Understanding people’s strengths and focusing on what makes them uniquely talented has always been a passion for me.  It’s probably what led me to the recruiting profession and definitely why I still LOVE it as much as ever!  And dare I say, it’s why I’ve achieved such success as a professional match maker.  I’m a Maximizer, so it comes naturally to me.

I’ve always instinctively known my strengths, so I’ve found ways to incorporate them in everything I do.

According to Clifton StrengthsFinder®, here are my top 5 strengths:

  1. Strategic
  2. Maximizer
  3. Achiever
  4. Learner
  5. Activator

I’m a strategic, maximizing achiever, with a strong drive for learning and making things happen.  I own it and I thrive when I focus on it.  Yes, sometimes I break the rules, but never-the-less, I achieve the desired results and have a whole lot of fun getting there.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Strength-Based approach focuses on developing each person’s strengths and managing around weaknesses, versus identifying weaknesses and creating a performance improvement plan to fix them.  Focus on weaknesses, and you’ll fix the problem and get to status quo.  Focus on strengths, and then you’ll reach your highest potential!

In a ground-breaking and comprehensive study, Gallup examined the effects of focusing on strengths had on workgroup performance. It included 49,495 business units with 1.2 million employees, across 22 organizations, in 45 countries. Gallup focused on six outcomes: sales, profit, customer engagement, turnover, employee engagement, and safety.

Here are the findings:

  • 10%-19% increase in sales
  • 14%-29% increase in profit
  • 3%-7% increase in customer engagement
  • 9%-15% increase in engaged employees
  • 6- to 16-point decrease in turnover (in low-turnover organizations)
  • 26- to 72-point decrease in turnover (in high-turnover organizations)
  • 22%-59% decrease in safety incidents
**Rigoni PHD, Brandon & Asplund, Jim, “Developing Employees Strengths Boost Sales, Profit, and Engagement”, Harvard Business Review, Web 9/1/16.  https://hbr.org/2016/09/developing-employees-strengths-boosts-sales-profit-and-engagement

Next time, we’ll explore the 4 strengths categories and how to build powerful teams by understanding and acknowledging each person’s strengths.  When you combine team strengths, you will reach new levels of performance and engagement!

If you would like to explore your strength and/or discover how to unleash your team’s potential, please reach out to me, Barbara Field at bfield@bravatalent.com.  We can customize a program to meet your needs and help you unleash your potential, both personally and professionally.

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