5 Steps Leaders Can Take to Unleash Their Team’s Strengths

It’s not unreasonable to say most of us in leadership probably got there because we were really good as individual contributors and someone saw potential in us to lead others. Alternately, and statistically more likely, we were thrown into leadership in the hope we could duplicate ourselves or at the very least keep things moving along. It was an adventure in “just figure it out” as a new leader.

Zenger/Folkman has conducted research that most managers don’t receive any kind of training for their first 10 years in leadership. It’s a common gap in us as leaders that we don’t know how to truly unleash our team’s strengths. We may know how to lead a function, but not necessarily how to lead and unleash the people doing the work — moving beyond the day-to-day tactical grind to a thriving, highly collaborative, well-oiled machine as a team.

Here are five steps that you as a leader can take to help unleash the hidden talent in your teams:

1. Don’t assume you’re the smartest person in the room. In fact, you’re probably not. Your job as a leader isn’t to be the subject matter expert of all the things; your job is to facilitate a team of experts and combine their expertise to create something amazing. The further up the leadership ladder you go, the less of a subject matter expert you are as you gravitate further from the day-to-day work. Your role as a leader is strategy, vision, inspiration, motivation, not to be the tactically smartest person. Let your people teach YOU and let them do their thing, which leads to …
2. Assume the best from your team. Don’t assume mistakes were because they were lazy, assume it’s because they tried something new and celebrate that. Don’t assume new ideas won’t work. Again, you’re not necessarily the expert, and they may have a better idea for how to approach something than you may have done. Assuming the best from your team raises the level of psychological safety and trust while also raising the bar of quality and what the team can produce together.
3. Know your team’s strengths. This doesn’t just mean what they do tactically that’s incredible — although that’s definitely important. Know what their strengths are as a human being. What comes so naturally and easily it’s almost like breathing? Who is it that can get any group of people on board with a new idea? Who won’t miss any details that could come back and mess things up later? Who likes to go dig into the research and will make sure the data is there for decision-making? Consider how you celebrate and leverage these strengths. Not sure what your team’s strengths are? You’re definitely not alone in that. Using a tool that can identify strengths and provide tips for how to leverage them can really help.
4. Celebrate those strengths and get out of the way. It’s one thing to acknowledge you’re not the smartest person in the room, but if you don’t know how to let go of things and entrust them to your team based on what motivates them and their natural strengths, it doesn’t really matter. Learn how to delegate and provide support and coaching. Don’t micromanage; that’s a quick way to derail trust and cause people to put up walls.
5. Focus on continually developing their strengths. In his research, Marcus Buckingham reports that we grow most in our areas of greatest strength. There are neuroscientific explanations for this, but as leaders we should move past trying to develop “areas of opportunity” and instead focus on developing strengths. That’s where our people will be happiest and most fulfilled AND our organizations will see the most benefit from their work.

Unleashing the strengths of your team may not come naturally to you, but there are tools that can help and the work to move in the direction of a more strengths-focused leader is well worth the payoff. Your team will appreciate it and you’ll be amazed at what they can do together.

Tyana Owings is the people operations director for Cloverleaf, an automated coaching technology that integrates with the tools employees use every day.