It is widely acknowledged that teams will play an ever-greater role in the workplace of the future. To compete effective in a fast-changing and unpredictable world, organizations need more diverse, agile, and collaborative teams to tackle greater complexity and adaptive challenges created by disruptive changes and trends, including rapidly changing technologies, new ways of working and shifting employee expectations.
However, teams face a host of risks and blockers that impede their effectiveness. Many of these dysfunctions have been well covered in the literature and include things like poor trust, lack of clarity of goals and purpose, unclear accountabilities, and breakdowns in communication.
Perhaps one of the least known and biggest risks to team performance arises when team strengths are overused and this leads to negative, unintended results. Overused strengths occur when team members use their strengths excessively or carelessly and this unintentionally undermines performance, relationships, and results. For example, a team that has a high proportion of team members who are highly task-focused, driven, and decisive may end up driving results so hard that they overlook the importance of listening to others and exploring creative options that could generate better results. Because they are so focused on driving for short-term results, they may also fail to engage external stakeholders to support their plans, resulting in implementation challenges arising from a lack of commitment. Breakdowns in trust and teamwork with colleagues who are more creative, relationship-oriented, and considered in their approach can also arise, leaving these minority team members feeling excluded, ignored, and unvalued.
The biggest sources of this problem are as follows:
Lopsided teams
Failing to assess for personal strengths when hiring people and building teams often results in teams that are lopsided. For example, I once worked with a top team of a major Tech company who had plenty of leaders with strengths in Delivery and Problem Solving, but insufficient team members who were strong at building and maintaining positive relationships with others. This lack of softer power skills in areas like collaboration, empathy and consideration, undermined team effectiveness and results.
This problem can even spread to other parts of the business, as lopsided team behaviours at the top tend to trickle-down to other management levels. This happens because managers tend to demonstrate the behaviours that get recognised and rewarded by senior leadership. When some strengths are valued more than others in an organization, these feed through into the way new managers are hired, developed, and progressed, adding to the lopsidedness of the entire organization.
Lack of feedback
Feedback is crucial in order for team members to understand their ‘blind spots’ and overused strengths. Without regular, timely and balanced feedback, it is unlikely team members will recognise behaviours and unproductive habits associated with their overused strengths. In the absence of this awareness, team members are likely to continue to perform the role as they’ve always done, even when these behaviours don’t work anymore.
Stress and pressure
We see many teams, particularly leadership and executive teams, that overuse their strengths because of the huge pressures they are under from multiple stakeholders, including investors and the Board. This causes behaviours such as decisiveness, confidence, and more autocratic leadership approaches to be used excessively, leading to overhasty analysis and decision-making, groupthink (i.e., when teams start to think alike and make decisions that remain unchallenged) and careless risk taking.
Company culture
Freedoms and constraints in the company culture can exacerbate overused behaviours. It is hard to forget the examples of Enron, Royal Bank of Scotland and more recently FTX, where rash decision making, and over-confidence were left unchecked because of a lack of company ethics, values and boundaries. This resulted in reckless and unethical behaviour that ultimately led to the well documented demise of these companies.
Teams can avoid risks arising from overused strengths in the following ways:
Teams should take steps to become more aware of their strengths and the behaviours that show up when they are used excessively or carelessly. By using a valid and reliable strengths assessment profiler like TalentPredix™, teams can build awareness of team member strengths and how these show up when they are overused, as well as when they are used effectively. By developing specific techniques to avoid overusing their strengths, team members can balance out one another’s excesses and avoid the downside of their strengths.
One of the great benefits of this strengths discovery and optimization workshop is that team members start to see their colleagues’ behaviours in a radically different way. Rather than automatically viewing problematic behaviours by colleagues as weaknesses that are difficult to change, they start realizing that some of these behaviours arise from their overused strengths. This provides them with a powerful new ‘lens’ and language to offer constructive and empowering feedback to their colleagues.
Problematic patters of overused strengths in teams often occur when a dominant strength or combination of strengths becomes the dominant way of thinking in the team – the ‘hammer’ the team uses to deal with every challenge it faces. In such cases, everything starts looking like a ‘nail’ and minority, dissenting team members’ views are steamrollered or ignored.
Teams can avoid this danger by hiring team members with diverse strengths. Studies show that more cognitively diverse teams made up of a broad mix of strengths, skills, experiences, and different backgrounds (including ethnic and gender differences) outperform those that lack such diversity.
