How using the Team Strengths Grid can increase your team's performance

When we talk to people in HR, we ask them what keeps them (and their managers) awake at night when it comes to teams. We receive pretty much the same type of feedback:

• "The team is not performing"
• "We must deal with constant conflict in the team"
• "There's no communication in this team"
• "We must have difficult conversations with members not performing"
• "We're struggling to guess what the employees are good at and try to fit that to their job requirements"
• "Sending members on training doesn't seem to work"

In this article, I will share ways to address these issues using strengths and will bring this to life, using a client example. In order to begin addressing some of these problems, HR need to understand what makes each individual team member unique and how this potentially can contribute to team success. In other words, HR need a way to look at and make sense of each person's individual talents and their ability to contribute to the goals of the team. One way of being able to engage with, and visualise the collective strengths of the individuals is to use a Team Strengths Grid. 

Each team grid tells its own story by providing HR and managers with a way to visualise the collective strengths of each person. Once you have the collective strengths of the team, you can use the grid to:

• Identify what your team members are great at
• Know how to motivate each member
• Know how to keep them focused on the team goal
• Know how to deal with conflict; and
• Know how to increase communication by up to 50%

One of the best ways to illustrate this is by way of a real-life example. 

Client Case Study

We have included a team grid from one of our clients to show how we use a team grid to help teams. 

Each team grid divides the 34 CliftonStrengths into 4 domains or categories. The categories include:

• Strategic Thinking domain: "When your team needs to become more creative and innovative, look to people with the Strategic Thinking themes. They can stretch the team's thinking for the future and inspire new ideas that can lead to high performance."
• Relationship Building domain: "When your team needs to become stronger and more cohesive, look to people with the following Relationship Building themes. They can unite the group and galvanize them to achieve shared success. They are the bond that holds great teams together."
• Influencing Domain: "When your team needs to sell its ideas and persuade others, look to people with the following Influencing themes. They can help your team reach a much broader audience and convince others to aid in accomplishing your goals."
• Executing domain: "When your team needs to get things done, look to people with the following Executing themes. They can take an idea and make it a reality. And they'll work tirelessly to accomplish the goal."

In the example above, Strategic Thinking (31) and Execution (22) are dominant. This suggests that this team is good at developing great ideas and in turn, implementing them successfully. These are great strengths to have in any team. 

However, the manager was concerned about whether the team was able to influence sufficiently and if they were working effectively together, as the team seemed stressed. 

Taken in turn, it is tempting to look at the Influencing domain, and at a glance, think that this team cannot influence. Influencing is when your team needs to sell its ideas and persuade others, which most managers see as critical to team success. Having said, it is noticeable that several team members have Communication as a strength. If space is made to use their strengths intentionally, then focusing on sharing what the team is doing can be a powerful way to influence. In this team, communication became a standing agenda item.

In terms of working better together, we see that 8 people have Learner in their Top 5. Learners are motivated by learning and to continuously improve. They can be good at investigating ways to solve complex problems. But at times, they can be so in love with learning that they can frustrate those who look to complete things and meeting deadlines, such as those with Achiever and Responsibility. By understanding these differences and what each person requires to be effective, many team members were able to develop powerful partnerships in the team.

For example:

• Edward helped other team members see the unique and valuable qualities of team members using Individualization;
• Nelly sought the assistance of Lebo, who has Maximizer, to help improve her report writing;
• Once Anju realised that Settlers was not trying to deliberately annoy her by continuously suggesting new ways to do things (Strategic), whilst she was trying to prioritise deadlines (Focus), she was able to communicate the importance of agreeing goals.

The manager of this team felt that they were able to put a game plan together to make the team more effective using strengths, because they no longer had to guess what each person can contribute. This reduced the amount of time and energy taken up by conflict and stress, improving team motivation and effectiveness.

We help HR and managers improve team success, using a simple to use 3-step process.

The 3 Steps to Team Success

 When we work with teams, we use 3 steps to help managers create a team strengths game plan:

Phase 1: Identify

Phase 2: Educate

Phase 3: Implement

During the “identify” phase, we focus on understanding the challenges the team has. Are they struggling to communicate? Do the team members understand how they think, feel and behave? Is there a team member that is holding the team back? What would success look like for this team?

We then move on to the “educate” phase. During this phase, we get the team together to help each member understand their own strengths, by using the CliftonStrengths assessment. We help them to see how they can use their strengths to be productive and to avoid becoming disruptive in the team. We also focus on getting the team to talk to each other, understand the value that each person brings and how that makes the team better. We then focus on collaborating and exploring what makes this team great and discuss strategies to use their uniqueness to form complimentary partnerships, increase performance and motivation.

During the “implement” phase, we focus on taking the strategies that were discussed and turn these into a working plan. For the next 6 months, we follow up to ensure the strategies are embedded in the team and to offer support where needed.

When you get these three phases right, it empowers team members and removes the basic obstacles that keep teams from performing.

What's next?

The first thing that you can do to start your team on this journey is to click the link below to book a 15-minute call with me, Magriet, to discuss the challenges your team is currently facing and hear how we can help you: Book your call here.

The second thing you can do is to download the free ebook, "What you get with CliftonStrengths assessment".

The Team Strengths Grid is most effectively facilitated by a Gallup-Certified Coach who has deep knowledge and insights into the 34 CliftonStrengths talent themes.

If you want to a free template of the Team Strengths Grid, email me at magriet@bhgroup.africa.

If you want a more in-depth demonstration, into our 3-step Strengths Team Game Plan, book a 30-minute meeting with me here.