Focussing On The Strengths

Not too long ago, I was working with a client who continually complained about one of their long term staff members.  The staff member concerned was apparently not doing their best anymore and they had started displaying this lack of enthusiasm for their job by intentionally doing things that would rub their boss up the wrong way. Or so I was told.

"Hold on a minute" I said to my client.  "Are you telling me that this employee is trying to get unemployed?"  "Well no" said my client "but that doesn't change the fact that they keep doing these really annoying things every day." "What about the rest of your staff" I asked.  "Well now that you mention it, they are all annoying me at the moment"

"OK" I said. "Let's take a look at what's really going on here and see if we can get to the bottom of these strange new behaviours you are seeing."

My client and I had an in-depth coaching conversation about what had been happening in the business since this behaviour had manifested itself and it turned out that finances were low and the business was not performing as was hoped. Another thing that came to light was that this was impacting on my client's perspective of how his staff was performing in terms of contributing to this downturn in business.  What the end result turned out to be was that because my client was feeling stressed about the poor performance of his company, he was blaming his staff and their "new poor performance" for his woes instead of looking at himself and how he had managed to get into this less than desirable situation.

I could see straight away that until he was able to really see that he needed to take responsibility for his own poor performance and stop blaming his staff, there was going to be little or no improvement in the situation at hand.

True enough, his staff had started to behave in less than favourable ways during their working hours but this turned out to be in response to my client's poor behaviour and general overall grumpiness.  He, like many, needed to place the blame elsewhere when things weren't doing too well and his staff turned out to be the not so lucky recipients. Suddenly nobody was laughing or smiling at work anymore and everyone was tiptoeing around my client not knowing what the right thing to be doing was.  Boy, were they stressed out!  And of course this was resulting in them acting differently at work.

To get things back on track between my client and his staff, I asked him to make a list of all the positive things that each staff member brought into his business.  When I spoke to him a few days later and asked him how his lists had gone, he reported back to me that he was now able to see that he had been focussing on the wrong things with his staff.  Instead of looking at all the positive strengths each staff member had, he had been focussing instead on the negative things  (which by the way, he had contributed to producing).  After this, his attitude to his staff improved considerably and of course this in turn led to a noticeable change in their ‘strange and undesirable" behaviours.

What did my client learn from this and what can you learn from his experience?  Two things.  Firstly, before blaming others for all the bad things that happen in your life (both personal and professional), take a good hard look to determine who is really to blame. Secondly, always remember to focus on the strengths of the people around you.  Remember that each staff member is an individual and because of that, they will all have different strengths as well as weaknesses.  A good leader is one who knows how to tap into those variety of strengths on their team and to make them work in favour of their business.  Try always to steer your staff towards working with their strengths instead of expecting them to improve dramatically on their weaknesses. This is just a waste of your time and theirs. And finally, remember, no one is perfect.....not even you!

Pam specialises in working with small and micro businesses to motivate business owners, managers and their key staff towards maximising productivity and profits, excellence in customer service and client retention. Pam can be contacted on:

Phone: 0431 975515  or 0755 296 467.

Email: pstellem@ask@pamstellema.com.au

Website: click here.

An important message

While every effort has been made to provide valuable, useful information in this Newsletter, I and any related suppliers or associated companies, accept no responsibility or any form of liability from reliance upon or use of its contents. Any suggestions should be considered carefully within your own particular circumstances, as they are intended as general information only.