Teams wanting to avoid overdrive risks should build an open culture of feedback where team members are able to provide constructive as well as positive feedback. It takes times and trust before such candid feedback conversations can occur which is why it is always a good idea to bring in an external facilitator to equip the team with the tools, skills, and confidence to shift to an open culture of feedback. Inviting employees and stakeholders outside the team to provide feedback on team behaviours as well as results can also help guard against excessive behaviours.
Teams that are naturally results-focused and ambitious are far more likely to trip themselves up by using their strengths excessively when they are over-stretched and in a vicious ‘do-do-do cycle’. This stress response means that these types of teams allow themselves little time for engaging diverse perspectives, planning and reviewing work and applying creative problem-solving. By helping these teams understand the dangers of this lopsided pattern and providing them with the support to prioritise their work, build resilience and apply creative problem-solving techniques, team effectiveness will improve and the company will minimize burnout, disengagement, and unwanted turnover of key talent.
We have highlighted the risks of overused strengths for individuals in a previous blog about this. Similarly, when used excessively or carelessly, team strengths can undermine results and damage relationships. Yet, the vast majority of teams remain totally unaware of the risks arising when they use their strengths excessively or in the wrong way. By implementing the steps outlined above, organizations can build greater awareness of collective strengths within their work teams, how these can be applied effectively, and potential risks associated with overuse. This approach provides teams with a way of optimizing their strengths while also mitigating and correcting excessive behaviours that may derail the team from achieving and sustaining high performance.
The attraction and retention of top senior talent have never been more important than in our current culture. Speaking at a Harvard Business Review Event, Michael D Watkins, said “Today we are in a world of transition – there is so much change going on… well-structured and delivered transition support halves the time required for leaders to become fully effective in their new roles.” This transient zeitgeist has only been reinforced by the Covid-19 global pandemic which gave many the opportunity to pause and re-assess the trajectory of their lives and careers, leading to ‘The Great Resignation’ peaking in the summer of 2021. With many people quitting their job – statistics from 2022 show that of a global sample surveyed, 40% of workers were considering leaving their jobs…[Download full version to read more]
– Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft
Investing in employees’ growth and career progression is becoming increasingly important to retain and motivate high-quality talent. Studies consistently show that career and development opportunities are one of the most important reasons why talented people stay with an organization. Yet, career development is arguably the most overlooked HR and talent priority in business today.
Far too many managers don’t invest time and energy in high-quality career conversations. This leaves people feeling undervalued and undermines engagement, morale, and performance. Some managers even undermine career development and internal mobility with demotivating practices such as hoarding top talent, engaging in favouritism when it comes to filling vacancies and actively blocking the advancement of people they dislike or find threatening.
However, encouragingly, most managers we meet understand the importance of supporting the growth and development of their people. They just lack the framework, skills, and toolkit to provide meaningful and high-quality support. Time is also cited as a major problem by many managers, particularly when top leadership and HR don’t establish career development as a core HR priority. However, the time argument is paradoxical. Without investing time in career development, organizations end up spending a lot more money and time hiring replacements for top talent leaving the business.
So, as the New Year begins, show employees you are investing in their growth and development by applying the following six strategies:
Effective career conversations require time and focus. They should not be reserved for the annual review, as this typically leads to a meaningless tick-box exercise. Rather, you should plan a cadence of quarterly (or at least bi-annual) career conversations that are separate from regular performance dialogues. In addition to these structured sessions, it is important to provide ongoing guidance, coaching, and feedback during your informal check-ins and coaching sessions.
Mentoring involves the transfer of knowledge and wisdom from a more experienced person to a less experienced one. Unlike coaching, which typically focuses on near-term performance goals, mentoring provides professional guidance and insights beyond the person’s current role. As a manager, you play a crucial role in helping employees understand the value and benefits of mentoring. You are also in an ideal position to recommend mentors within and outside the business, who may not be known to the employee.
However, mentoring can be done within the team and doesn’t have to be one-on-one. Peer mentoring and coaching can be powerful ways to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, skills, and insights. For example, you can assign more experienced team members as “buddies” to help onboard new hires. This helps to fast-track their transition into the team and organization. You can also set up small peer coaching groups (groups of 4-6 are ideal) to encourage collaboration, shared learning, and fresh perspectives around priority topics, challenges, or opportunities. These can either be self-managing or facilitated by a skilled external or internal coach.
