Magnify Their Strengths and Multiply Work Positive Teams

Lisa Cummings was a brand-new manager in 1999 as she ran a half-day workshop with her team using Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment.

She inherited this team. She did what most new managers do. She hoped everyone would think the way she did. The assessment transformed that instantly. The people Lisa was most uncertain about revealed talents she completely overlooked. The quiet one was a precision thinker. The scattered one was a connector who moved ideas across the organization faster than anyone else.

Lisa decided to manage for similarity. The assessment revealed the power of complementarity.

The M in D.R.E.A.M. is for Magnify Their Strengths.

Notice What Works

Lisa’s core philosophy for magnifying strengths requires one simple quality. She told me on the Work Positive Podcast, “Notice what works to get more of what works.”

Find what already shines. Share it. Feed it. Watch it multiply.

So many people leaders do the opposite. They scan for what is broken, give it attention, and call that management. Lisa coaches the Work Positive Community to flip that paradigm: “Catch someone doing something right and say it out loud, even if it’s small, and watch what that does.”

Walk through the company or gaze across your next Teams meeting with one question in mind. “What is this person doing that no one else on my team does quite like this?”

Find one answer. Share it out loud. That is a strength magnifying practice.

Gifts, Skills, and Passions

Glenn Akramoff offers a three-part framework for helping team members discover their deepest purpose at work.

• Gifts are the natural abilities someone brings to work without training.

• Skills are what someone develops over time, often because they were drawn to them.

• Passions are what light someone up, the work that generates energy rather than consumes it.

Many people leaders have yet to ask about these three strengths. The result is people who sit inside roles that use their skills while ignoring their gifts, do competent work that never quite catches fire, and wonder why Monday mornings feel so heavy.

Glenn told me on the Work Positive Podcast, “When you focus on that [gifts, skills, and passions], not only do you say that you care about them, you show that. And that’s how you get loyalty. That’s how you get performance.”

Gallup data on strengths-based organizations confirms the return. A 21% increase in productivity. A 14% reduction in turnover.

The Work That Matters

Jennifer McClure named the deepest reason magnifying strengths works. She told me on the Work Positive Podcast, “People are engaged if they feel like the work that they do matters.”

Magnifying strengths is how you show someone that the work they do matters, because only they can do it the way they do it.

You make the connection between person and purpose concrete. You stop the revolving door as you magnify strengths.

Your Magnify Do One Thing (DOT) Challenge

This week, catch three people doing something well.

• Share it specifically.

• Share it out loud.

• Share it in the moment.

Repeat this practice every week for one month and watch the team’s energy transform.

Work Positive Bottom Line

Define your culture. Right people, right seats. Elevate courage. Attend to each person. Magnify their strengths.

Your D.R.E.A.M. Team comes true.

Do One Thing today.

This post is from Dr. Joey Faucette's best-seller, D.R.E.A.M. Teams @ Work: Cultivate the Work Positive Teams You Dream About.