets.

What’s to be done?  I’m not advocating low targets – every business owner / organization knows their own industry well enough to do this task.  I also encourage stretch targets because they can help you to grow, and it can be very enjoyable and satisfying if the tasks  are aligned to the strengths of the employees.  

Here are some guidelines which could be useful:

1. Be realistic when setting the goal.  Start with “Why” – as Simon Sinek advised.
2. In today’s times especially, one person will NOT have all the answers.  So do engage a neutral, external Facilitator to enable your HODs and their immediate reports to have meaningful discussions on ‘HOW’ the targets will be realized, and pool their knowledge and resources to make it happen. You may even decide to invite your vendors for a part of this meeting, especially when discussing support for the execution of the goals. Use this opportunity to include review dates, specific milestones and so on.
3. Encourage and support interdependent behavior – which is about knowing their strengths and balancing their weaknesses with the strengths of other employees, as this will enhance their performance. This becomes easier if your team has undergone their individual Clifton #Strengthsfinder assessment and have this clarity.
4. Ensure that there is clarity on what support (lead generation, training, manpower and other resources) will be provided by the organization and what will not be provided.
5. Ensure that performance reviews are human, practical and based in compassion (not to condone negative behaviour) across the organization.
6. Ensure that performance reviews are solution-oriented and focused on business outcomes, instead of blame games.
7. Don't go overboard with designing an elaborate rewards mechanism, and do ensure that people are rewarded for consistent results born of collaboration and innovation. One person can't know it all OR do it all.

As you can see, this is going to take time, which you may feel that is not worth the investment.  I would submit that it would be more costly (financially and otherwise) not to take this approach. I would also like to point out that this approach will positively impact the employee engagement within your organization, because they will feel feel trusted, and involved in the future of the organization, rather than turning up to office for a paycheck..

Want to know more?  I'd be happy to have a call on +919820155778 to discuss more with you. Or you can leave me a note at ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com

Employee Engagement for All Situations

When people are financially invested, they want a return.  

When they are emotionally invested, they want to contribute

- Simon Sinek

Employee Engagement has been in the conscious mind more and more over the past decade, ever since it was talked about by Gallup's Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham in their ground-breaking book "First Break all the Rules".  It has frequently been quoted in HR conferences and HR initiatives along the lines of "X percentage of employees in organizations are disengaged".

Here's a simple definition from Google - "Employee engagement is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organization, and put discretionary effort into their work". 


And Forbes.com - "Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals".


Here's what it looks like:

This means that employees put in more than required effort in their work, because they're not just working for a salary or bonus or promotion, but job satisfaction, transparency, along with fulfilling personal growth goals and other things.

A cursory google search will turn up loads of links on the topic, including definitions, how to do it, things to watch out for and so on.  And this article is not really about those things. This article is about what managers can do to drive engagement.

While we're at it, I would like to clearly state that Employee Engagement has nothing to do with fun activities (birthday celebrations, festival contests, annual day events) run by HR and / or line managers every month / quarter.  These are stress buster activities, nothing more, nothing less.  For those who think that these fun activities are employee engagement, ask yourself - "How many candidates will join my organization or take back their resignation because we are running these fun events?"

In my experience of twenty years in HR across different industries, Employee Engagement comes down to the relationship between the manager and his team. This is applicable to for all departments including HR.  Employee engagement is not the responsibility of HR, but the responsibility of anyone who leads a team, irrespective of organization level or delegation. When you come to think of it, it's also the responsibility of those who don't have teams, but work across the organization.  HR can provide a framework of Talent Management (Hiring, Performance Management, Rewards, Learning), but the actual work has to be done by the manager personally.

Why the manager?
The manager has to set goals for the team, ensure discipline, manage and monitor performance regularly, provide effective feedback, groom and develop his team members, and ensure goals are met.

So how does the manager drive engagement in his team ? (the term "he" is interchangeable with whatever term you like)

• He has to know his team, beyond their resumes.  
• He has to let the team get to know him / her - beyond the designation.
• He has to develop a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.  
• Define the goals
• Monitor and manage performance
• Enable them to understand and use their own motivation in their work.

Some may say - Who has time for all this?  It seems a lot of work, and it definitely does require substantial investment of time from the manager. Unfortunately, there's no shortcut from this time investment.  There is of course, the Situational Leadership Model by Dr. Paul Hersey  (Center for Leadership Studies) which can help the manager do all of this.

