Three Star Leadership Blog: Recent Comments

Comment on Strengths, Weaknesses, Your Team, and You

2010-03-19T20:33:21Z

Wally - well stated! I agree that for any given job, team members should be accountable to attain a certain level of competency. Aside from this core level, leaders should then allow them to utilize their innate abilities in a way that collectively makes the team stronger.

Comment on Undercover Boss: A Repellant Piece of Trash

2010-03-19T19:06:32Z

I also find the camera thing amusing. Do you really want people working for you who aren’t at least just a little curious about why the “new guy” is being followed around by the paparazzi? If you’ve hired people who don’t notice anything different in their environment with regard to the camera thing, maybe—just maybe, you have stumbled on to the thing that’s really wrong with your business—the boss doesn’t know how to hire curious people. D’ya think?

I saw some of the first, (and last that I’ll ever watch), episode of “Undercover Boss” last night. It showed how one of the big cheeses at White Castle Hamburgers was going to get to know the front line troops. All the employees played along, and everyone seemed sacchariney happy. Maybe Tony’s Robbins’ employees are always that chipper—but White Castle Employees? I don’t think so.

Tsar Peter the Great had it right. He too went around masquerading as a “common man” in order to get a feel for how things were going in the “common” world. The biggest difference however, is that he left the “yes men” at the Kremlin palace, and donned peasant robes and mannerisms. He went out to study specific people, (shipwrights and the military), for a specific purpose that involved the sussing out of his power base and resources. He did not go out on a self aggrandizement tour aimed at proving to himself, and his “yes men” that he was a great “Enlightened Boss.”

I thought our society was over the Great White Hunter and White Man’s Burden. Evidently not.

Comment on Strengths, Weaknesses, Your Team, and You

2010-03-19T14:04:19Z

I love the concept of working with strengths and collaborating with others whose strengths are your "weakness". Although I have undergone Strengthsfinder testing I am not sure that is is necessary . What is important is that bosses are capable of recognising the individual strengths of their team members and work with that knowledge. Crucially they also need to be willing to do this and I believe that this will be a measure of their "strength" as a boss especially when they are clear on their own areas of weakness.

Great discussion.
Thanks Wally!

Comment on Strengths, Weaknesses, Your Team, and You

2010-03-19T13:55:32Z

I like how you put that, Darcy. Thanks.

Comment on Strengths, Weaknesses, Your Team, and You

2010-03-19T13:38:10Z

Wally - This is a great post. I like "strengths-based" management because people feel more successful when they're working with their strengths. And I know that for me personally, there are certain weaknesses that are innate, and based on watching my parents, seem to be genetic. I'm never going to get good at those things. I do think it's important to work on them to get "good enough" like you mentioned above. But I'll get a better ROI with my time if I work on improving the areas where I already do well.

I like to tell supervisors that it's their job to help employees to capitalize on their strengths and manage their weaknesses.

Comment on Strengths, Weaknesses, Your Team, and You

2010-03-19T12:26:02Z

Thanks for the comments, Bret. I love the point about how, when things are taken to extremes, we almost always get in trouble.

It's also to cherry-pick the parts of an idea we like and forget the rest. Many advocates of strength-based leadership, for example, appear to think that weaknesses can be ignored.

Then, there are things we haven't addressed here. Strengths that are developed at the expense of other things can become weaknesses. And there's a difference in the way people receive and interpret commentary on their strengths.

There was an excellent post on this by KenNowack on the Results vs. Activities blog last year. It was titled "HRD Shams #3: Leveraging Your Strengths." I can't do the post justice in a summary, so click over and read it for yourself.

Comment on Strengths, Weaknesses, Your Team, and You

2010-03-19T12:01:02Z

Thanks for those thoughtful comments, Tanmay. I think there's a few degrees of difference between project management and other management on this issue. With project management there's usually a sunset date or deadline, and that tips the balance for the manager more toward using complementary skills and away from developing team members. Art Petty had an insightful post on this a couple of weeks ago titled "Learning to Lead in a Project-Focused World."

Comment on Strengths, Weaknesses, Your Team, and You

2010-03-19T11:53:37Z

I like that line, Heath. Thanks for sharing it.

Comment on Strengths, Weaknesses, Your Team, and You

2010-03-19T03:55:37Z

Very interesting thoughts on strengths based leadership.

Managers, leaders and organizations have to play to their people’s strengths and see that they win each day. Team members should smell success everyday in whatever they are doing. These small victories build self-confidence over a period of time and makes them capable of handling larger assignments. I call this “eventual strength building”. While proper utilization of team members is important too, assigning them tasks without thinking about their capabilities and strengths is a sure way to failure - both for the team member and for the manager.

An extension to the above is to manage their weaknesses. I prefer to have people with complementary skills on a project. Ideal team composition is where weaknesses of one member is complemented by strength of another team member.

Comment on Strengths, Weaknesses, Your Team, and You

2010-03-19T03:38:37Z

I always love how you see through the fog and boil things down to the bottom line. Its when things are taken to extremes that they get distorted and can be more harmful than good. Such is the strength based "movement." I wish folks would learn to run as fast as possible from anyone that claims to support their approach to management with "a mountain of evidence."

I think we should always care about our weaknesses, but as you point out so well, they don't always have to matter.

Well done, Wally.