I recently had the opportunity to attend a half day training seminar and I found the topic extremely relevant to each of us as we transition from execution to management within our companies. I think everyone knows how passionate I am about personal growth and development, and I stand firmly behind the idea of strength-based feedback. This post is going to focus more on how to give feedback rather than receiving it yourself, but the framework can be applied in either direction.
Strength-based development is the practice of deeply knowing and documenting an individuals’ distinguishing capabilities and linking their strengths to priority development areas in order to accelerate learning and growth.
Strength-based feedback is comprised of three steps. Step 1 calls for an inventory of strengths. Step two pushes you to link the strengths to development goals, and then in the third step you apply the strengths and development goals to an action plan.
A strength inventory is a comprehensive list of the skills, characteristics and value an individual brings to your organization. They are individual and specific and supplemented with examples on how the strength manifests in behavior and actions. By creating this inventory, you provide explicit recognition of the strengths, which fosters self-confidence.
The next step is to link the strengths to development goals. It’s important to remember that we can only focus on a small number of development goals at a time, so as you’re providing feedback, focus on what’s most important. For example, if someone on your team really struggles to speak up in meetings, but they can create very polished presentation slides, your feedback should focus on helping them pivot their strength in slide creation to polishing their presentation skills in the same manor.
The final step is to create an action plan together with your employee. Agree to tactical goals that the individual can refer back to, and do so regularly. An example might include “…improve first impressions and body language and avoid coming off as more junior. Leverage your natural confidence and credibility and extend it from beginning to end of an interaction.” Each subsequent meeting you have should include an update on the action plan and a focus on what the individual has done to address each of the goals you agreed to. The action plan encourages collaboration and fosters a shared responsibility between you and your employee to monitor their personal growth and development together.
How have you helped foster development on your own teams at work, either as a colleague or manager?
This is a very interesting article to me personally as I became a first time manager earlier this year. In becoming a first time manager I have had to learn different ways to help develop my team into the future stars of the company.
I agree with what you have said about the importance of creating agreeable development goals and a clear action plan to achieve them. I’ve found that creating these goals very early on in a manager/employee relationship helps get the relationship started off on the right foot. I positioned this discussion as a fairly open discussion because I wanted my employees to buy into the goals I was setting and make sure it was something that was important to them. The earlier you can agree on this the better.
As you are working towards these development goals learning the difference between coaching and dictating is an important distinction. Two things that have worked very well for me is to:
1) Give a lot of praise when things go correctly, as Brandon mentioned 8 – 1 ratio between praise and raising opportunities for improvement (impossible to hit that ratio). The purpose of giving a lot of praise is when you do have to approach your employee about something they are not doing well they know you have their best interests in mind because of all the positive things you have said in the past.
2) Make sure you praise the right things. Praise the things that you really want them to continue and explain why doing that correctly is important. I have had a few instances where my employees have accidentally done something correct, but I made sure to give ample praise so that behavior would continue.
Finally, the biggest thing I have found in my experience in developing my team is different people have different motivations. The easiest way to figure out what motivates them in their development is to just ask them. If you set forth a development plan for someone that doesn’t align with any of their goals or personal interests it will be very difficult to get that person where you want them to be. Communication goes a long way in helping managers develop their employees and is something that is often overlooked. As a manager you need to be willing to listen to your employees development goals and make sure you align your plan with those goals. I have seen a lot of managers use a cookie cutter approach across different employees and it often doesn’t get the most out of their employees.
Those are some of the ways I have helped drive development on my team. Does anyone else have any helpful hints?