Here's an image of the model:

The #SituationalLeadership model will enable you to:

• Allocate the appropriate task to the correct employee
• Adopt an appropriate management style with each employee (not a one style fits all approach)
• Get employees to participate in the planning the execution of the department's work.
• Identify high performers
• Manage low performance
• Develop the capabilities of the team members

In a crisis or in Business As Usual (BAU), a leader / manager has to take frequent decisions in many areas where he and his team have to get things done.  The Situational Leadership model is an excellent guide for doing all the above-mentioned points. 
For Situational Leadership to succeed, the manager must know both his own Strengths and Weaknesses, as well as those of his teams. A tool such as the #CliftonStrengths or the #PRISM Brainmapping Professional (or DISC, FIRO-b, etc) is necessary as a precursor to ensure that the team becomes an engaged, smoothly-oiled unit. A few reflective questions to start  could be :

1. "What do I need from my team?"
2. "How do I support my team so that they deliver what I need from them?"

Of course, Team Coaching and Individual coaching will also help, along with regular conversations which treat the employee as a person and not just an employee.

Want to know more? Leave a note here, or write to me on ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com to set up a call. I can also be reached at +919820155778 for a conversation.

Talent-based thinking patterns during COVID-19 challenge

I came across this extremely apt and wonderful description by Dries Lombaard of the 34 strengths of the CSF (Clifton Strengthsfinder) - i.e. how each strength will manifest / react during #stress situations, like the current #coronavirus pandemic.

Here's a sample:

Achiever – “There goes my to-do list, at least working from home can be more productive.”

Arranger – “I will simply re-organize myself.”

Belief – “Working from home, closer to my family…yeah!”

Consistency – “Let me check on the policy and procedure regarding working from home.”

Deliberative – “I already prepared for this, I knew the risks.”

Click the link below to read more:

Strengths behaviours during coronavirus

Building an organization based on strengths - Plato

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, 

when each man works at a single occupation, 

in accordance with his natural gifts, and 

at the right moment, 

without meddling with anything else.

- Plato

Questions about effectively using Strengthsfinder at the workplace?

So you have heard about strengthsfinder and how it creates magic at work.
But you're not really sure what can happen. What if the same conflicts and quarrels resurface?

Here's a short snippet from an article by Gallup on this. Enjoy.
The Five Principles of Strengths-Based Development are listed below. 

1. Themes are neutral.
2. Themes are not labels.
3. Lead with positive intent.
4. Differences are advantages.
5. People need one another.

Read the article for more details.

https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/249821/strengths-based-principles-action-not-forget.aspx?fbclid=IwAR278wU8MWwSfxABepq4yZI3T3kej1lJjsVTUccbRM3WFI8GbbK_XyZ1nJI


If you wish to explore more, please call me on +919820155778

When Top Performers Collaborate

The ability of an organization's employees to collaborate effectively will provide superlative performance for the organization.


Have you wondered how some teams of Top Performers deliver extraordinary performance, and some deliver barely adequate performance?

I have been thinking on this for a long while now.  It started with football (soccer) where I watched a team of stars being shut out by an team of fairly decent players.  This was when Greece won the Euro Cup in 2004 by defeating a much stronger Portugal in the finals.  This was surprising since Greece was not expected to be in the finals in the first place, because they're not a team that's really well known for highly talented football players.  As you may be aware, such cases in sports are deeply analyzed and dissected in order to find out what went right or wrong during said match.  Lots is written about how they won, and why they won, and I won't repeat any of that.

I was also reminded of time when I was playing carrom (click for the rules if you're interested) in college with an extremely accomplished partner.  We were both considered to be among the best players in college.  Whenever we played as partners, we initially lost more often than we won.  We soon realized that these losses were because we waited for each other to pocket the pieces and attempted difficult shots, rather than do it ourselves.  Once we realized this, we quickly ensured that we took care of what was within our range instead of leaving coins for each other to pocket.  It made a tremendous difference to the number of games we won as a team. We reached second place in our college championships.

Both these examples helped me realize that top performers can get in their own way of achieving success, despite executing well-intentioned efforts.

More recently, I came across this video (which blew my mind) on YouTube where a few top rock guitar players did a cover of the Game of Thrones theme song, and actually made me think about writing this article.  Here's the original theme for comparison.

