In my last instalment on ideas for developing your employees, I suggested you ask further questions in response to questions asked by your employees. Today’s tip in this series: find opportunities to showcase your people’s strengths.
Find opportunities to showcase your people’s strengths
An important component of developing your employees is to build up their self-esteem and their confidence, and when we, as leaders, can find ways to highlight and showcase their strengths, we set our people up to succeed! Every employee has certain things they are good at. Perhaps one of your staff members is very strong analytically, and a second is good at doing presentations. Maybe one of your people is very detail-oriented, and another has a knack for seeing the big picture implications of a situation. Yet another has demonstrated expertise in complicated negotiations.
Whatever an employee’s strengths, when you give assignments that emphasize those attributes, you also give the employee an opportunity to shine. And when employees get the satisfaction that comes with not only doing the job well, but knowing that others also observe them at their best, their self-confidence climbs. And it is this very self-confidence that then serves them well as they take on other more challenging work, tasks that may not be their primary strength. It is the boost in their own self-belief that allows them to put their best foot forward in other areas that they may find more difficult.
Yes, there is a hint of paradox here. Letting your people do more of what they already know well and are good at sets them up to succeed in things they are not as familiar with or accomplished in. So find opportunities to showcase your employees’ strengths, and you will actually be developing your employees.
What ideas do you have for ways to showcase employees’ strengths? If you’ve had great success with this approach, I know that we’d all love to hear what you are doing. Please share your experiences in the Comments section below.