Want to increase productivity and engagement in your team? Then it’s time to shift the focus away from what they don’t do well enough, and on to where they naturally excel.

There’s a real movement in organisations right now to help people leverage their innate strengths in the workplace and it’s no wonder why. A recent Gallup report stated that $8.9 trillion was lost in global GDP due to low engagement.

If engagement is the key, then we’ve got to get our teams tapped into their intrinsic motivation and set them up to succeed through contributing in a way they can excel at.

That’s one of the reasons this shift in focus is gaining momentum. People with a talent for distinct job aspects already have an intrinsic ability to do them, but when coached, do them with excellence.

In fact, according to Gallup, when managers encourage employees to use their strengths and talents to achieve a goal, individual engagement improves (from 9% to 15%) as does team performance and the company’s business metrics as well.

Gallup studies have found 8% to 18% performance improvement and 2% to 10% increases in customer engagement among strengths-based organisations.

So, if that’s the case, why the heck are strengths-based organisations still so few and far between?

Because, as a Harvard Business Review article outlined last month, we live in a ‘fixing’ society where we’re taught to focus on our ‘areas of development’ versus what we do well.

And we devalue what comes naturally to us because we are instead taught to value more highly the things we have had to ‘work at’.

The article said: “We might do this because we wrongly assume that what’s easy for us must be easy for everyone, or because these strengths are so core to our beings that we simply overlook them.”

But organisations are missing a trick here because strengths-based leadership has a proven, positive influence on employee engagement, individual productivity and team performance. So we expect many more organisations will choose this approach sooner rather than later.

Why is this approach so influential? Because when you focus on people’s strengths, not their areas to improve, they feel:

• Like they are genuinely and specifically adding value
• They are making a unique contribution to their organisation
• More connected to their colleagues and like they belong in their team
• More appreciated and more likely to want to improve their skills and performance

Organisation wide, you end up building an internal culture of strengths-focused individuals, which allows managers to lead their teams to better performance outcomes because they understand the natural strengths of each individual in their team – and can amplify them.

How to become a strengths-based organisation

1. Uncover your Strengths

Pivoting your culture to a strengths-based approach begins with a diagnostic tool like the Clifton Strengths Finder. With just a 30min online assessment, you can receive a detailed report that uncovers the innate strengths of your managers and their teams. There are 34 different ‘strengths’ and it reveals your core 5.

2. Apply Your Strengths

This approach really comes into its own when you decipher what those results mean for you and how you leverage those strengths throughout your role or work day. For instance, if you have the ‘Arranger’ strength, you naturally get things done. As an individual, how do you amplify that? What do you need? What’s in the way? Or, as a manager, how do you utilise that to the greatest effect in your team?

3. Embed the strengths-based approach

As we talked about earlier, this is a very different approach to performance and performance management than is normally found in the corporate world. So managers and individuals will often need coaching in order to know how to apply and to shift their mindset to this new way of doing things, so it becomes ingrained in your company culture.

Think of it like going to the gym but rather than focusing on building your weakest muscles, you’re focusing on honing where you’re already strong and looking for tweaks to enhance your performance, just as high-level athletes do.

If you’re looking to identify a new way to bring more productivity, efficiency and increased performance into your teams, we would recommend Clifton Strengths. And we can help you coach individuals and small teams on how to actually bring this to life in your organisation.

We utilise a strengths-based coaching approach to help businesses to understand and change their culture; to help leaders to motivate their teams; and managers to coach their employees to increase performance.