Embracing Your Team's Superpowers
Practical Applications in Servant Leadership, part 3
Previous posts: part 1, part 2
As we continue our walk through the Gallup Q12 engagement survey questions, let's look at another way you can improve your work culture. I’m taking one question each week and offering some practical suggestions on how to serve your team. This week, Q3.
Q3: At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
Again, Gallup’s survey will ask your team to rate on a scale of Strongly Agree (good) to Strongly Disagree (awful). Is this something you believe there would be strong agreement around for your team? Do your direct reports get the opportunity to do what they do best every day?
Making this happen can be difficult.
To ensure that everyone on your team has that opportunity to do what she or he does best, you have to know what those things are. Many leaders don’t even consider taking the time to know the people they work with that well. Even managers and leaders that want to do this often don’t know how to dig down and understand people’s gifts.
Here’s something that shouldn’t be a secret: every person you meet displays the image of God in a unique way. God took the time to knit that person together in a way that shows Himself to the world. This includes your coworkers!
This means that every one of your direct reports is
1) a window into God that you should embrace as a gift to you and those around you and
2) specially designed to be great at some things and not so great at others.
The things that each person is naturally gifted at and can develop into strengths I refer to as their Superpowers.
At organizations that I’ve worked at, job descriptions are created and then the interview process focuses on whether the individual applicant is capable of doing the job as written. It’s very function focused, and overlooks so much of what a new team member brings to the job other than the specific skills needed for that “job”.
I put the scarequotes around “job” because it’s really more of a utilitarian functional look at work rather than a human focused picture. We’re still, in far too many ways, treating every employment relationship as if its analogous to working on an assembly line. And that just ain’t right.
To really get at the heart of what’s behind Q3, you need to know and embrace the superpowers of each of your team members. It’s not an easy task, and my usual recommendation is to outsource part of it. When I’m coaching teams I primarily use two assessments (Gallup’s CliftonStrengths and Table Group’s Six Types of Working Genius) to dig down and find those superpowers for each person on a team. I use both of those in my 1 on 1 coaching as well.
You may not currently have the budget to outsource this and do a team workshop, but consider whether that money can be allocated in the future. The ROI can be incredible as team effectiveness skyrockets. Having some time to be more aware of one another’s talents (superpowers) and integrating that into your work habits makes everything run more smoothly. People doing what they do best is valuable to you, to them, and to your organization. than when they’re sloggin through types of work that God didn’t design them to do.
I do team sessions for as little as $3500 (for teams up to 8 people). I specialize in Christian mission focused organization. If your company doesn’t fit that niche, feel free to reach out anyway. I'd be happy to help you find a team coach that will work for your needs.
Barring the option of outsourcing, which is the simplest approach, here are three more things you can do to embrace the superpowers of your team members:
Read Patrick Lencioni’s book The Six Types of Working Genius. This will give you a good, easy to read, overview of work energies in various phases of work, and help you to understand why some people are energized by specific work and completely drained by other tasks.
Think about talents and energies when you’re interviewing. This is more vague than I would like because there’s not an easy one-size-fits-all approach to discerning job fit to talents. Additionally, building a habit of discerning the uniqueness of an individual during the interview process takes time. Eventually it can be intuitive for you, but the main issue is to focus more on the image bearer in front of you in the interview than the details of the job description or the required experience for the position. Look hard at whether what makes them special lines up well with the work you want to hire for. If you like the person, but there’s not a job fit, consider whether there are other jobs you could hire them for, but don’t hire someone for a position that doesn’t match the superpowers.
Make it a part of your 1 on 1s with your team and even your team strategy sessions to look for ways to allow those under- or un-utilized superpowers to break out. Have you ever driven to work on a Tuesday knowing “Today I get to do something that energizes me so much, I’d almost do it for free!”? You want that to be the experience of every direct report you have, as often as possible. Ask “what have you loved most about your job in the past month?” or “what has frustrated you most about your work recently?” in the 1 on 1 as a regular part of engaging with your direct reports.
Make sure you prioritize in your budget, your schedule, and your job descriptions understanding and utilizing what God made you and each person on your team specially to do. You will find that embracing your own superpowers and those of your team members leads to greater effectiveness and more joy at work.
This is Part 3 of the Practical Applications in Servant Leadership series.
Part 1: Clear Expectations
Part 2: Fully Equipped