By Ekaterina Walter, www.ekaterinawalter.com
It is in human nature
to look for negative in everything first. Most of the stories on the news are
negative (after all, they draw the most attention). There are more negative
words in our vocabulary than positive and happy words. When something doesn't
go the way we think it should, our mind immediately jumps to negative thoughts
and gloomy assumptions.
It is also in human
nature to fix things. We love finding problems so that we could solve them and
gaps so that we could fill them. Not only we use this approach with the
projects we work on, but we also use this approach in evaluating our employees.
After all, it feels natural, it feels right.
And that’s where we go
wrong! This approach is the reason we cannot build strong and diverse teams.
This approach is the reason we are not utilizing human potential to its
fullest. This approach is the reason we have more mediocre managers than we
have true leaders. And at the end of the day, all that impacts our culture and
ultimately our bottom line.
The simple truth is that if we stop trying to “fix” our employees
and rather focus on their strengths and their passions, we can create a fervent
army of brand evangelists who, when empowered, could take our brand and our
products to a whole new level.
Over the past several years a number of companies have embraced StrengthsFinder as an approach to
evaluating individual employees and team alike. StrengthsFinder is a test and a guide
that helps identify team’s top strengths to allow management to tap into the
natural talents of its employees. However, the sad part is that in most
companies this is usually a one-time exercise rather than a mentality. We come
to the end of every year and we still pay more attention to areas of
improvement than we should to strengths of our staff.
The companies that embrace the mentality of aligning people’s
strengths and passions with the right projects and teams get amazing results in
both employee brand evangelism and productivity.
Facebook is one of those companies. Facebook’s culture and approach to hiring
people is non-traditional. Sometimes they find the best talent in the industry
and bring people on board without any particular role in mind allowing them to
match up their skills with their projects of interest. Every 18 months or so,
Facebook engineers are required to rotate and work on something different for a
while. This requirement constantly brings new perspectives and experience to
the teams and ignites new ideas. But the key is that, in doing so, they don’t
force unnatural talent/project pairing.
Facebook also holds
hackathons, monthly all-nighters where any idea or project can be brought forth
for others to work on. If an employee is passionate about a feature that isn’t
currently on the roadmap, (s)he can bring it to light and partner with others
to get it to the state of usable code. It is considered an intellectual and
creative exercise. The company provides food and beer; engineers, their
ingenuity. The only rule is that during hackathons, one can work only on
someone else’s project. Some of the most popular site features, like chat,
video messaging, and Timeline, came out of these all-nighters.
The company encourages
its workers to form teams around projects they’re passionate about and have the
strongest skillset, because Facebook’s leaders clearly understand that great
work comes out of doing what you love and applying your strengths in creative
ways. This also creates a rather flat environment where anyone can be a hero:
whether you are a CEO or an intern, if you had the best idea or code, you are
celebrated. “Pixels talk,” said Joey Flynn, one of the designers of Timeline.
“You can do anything here if you can prove it.”
3M is another company that allows its employees
to apply their strengths towards the projects and ideas they are passionate
about. We have all heard about companies like Google allowing employees the time and encouragement
to create, but it is a little known fact that 3M set the precedent for this
practice years before with its “15 percent time,” a program that allows anyone
who works at 3M to use a portion of weekly work time to create and develop his
or her own ideas. As a matter of fact, the program has produced many of 3M’s
best-selling products, including the Post-it note. In 1974, Art Fry, a
scientist at 3M, came up with that simple but famous invention.
Strength-based
leadership is often overlooked. Mostly because “we’ve always done it this way”
syndrome. We understood the value of improvement and fierce
competition, so it stood reason that we have always tried to change who we are
to become, well, “better”. However, if we want to breed more leaders, not more
mediocre managers, we need to revisit how we hire people, build and manage
teams, and, at times, fire as well.
Here is the ABCD of strength-based leadership:
· Align, don’t fix. Instead of forcing team-members to work on projects that need to
be done, ask “Who wants to take on this one?” Look at the skillsets of your
employees, talk to them, and identify the best fit. You might find that someone
who isn’t passionate about analytics would trade projects with someone who is
and vice versa. Sometimes it’s as easy as asking. And sometimes you need
to reshuffle your team and fill in the gaps. But ultimately, when all the
pieces of the puzzle fit well and all the skillsets are utilized in the way
they should be, you end up becoming a better leader and fostering an innovative
environment.
· Build diverse teams. Diversity of perspective, cultures, passions, ages, genders will
help you build some of the most creative and innovative teams around. Building
a successful team is like building a puzzle. When all of the pieces fall into
place, you end up with a complete picture. Don’t just hire “yes” people, hire
those who will be able to bring various strengths to the team, thus creating
grounds-breaking thinking. Their success will take your success to new heights.
· Create the culture of
transparency.
When your team-members trust you, they are open about their passions,
motivations, and dreams. And if you listen (not hear, really listen) hey will
give you their 110% and more.
· Don’t manage, empower. Building a diverse and complete team is
half the battle. The other half is to actually empower them to create art. And
that requires risk-taking and unconventional thinking. As a leader you need to
allow your teams to be naïve, curious, and bold. Even if sometimes it leads to
a healthy conflict. A diverse team usually means strong perspectives and
opinions. But that’s okay, because as a leader you can guide your team and
their passions in the right direction without dampening their ingenuity and
enthusiasm.
Leadership is a privilege, not a right, and we
need to treat it as such. Leadership means encouraging people to live up to
their fullest potential and find the path they love. That, and only that, will
create a strong culture and sustainable levels of innovation.
This article appeared on forbes.com on 27 August 2013.
