Be Patient

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 661.

Focus on Your Team's Strengths

Research into what makes groups of people successful shows conclusively that managers and leaders get further by accentuating the positive attributes of team members than by working on their weaknesses. If you understand that people only change when they decide to change, this concept should make sense. Successful managers don't work too hard at changing the bad habits or behaviors of their employees; they find ways to build on their employees' innate skills. Focusing on strengths does not mean you need to turn your back on all of the unproductive or negative behaviors of your employees, but you do need to distinguish between those traits that can be changed from those that cannot be changed. Invoke the Serenity Prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous: "God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." Limit your focus on "fixing" to those things that are completely unacceptable, and have the courage to put your energy into finding and bringing forth employees' strengths.

Change takes time. When people work towards changing their own performance, it is not uncommon for Herculean internal effort to show-up as incremental visible improvement. Telling people they aren't changing fast enough in hopes of accelerating their development usually has the opposite effect. Be patient, particularly with yourself. Experience is a great teacher, but it often takes a lot of it before people understand how to apply it. There are ways to accelerate this process, but pushing people is rarely the answer.