Many managers make the mistake of providing well-intentioned career advice that falls short of the mark, as it is based on what motivates them, not the personality and motivations of the employee they are typing to help. A vital part of providing effective career support is to understand the unique motivations, values, and strengths of your people. You can do this by asking some of the career coaching questions listed below during career conversations. However, it is also advisable to use an accurate and objective assessment of work-based strengths, motivations, and values such as TalentPredix. This will pinpoint the top strengths of each of your people, as well as what is most important to them at work. Once you have this clarity, you can provide support and stretch assignments that are closely matched with their strengths, potential and motivations. The aim of any great manager is to magnify an employee’s strengths so they can excel in areas where they are particularly talented and energized.
Stretch assignments are one of the most important ways for employees to grow new skills and build confidence to progress in line with their aspirations. But an assignment that is seen as positively stretching by one employee might demotivate or undermine the confidence of another. It is therefore important to pay attention to each employee’s strengths, appetite for challenge and self-confidence. You should also ask them what additional tasks and responsibilities they would like to take on, as well as the support they need from you to succeed. To avoid any confusion about priorities, you will need to highlight to employees that their priority is to perform their core job effectively and any stretch assignment should not interfere with this. Talented employees will rise to the challenge and with your support, work out how to shine in both.
Employees get frustrated and demotivated when they are kept in the dark about career pathways, skills needed to progress and how vacancies in the company are filled. Explain to your employees the skills and capabilities they will need to progress and coach them on how to develop those skills. Create opportunities for them to learn directly from others by connecting them with colleagues in the company doing the jobs they want to do in future. Inform employees about how to find out about upcoming vacancies they may be interested in. Insofar as possible, ensure your vacancies are posted internally before they are filled with external hires. Nothing crushes the motivation of talented people more than seeing roles they believe they can do filled by external hires without being given a fair opportunity to apply for the role.
A key part of your role as manager is to coach and guide your employees to help them progress their career and achieve their full potential. Coaching is a collaborative and supportive relationship involving mutual trust, reflection, and exploration. Through a process of discovery, goal setting, and focused action, it can facilitate better learning, career advancement and well-being. Coaching and supportive behaviours that promote effective career conversations include:
If you want to be a great leader who inspires, supports, and enables people to achieve exceptional results, you need to invest your time, energy, and expertise in helping people realize their full potential. This involves planning and undertaking high-quality career conversations; developing, and honing your coaching, feedback, delegation, and other key people skills; recognizing and magnifying strengths, progress and achievements and acting as a role model by prioritizing and progressing your own development. In today’s modern workplace, where unpredictable and disruptive change is the norm, there are few more pressing priorities than the growth, development and upskilling of the people you lead.
To be effective, feedback conversations should be empowering. They should provide useful, timely and constructive guidance to help the individual to change their mindset and behaviour. Yet, many managers struggle with feedback conversations, especially those that involve providing constructive or corrective guidance. They fear stirring up conflict and worry about undermining their relationship with the individual. They often end up falling into one of the following traps:
Avoidance – they avoid the conversation in the hope that the problem will resolve itself or won’t cause too many problems. However, avoidance often leads to problems becoming amplified and resentment arising from inaction growing among other team members.
Using the popular “sandwich approach” – they dilute constructive feedback by layering it between two ‘slices’ of positive feedback, at the outset and end of the conversation. This typically results in an ineffective performer selectively hearing only the positive messages and leaving the meeting believing they’ve got little or nothing to improve.
Over-criticism – they use an autocratic, critical tone. They generalize their critical feedback to the person’s performance, and even personality, rather than focusing it on the behaviour that needs to be modified. This is very risky, as it can leave people feeling angry, insulted, and demotivated. At worst, it can lead to a messy termination process involving claims of bullying and unfair dismissal.
Based on decades of experience helping managers and leaders deal with challenging feedback conversations, I recommend applying the following 6 steps:
1. Use a framework to guide your feedback – Follow a straightforward process like our AIM Feedback Framework™ (see below) to ensure your feedback is candid, concise and maximizes the likelihood of achieving lasting change.
2. Focus on the behaviour, not on the person – Ensure you don’t criticize or judge the person. Be specific and clear about the behaviour that you would like to see modified.
3. Keep it brief – Feedback receivers prefer crisp and clear messages so don’t overtalk, or provide lengthy, rambling justifications.
