Managing By Employee Strengths

You know that your employees are critical to your ability to produce results in the business. Yet, do you know what your employees can or want to do? Human capital is the knowledge, skills and abilities of each employee. It’s time to step back and learn what each employee can bring to the table.

Most managers find it easier to focus on managing the business and feel less confident around managing employees. Yet in order to handle your business you need to maximize the strengths that each employee can offer you in reaching your goals.

Managers are juggling two distinct areas of focus every day…the business and the people within their teams. We don’t always stop to uncover the gemstones that may be hiding in a team member’s skills and abilities. You do need to stretch your employees, but how do you do that if you are not entirely sure of their abilities.

It’s important to find out as much as possible about your employee’s knowledge, skills and abilities…as well as what they want to move towards in their careers. Why not start today gathering information about each of your employees. If an employee has a strong interest in building knowledge in a specific area that you could use now or in the future, that’s information you can use to enhance your effectiveness.

Ask your employees!

Know not only what each of your employees do now, but also what they have done in the past.
Capture all the training and education that they have completed.
Find out what special projects they have done in the past. Even if the subject matter isn’t appropriate for your business, they may have strong project management skills that you can try out and build on.
Have they trained others…can you maximize this skill in order to enhance your business?
Do they have strong interpersonal abilities? Are they your problem solvers or organizers?

The more you know about your employees, the more you can utilize their special talents. Even more important, you want to retain the talent you currently have within your teams. When managing employees, you will gain more by focusing on their strengths. That doesn’t mean that you don’t address areas where performance needs to increase, yet managing employees by their strengths will increase the performance of your team.

Find out what you employees can do, like to do and are willing to do. Engage them in open communication around what they can bring to the table and see what you uncover.