Strengths-Based Questions - Management Questions

Employees

If you’re involved in activities that you’re already naturally inclined to do well, your attitude toward work is different and you contribute more to your workplace compared with someone who may have similar skills but less natural ability. Doing what you do best is essential to being a star performer at work. As an employee, you should ask yourself these questions:

Do I know what I do best every day?
What do I enjoy most in my day-to-day activities at work?
How much time do I spend doing what I enjoy most?
What part of my current role energizes me?
What were my greatest accomplishments in the past six months?
Can I connect my talents to my accomplishments?
Do others know what I do best every day?
Am I communicating to the right people about what I do best?
Have I gathered input and feedback from the right people on how to apply my talents in my role?
Is there a career path that my manager and I can agree on that builds on what I do best?

Managers

You have a different challenge: to embed strengths into your workgroup’s culture and everyday process. Managers who want to capitalize on employee talents must first understand that employees are unique and bring distinct talents to their role. But to gain the most benefits — and to significantly boost productivity and profitability — you may need to discard some long-held premises. As a manager, you should ask yourself these questions:

Do employees clearly understand the priorities in their day-to-day work?
Are there information flow barriers in your company? Do workers have the resources and support they need from teams outside their workgroups? This is crucial to superior performance.
Do people feel comfortable asking for help and giving opinions? What channels of formal and informal communication can they use to voice opinions and share ideas across the organization?
How can you use everyday points of contact to talk with employees or teams about increasing productivity and efficiencies?

Leaders

Last but not least, leaders have an opportunity to transform an organization’s culture by implementing a strengths-based approach to employee development. But transformational change requires more than providing training to current employees. It demands a strategic approach to identifying the best performers in a role and finding more employees who are like the very best.

As a leader, you should ask yourself these questions:

Does your company have systems in place to study your best performers and replicate excellence and high performance across the company? Do you have a scientific way to identify the unique and differentiating talents of high performers? Once identified, can you integrate those attributes with workforce planning, career progression, and succession management to ensure that the right people with the right talents are in the right roles?
Are you providing opportunities for star employees to grow in their roles? Are you building, appreciating, and communicating excellence at all levels?
As an organization, are you providing the right opportunities to people based on their natural abilities? Are you promoting the right people into management and leadership roles?