Building a Strengths-based Culture

Often, I start talks to new leaders with this quiz question. Perhaps Gallup’s most important global workplace discovery is that 70% of a team’s engagement is determined by ________.

Guesses come quickly: Employee appreciation. Results. How well the team works together. Until invariably, someone suggests the obvious answer. The leader or manager as Gallup calls them.  That’s a duh!

Clearly Gallup’s research reinforces scientifically what we all know and see if you work with anyone other than yourself. The leader (manager) in an organization matters and what they do with that 70% variance matters even more in directing employees and achieving results.

There is one word that broadly describes a workplace environment that often gets either the credit for high performance or the blame for a low one. That word is culture. For example, when an organization is effective and achieving results, you might hear the leader praised as someone who has built and supported a culture of excellence. On the other hand, when an organization is performing poorly and results are not forthcoming, the leader may be described as someone who enabled a culture of low performance.

The descriptors may be different in each case, but the pathway is clear: The leader impacts the culture through their team engagement and the culture greatly influences results.

Why is it that things sometimes most easily described are often the most difficult to do? If you are on a hiring board just hire a good leader. A good leader engages the team around them, creates a high performing culture, and voila—- good results. Everyone wants good results so it should be a fairly simple path forward.

If it were so simple, I suggest there would be less than 6 billion entries (I checked today) when you Google “leadership”. That’s not to suggest we can’t offer a few pathways that have proven to be tried and true in connecting leaders, engagement of employees, and high performing cultures. Let me offer one path— a strengths engaged one.

I’m often asked to do strengths workshops for groups of folks. We use the Clifton Strengths Finder (now, over 30 million have completed the tool) to get an assessment of individuals. Participants receive their top themes with descriptions of what those themes mean, how they contribute to solving problems, and how you can aim them.

We know from Gallup’s research that strengths-based cultures contribute to improved results. While the pathway is clear, the practices are all over the board. The pathway is that a great manager helps people fit their strengths to their role and this greatly contributes to engaged employees, and that leads to higher productivity.

But what about the specific practices? A simple way to start would be to EMBRACE strengths as an individual, a team, and an organization. Decide this is one of the tools you need for personal, team, and organizational growth. Next ENCOURAGE strengths as a new mindset, include the vocabulary and themes in your daily discussions, communication, and events. Third, EMBED strengths through an internal marketing campaign. Include strengths on email signatures, screen saves, name badges, workstation ID’s, bulletin boards, office, and organizational events.

This is where it becomes challenging to leaders. Now that I know my team’s strengths, what do I do? I can promise you that having them share their strengths at the bottom of their email is not sufficient. It’s a start.

Gallup’s newest workplace finding was shared earlier this summer. That is: the most important habit of a great manager is to have one meaningful conversation per week with each team member. What makes it meaningful? Focus on the employee’s goals. I would add …and while you are talking about goals, why not talk about how one’s strengths that can be used to accomplish them?

Like building any culture, it begins with doing. Small acts of doing seem to be so much better than large acts of talking. As an old professor once told me, “Don’t tell me what you believe, show me what you do, and I’ll tell you what you believe”. You behave your way into using strengths. Strengths identification is not to label and limit people. It’s a terrific starting point to getting to know your staff. I’m always amazed at people who have worked together for years but still don’t know each other. Strength themes are a common language to learn about the gifts of each other and get ideas on how to accomplish things together as a group. The most successful pathways to developing a strengths-based culture begin with getting to know your people, deploying that knowledge in ways that successfully engage them, and keeping their gifts front and center.

Imagine what you want your staff to say if they were asked to provide words to describe the culture. Then ask yourself, what might you do as a leader to ensure that is what they would say? How will each of your staff use their talents to bring that culture to life?