A Simple Pattern for a Powerful Conversation
It’s too easy to point out weaknesses. Successful leaders know the top three strengths of everyone on the team.
Peter Drucker wrote, “A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.”
Every leader who expects performance learns to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses.
Top three strengths conversation:
Ask team members to write their top three strengths on a note card before they come to the next one-on-one or one-on-three meeting.
Before team members arrive, write their three top strengths, as you see them, on a note card. Include one illustration of each strength.
- Exchange cards.
- Discuss.
- Explore ways to maximize and develop strengths.
- Conclude with a discussion about insights gained. What are you learning about yourself? Others?
4 Tips:
#1. Send a list of possible strengths before the meeting.
The 34 strength themes from Clifton Strengthsfinder is a good option. (click the link for descriptions.)
- Achiever
- Activator
- Adaptability
- Analytical
- Arranger
- Belief
- Command
- Communication
- Competition
- Connectedness
- Consistency
- Context
- Deliberative
- Developer
- Discipline
- Empathy
- Focus
- Futuristic
- Harmony
- Ideation
- Includer
- Individualization
- Input
- Intellection
- Learner
- Maximizer
- Positivity
- Relator
- Responsibility
- Restorative
- Self-assurance
- Significance
- Strategic
- Woo
#2. Participate:
Include your own strengths in the conversation to make it interesting. Have them write your top three strengths with illustrations.
#3. Exclude weaknesses:
Discuss their top three weaknesses at a different meeting. Don’t use a discussion about strengths as an opportunity to bring up weaknesses. Separate the conversations.
#4. Adapt this for a group exercise with your entire team.
Application:
Give team members freedom when they’re working in known strengths.
Provide intervention, oversight, and direction in areas of weakness that need to be developed. Develop weaknesses that block the effective use of strengths. A person who is great at analysis may need to develop their decision-making skills, for example.
What suggestions do you have for a “Top Three Strengths Conversation”?
What additional patterns might you add for successful one-on-ones?
Very useful points. I really like the one about not mixing discussion of weaknesses with discussion of strengths. That keeps focus and builds confidence in individuals that may be slow to see their own strengths – if you point out weaknesses at the same time, they’re off like hares concentrating on their own perceived inadequacies!
Your point about concentrating on developing those weaknesses that block the effective use of strengths is also sound. Too often we’re scatter-gun in our approach to development, and your approach means instead of dissipating energy on things that won’t really take anyone forward, one can build momentum toward a virtuous circle of strengths being enhanced by increased skill in relevant weaker areas…
Thanks again for a great post, and speak again soon.
Regards
Alison
Thanks Alison. Glad you noticed the separation of strength conversations from weakness conversations. The idea fits more broadly into the idea that the feedback sandwich is filled with baloney. (Positive – Negative – Positive) Everyone ignores the positives because bad is stronger than good.
We should have enough positive performance conversations that the occasional ‘negative’ conversation is taken in stride. The minimum ratio is 3 positives for 1 negative.
Woo?!?! (#34)
Hey SGT. Great seeing you today. Woo….
Woo stands for winning others over. You enjoy the challenge of meeting new people and getting them to like you. Strangers are rarely intimidating to you. On the contrary, strangers can be energizing. You are drawn to them. You want to learn their names, ask them questions, and find some area of common interest so that you can strike up a conversation and build rapport. Some people shy away from starting up conversations because they worry about running out of things to say. You don’t. Not only are you rarely at a loss for words; you actually enjoy initiating with strangers because you derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection. Once that connection is made, you are quite happy to wrap it up and move on. There are new people to meet, new rooms to work, new crowds to mingle in. In your world there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet—lots of them.
I like it. Thanks for clarifying.
I have trouble with connectedness. I know I should work on fixing this, but I have problems with being pushed in with large groups. I can lead, but large groups are intimidating. I would rather lead by example over a small group.
Good points. It makes it easier to give people strengths to work in regarding any leadership exercise.
Thanks lost. Your transparency and self-awareness serve you well. In order to succeed we need to know who we are and when we function at our best. In addition, it helps to know where we want to go.
best for the journey
Great post, like the idea of sending the list out pre meeting and making a group exercise, would be a great ‘icebreaker’, get everyone relaxed, open, break down any barriers, perceived or otherwise. One question, can any leader truly know and remember all their team’s top 3 strengths? Could the size of the team not impact this? If you have a huge team, as some organisations are.
How can I put this, in my eyes today’s post is a little less ‘thorny’ than the previous one 🍻
Thanks Thinker. Great question. Perhaps it’s better to say we should know the top 3 strengths of our direct reports. 🙂
That was my train of thought, get the leadership working in the order, straight line it should be working in. May be a justification for attempting to keep ‘teams’ small and manageable rather than large and more than likely unmanageable, uncontrolled, uncontrollable. 👍🏼
Small teams promote, even require, high engagement of each participant. Drifting is more difficult. The two pizza rule points to a maximum number. If it takes more than two medium pizzas to feed the team, the team is too big. Maybe we need a ‘one large pizza rule’.
Smaller teams work more effectively, co-operate between each other more or so I have seen. Rather than referring to ‘medium’ and ‘large’ pizzas how about using an ‘actual numeric measurement’. ‘Medium’ and ‘large’ could be translated differently, depending upon where you are – no?
Projects may need some flexibility regarding the number of people on the team. 5-7 is a reasonable working number.