I concluded my previous post advocating for strengths-based management as an approach for increasing employee engagement without burnout. If you’re wondering what the heck “strengths-based management” is and why you’re suddenly hearing about it everywhere, you’re not alone. The following is a very high-level (superficial, even!) intro to these methodologies and why they’re gaining favor in companies across a range of industries.
Grounded in findings from positive psychology and neuroscience, strengths-based methodologies are based on the following principles:
- Each person possesses a unique combination of talents and passions.
Even if two people share a particular interest or both enjoy a particular task type, they will each possess a near-unique combination of capabilities and passions.
- Individual and collective strengths and capabilities deserve at least equal, if not greater, recognition than perceived performance deficits.
Decades of psychology and management research have focused on illness and problems, respectively, which represent only a small portion of day-to-day experience. Wellness and routine success have gone largely unexamined. Strengths-based methods highlight what’s working
- People who spend a significant proportion of their workday doing work they find challenging and intrinsically satisfying are more productive and more satisfied than people doing work solely for extrinsic gain.
I know, this sounds like a “duh!” but the majority of organizational incentive programs have little or nothing to do with intrinsic motivations!
For many years “positive psychology” was poo-poo’d as “feel good mumbo jumbo” or “fluff” that had nothing to do with the real business of producing and delivering goods and services. So why the sudden interest? Companies embracing these methods have made impressive performance gains in everything from sick time use to employee retention to profit margins. Business analysts have taken note.
The research underpinning strengths-based methodologies goes back at least 40 years. Donald Clifton at the Gallup organization, Martin Seligman at the Univ of Pennsylvania, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at the Univ of Chicago (then at Claremont Graduate School), and David Cooperrider at Case Western have all played key roles in translating the research into actionable principles and methodologies now being taught in both psychology and MBA programs.
So what are these methods? The three with which I’m most familiar are:
- StrengthsFinders (now called CliftonStrengths™) from Gallup – an assessment that measures innate talents, often employed as part of career counseling to improve job fit and/or to guide performance appraisal feedback.
- Strengthscope™– an assessment similar to StrengthsFinders except that it measures individuals’ intrinsic motivation for particular activities. This information can then be used to better align task assignments with employees’ intrinsic motivation and as a guide for performance appraisal feedback. Group, Team, and Organizational assessments are also available.
- Appreciative Inquiry– a change methodology that mobilizes the energy for and commitment to change both by acknowledging what’s already working well and enabling the collective creation of a compelling “future” vision. Lean Management, Open Systems, and Liberating Structures, when implemented properly, use some practices similar to those used in Appreciative Inquiry, but they have not been explicitly labeled “strengths-based” methods.
I’ve not begun to do justice to any of these methods – there are books on each of them! – but this is more than enough info for one post. So I’ll wrap up for now and let those of you who are interested research them further. I’ll be writing more in the future including examples of how to apply these methods and their impacts.
Here at Syzygy Teams, our goal is to maximize team productivity without burnout. We use the Strengthscope™ assessment to identify each team’s strengths then coach them in using that information to better align tasks with individuals’ motivation. Then we use principles and practices from Appreciative Inquiry to help teams mobilize their strengths in the direction of a compelling goal and more effectively manage whatever barriers they encounter.
To find out if these methods might be helpful for your team, department, or organization, contact us to request a free 30-minute consultation: (512)387-2756 | [email protected] or use the form on the Contact page to send us a note.
Until next time…