In the corporate world as an HR professional, performance management and people development are of key interest to me. I often wondered why someone did well for a few months, and then was fairly average, sometimes mediocre during others, and bounced back.  I realized that in organizations, there is rarely one single right answer to questions of performance or non-performance. While we tend to laud the individual performer, s/he would be nowhere (or extremely burned out) without a set of teams with whom he collaborates. For eg. even the sales performer needs a team from marketing, operations, finance and HR to help him / her deliver both his / her goals and theirs.  There are also external indirect teams of vendors and franchises that help drive success.  All of them may or may not be top performers

From the examples above, I have tried to dissect what it is that top performers do when they collaborate together so that they create something magical.  Here's what I came up with (I know this formula can work in the corporate world too):

1. They bring their A game to the fore.  They lead with their strengths.
2. They do their homework, and practice regularly (Deliberate Practice).
3. They listen to each other so deeply, that the handover from one person to another is seamless, effortless and hardly noticed by onlookers.
4. They keep newcomers briefed on their purpose as a group and what they expect as a contribution from the newcomer, without telling them what to do, allowing them to improvise and be creative.
5. They keep track of what each other is doing so that they pitch in, adding their own style, and making the entire track sound much better.
6. They are able to do all of this because they know what each one is capable of, what their styles are and are willing to allow each other to shine.  Simply put, they know each others' strengths and weaknesses, because they have shared these things with each other.

What should a leader do to get their top performers to collaborate?

1. Give them a clear brief on outcomes and timelines.
2. Give them necessary resources and listen to their requests.
3. Get out of their way.When you combine employees' strengths with a performance system based on OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), the levels of collaboration will accelerate and you will find quality output.

If you want to improve the effectiveness of your team's ability to collaborate or manage conflict, let me know by writing to me at ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or calling at +919820155778 to set up a meeting / call.

IAF 2019 Annual India Conference session - Building a Conflict Competent Organization

Here's a short clip where I talk about my upcoming session at the #iafindia2019 annual India conference.  The topic is Conflict Management and is titled "Into the whirlpool of conflict - Creating a Conflict Competent Organization". I'm really looking forward to it.

Talent = Competence X Commitment X Contribution

This extraordinary equation came from this article by the HR Guru, Mr. Dave Ulrich.

This was extremely intriguing for me because of my work with strengths and the Clifton Strengthsfinder.  I was reminded of this excellent equation from that phenomenal body of work:

This equation shows how talent is converted into a strength.

Mr. Ulrich's equation says that Talent is an outcome of competence, commitment, and contribution of the individual.

We also use a familiar phrase to describe someone's ability in a particular task as "he / she is quite talented in "XYZ".  So we are actually commenting on the outcome of investment (in the form of contribution of deliberate practice & commitment) and raw talent (Competence). The difference is the nomenclature viz. Talent and Strength.

For me personally, a talent is an unrealized strength, which is yet to be developed and applied effectively. Deliberate Practice (the term created by K. Anders Ericsson), over a period of time, are key requirements for converting a talent to a strength. That's my specialty as a Strengths Strategy Coach - helping my clients (career transition and executive coaching) understand how the 34 Strengths from Clifton Strengthsfinder manifest in their everyday lives as behaviours, and thereafter, how to build them up and consciously call them when we need them.

Working with your strengths is a smart choice as it ensures that you have a more satisfied life, especially if your career is built on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses.

In an organizational context, this means that you and your colleagues are able to collaborate better with each other, simply because people know what you are strong and weak at, and you know the same about them. A lot of time, energy and cost is saved in this manner, especially if you link this to the performance management system of OKR (Objectives and Key Results).

What do you think?

P.S. - If you would like to try merging OKRs with Strengths, call me at +919820155778 or write me a note at ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com so that we can schedule a discussion.

Book Presentation - Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath

Pleased to share some feedback received from the session. Feels really good to receive this especially since I had only 180 minutes time.

I'm happy to be presenting the book hashtag#Strengthsfinder 2.0 at the Book Loversclub at Mumbai. This will be fun. Thanks to Binda Kanayalkar and Arun Vishwanath - CPF, CPC, PCC from The Trainers Forum for this opportunity. hashtag#behaviors hashtag#strengthsstrategy hashtag#books