Companies have
to increase the performance and productivity taking advantage of the strengths
of employees. To do that the senior management has to talk more with the
employees, listen and devote more time to them. If we want to have innovation,
productivity and the commitment of the employees, the leadership has to talk
with the teams because if they are too busy to do it, they no longer can be
considered leaders.
In my opinion we
have to focus on the areas of strength and not in the weaknesses, as lot of
companies do, because there are no opportunities. A proposal would be to do
weekly performance reviews instead of the typical ones done on an annual basis
using simple questions and on real time.
Before starting to know our natural strengths we have to bear in
mind that the strength is not something we do better but something that
strengthens us, in other words, it is an activity that gets you stronger.
Based on the above we should ask ourselves as follows:
·
What task or function makes me
feel better?
·
What really attracts me, what I
like to do the most?
·
Do you feel happy, full of
strength after doing this performance?
With the above questions we could pull out our comparative
advantages with regard to other persons and therefore we could strengthen them.
There are a lot of companies that base their policies in overcoming
the weaknesses. However, in my opinion, the view should be a little bit
different: a person will learn and grow
more in those areas where he/she is already strong.
Nowadays is typical to ask the employee if he/she is focused on the
customer, which actually has no sense. This question should be posed directly
to the customer. Therefore this information is not useful.
The real change will be to convince the companies that all
assessments have to be done at local level not at corporate level which is the
most common approach. The new technologies will allow the companies to know
individually every member of the team much better and quicker. This information
will make possible to connect, develop, train and place every single employee
in the role where he/she is stronger and this will also become in more
productive and committed teams.
As a summary, if the companies want to achieve more success they
should know deeper the talent of their employees to increase efficiency and
productivity because it is commonly known that you grow more where you are stronger. The message, therefore, is the
team leads have to know very well the members of their teams to place them in
the role more suitable to their strengths.
