Identifying Team Member's Strengths
Identifying the strengths of your fellow teammates helps in maximising team performance. Here are some basic tips that will aid you in identifying your team members strengths.
- Importantly, before attempting to recognise and appreciate the strengths of others, you should be able to distinguish your own abilities. Hopefully, this will aid and assist you in detecting the abilities of your teammates. This is hugely beneficial on a personal level, which will subsequently have a knock-on effect on the team as a whole. If an employee is aware of their core competencies it will enhance their performance and confidence.
- Employees aren’t always conscious of their personal strengths. A manager is in the easiest position for picking up and identifying them, so therefore a manager should take advantage of this and compliment employees on their apparent strengths.
Being Aware of People's Strengths When Delegating Tasks
If an employee isn't aware of their strengths and you as a manager are, then appoint them a task that enables them to use it successfully. This will intensify their efficiency and productivity as it creates an opportunity that allows them to demonstrate their strengths, boosting confidence. This lift in self-assurance could possibly turn weaknesses into strengths and encourage hidden strengths to surface.
Furthermore, if you are in a managerial position, conduct exercises and activities that are going to reveal team members strengths.
- It could simply be asking all team members to anonymously jot down a few strengths of each other and then discuss as a collective group in a meeting.
- There are many ways of doing this formally and informally such as interviews, questionnaires, guided self-reflection and 360 feedback reports.
For more on delegating tasks click here.
Summary
In summary, teams need to remind each other of what they are good at and areas they excel in. This helps team cohesion and shows individual team members that they are valued. Identifying team member strengths and weaknesses improves performance, employee engagement and employee retention.