4. Give the person an opportunity to clarify – Ensure you check that the person understands the feedback. Invite them to summarize what they’ve heard and give them an opportunity to clarify anything they don’t understand.
5. Acknowledge the person’s concerns – Calmly allow the person to express their point of view and any feelings triggered by the feedback. Don’t react if they express anger or defensiveness; listen empathetically and acknowledge their concerns. If their anger persists, invite them to take a break to reflect on the feedback for 24 hours before reconvening.
6. Invite and provide suggestions – Invite the person to come up with options that will improve their performance. Explore these in an open, constructive way, without passing judgment or allowing your preferences to dictate the course of action agreed. Provide specific suggestions to help the person improve. To encourage ownership and commitment, ask the person how helpful these ideas are and whether they can think of any other options that might be better or build on the suggestions provided.
Most of us are conditioned to focus more on the negatives we see rather than the positives. This is what psychologists call the “negativity bias”. It is therefore important for managers to consciously learn to spot and magnify strengths and effective behaviours.
By giving positive feedback and praise, managers will promote progress, excellence, and employee engagement. When people feel they are valued and their progress and achievements are recognized regularly by their manager, they are more likely to feel motivated and exert higher levels of discretionary effort (i.e., effort over and above the required level).
What action did they take and in what situation did it happen?
For example:
“In the project meeting yesterday, I noticed you interrupted Joe several times.”
What was the impact of the person’s actions (on their RESULTS, RELATIONSHIPS, and REPUTATION)
People don’t intend to act in a way that undermines their results, relationships and/or reputation. Remember that their intentions are typically positive, even when their behaviour causes unintended negative consequences. Unless the evidence points strongly in favour of malicious or negative intentions, give them the benefit of the doubt and trust that they intended to act positively in the first place.
For example:
“I was frustrated that Joe couldn’t make his points fully and we missed out on his valuable input.”
What does the person need to modify/magnify to strengthen their effectiveness and results?
Thinking about what the person can magnify is especially important when giving positive feedback on how the person can build on their strengths and effective behavioural patterns.
Offer specific suggestions and guidance to help the person modify/magnify their behaviour.
For example:
“When we meet with the team in future, it would be great to see you give Joe an opportunity to make his points without interrupting. You could also encourage him to contribute his opinion from time to time as we both know he is an introvert.”
Improve the effectiveness of your team leadership with this high-impact 12-week challenge. The challenge is designed specifically for team leaders and managers to deliver better results, motivation and teamwork.
Is it important to you to attract, retain and develop the talent in your organization? Are you spending this time and energy efficiently? This checklist will help you find out where the gaps may be for your organization in terms of talent management.
How does the checklist work?
Answer yes or no to all 24 questions divided over 2 different sections. Once you’ve checked all the boxes you can check your score by counting all “yeses” per category.
If you have a few too many “noes” you might want to pay some extra attention to our recommendations.
Ask yourself these questions to assess the effectiveness of your transition to a new leader.
1. Do I understand the context and culture of my new team and organization from the perspective of key stakeholders?
2. Do I have a clear plan for the first 100 days identifying my priorities and what I intend to do, communicate, and learn?
3. Am I clear on intended outcomes and how I will measure my success?
4. How will I manage… [Download full version to read more]
Introduction
The technological revolution and speed of innovation is transforming the workplace at a rapid rate. Within this disruptive landscape, organizations are managing myriad challenges from global supply issues, rising operational costs and inflation to a talent shortage.
1. Facing a talent and skills shortage and an economic crisis
Post-pandemic, there have been record numbers of job vacancies. This has increased competition in the job market for employers, as skilled and experienced workers can be highly selective about their next move. Offering higher pay and benefits is one tactic to secure top talent, however, it is financially unsustainable and could make existing employees feel underpaid. Compensation has a role in talent strategy, but organizations need to use different levers, other than pay to attract and retain talent. One of the most effective incentives is work that offers development and challenge as it increases workers’ value and gives them an opportunity to meaningfully improve their lives at work and beyond.
This approach can also… [Download full version to read more]
Your role in helping people achieve their full potential
A key part of your role as manager is to coach and guide your team to help them understand, clarify, and progress their career goals and achieve their full potential. Coaching is a collaborative and supportive relationship involving mutual trust, reflection and exploration. Through a process of discovery, goal setting, and focused action, it can facilitate extraordinary outcomes.
Specific ways you can support team members include:
Key Coaching Skills
[Download full version to read more]