Strengths-Based Coaching

- By Lyn Jeffress
Have you ever noticed that when you're doing something that comes naturally to you, you lose track of time? You forget to eat or take breaks - and when you've finished the task, you actually have more energy than when you started?
Now imagine that you can harness that kind of motivation and commitment in your team, and create consistent, near-perfect performance as a result. That's what strengths-based coaching is all about.

When people do things that come naturally, it creates energy. So if people understand what they do well, it becomes self-generating - they want to perform, and perform well. Conversely, when people push themselves to do things that don't come naturally, it drains energy. They are less motivated and less productive. Strengths-based coaching means capitalizing on peoples' talents and abilities, rather than trying to improve their weak areas.

As trainers, we may find this counterintuitive; isn't it our job to improve weak areas? Not according to the folks at Gallop, who used their study of more than two million people to determine how natural abilities could be translated into personal and career success. The job of the trainer (or manager, or coach) is to develop talent - a naturally occurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior - into strength, through the application of knowledge and skills. It is from that strength that we get performance.

Of course, no talent stands alone. Most projects or tasks require a combination of strengths, and therefore a combination of people. When you put the right combination of people and strengths together, you create synergy - and a much happier team than if those same individuals were forced into less natural roles. It is the very essence of the Service Profit Chain: Engaged, committed employees are more productive. What better way to create engaged employees than by helping them discover their strengths and use them every day?

The first step, then, is discovery. The Gallop Organization has identified 34 separate strengths, along with a process for discovering them (Now Discover Your Strengths, Buckingham & Clifton, 2001; the online 'StrengthsFinder' profile is included with the purchase of the book). Those strengths can then be divided into four unique 'themes,' and when you can identify a person's primary theme, you can determine how best to work with him - and with whom he can most productively work.

Mobilizers, for instance, can readily take control of a situation and make decisions - and they're skilled at recognizing and cultivating the potential in others. Reflecters, on the other hand, need to collect all available information and consider every factor that that might affect a situation. Mobilizers might become impatient with Reflectors, but they also need them working behind the scenes.

Energizers have certain unchanging core values that both define them and enable them to quickly turn thoughts into action. They, too, can be impatient, and their self-assurance makes it difficult to resist following them.

Finally, Connecters are the glue of any team. They are aware of and sympathetic to the needs of others and try to make everyone feel included. They have a gift for figuring out how people who are different can work together productively.

Once you've discovered the strengths within your organization, the real work begins: Strengths-based coaching requires a culture shift for managers who are used to assigning projects based on demonstrated ability, rather than natural talent. And that's where we trainers come in - since we have a 'natural talent' for changing culture.

Lyn Jeffress, Jack in the Box

References:
Flow, Csikszentmihalyi, 1990.
First Break All The Rules, Coffman & Buckingham, 1999.
Now Discover Your Strengths, Buckingham & Clifton, 2001.
Follow This Path, Coffman & Gonzalez-Molina, 2002.
Good Business, Csikszentmihalyi, 2003.
Thriving in Mind, Benziger, 2003.
How Full Is Your Bucket, Rath & Clifton, 2004.
Character Strengths & Virtues, Peterson & Seligman, 2004.