Identifying Team Member Strengths

Identifying Strengths of your fellow team mates helps in maximising team performance.

Before attempting to recognise and appreciate the strengths of others, you should be able to distinguish your own strengths and weaknesses. Hopefully this will aid and assist your ability in detecting strengths.

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.

However, employees aren’t always conscious of their personal strengths. A manager is in the easiest position for picking up and identifying strengths, so therefore a manager should take advantage of this and compliment employees on their apparent strengths.

Similarly, 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 this strength 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, strengths-based questionnaires, guided self-reflection and 360 feedback reports.

In summary, teams need to remind each other of what they are good at and areas they excel in. It helps team cohesion knowing how team members are valued. Identifying team member strengths improves performance, employment engagement and employee retention.