Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast where we celebrate authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose, and how these qualities lead to more successful and more inclusive workplaces. I'm your favorite weirdo, Erin Pachell, and I'm on a quest to turn business philosophy into business fact. If this isn't your first time listening, you might know that I tend to weave the concepts of strengths based teams and strengths based philosophies into almost everything that I talk about. Because in my mind, it's one of the things that connects these ideas of empathy, inclusion, stress and wellness, agility, design thinking, the future of work - hashtag future of work - performance and profitability all together, it's what I call a "linchpin" concept, and if you get this one right, it will unlock benefits in so many other parts of the organization. It has positive consequences. So this is what we are going to talk about today. Stay tuned.
Positive psychology has a focus on cultivating what is best within individuals and societies, and the ideas dovetail elegantly with the objectives of accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion in our modern workplaces. Strengths based philosophies recognize and celebrate every person's unique contributions, which is a core fundamental in the work of DEI and accessibility. When we acknowledge that each individual has unique talents and limitations, companies can tailor their work environments to be more accommodating, ensuring that all employees, regardless of physical or cognitive abilities, can leverage their strengths effectively. This environment not only acknowledges but values differences, seeing them not as hindrances, but as opportunities for innovation and creativity. Remember that the first step in design thinking is empathy, right? So if you want to strengthen diversity, inclusion, and accessibility, you need to get on board with the idea that a diverse cross section of talents, perspectives, and backgrounds is critical, full stop for your organization's success. Folks like me who advocate this style of work, we suggest looking beyond the conventional indicators of ability and potential, like university degrees or perfectly written resumes. Those are two things that are very commonly requested in the professional environment, but are also more often indicators of privilege, family support, and socioeconomic status than they might be of long term potential. So taking the strengthsbased approach naturally leads to more diverse teams, not just in terms of demographic characteristics, but also in thought, problem solving styles and creative approaches.
Diversity and inclusion is the natural consequence of a strengths based philosophy that truly understands and implements its principles. When team members believe that their unique strengths are seen and valued, they experience a sense of belonging and significance within an organization. An inclusive culture is one that not only invites diverse individuals to the table, but also listens to them. It engages with their ideas and gives them the space to shine. And I think we probably all know that by now. A lot of us have seen the posters. But by focusing on what every person does best, organizations can create teams where everyone feels empowered to contribute their best work and can foster a stronger sense of ownership and pride in a collective effort. So in practice, a strengths based approach can lead to policies and practices, such as flexible work arrangements that accommodate different working styles or levels of energy professional development programs tailored to individual growth trajectories and recruitment strategies that look beyond the traditional criteria and uncover a broader range of talents and backgrounds.
So we're trying to make the boxes a little bit bigger and the boundaries a bit more flexible. Ultimately, that positive psychology and strength based philosophies aren't just about feeling good, they're about achieving excellence and high performance through the genuine appreciation for every person as a whole person. Strengths, areas of development, idiosyncrasies and personal dynamics included as managers and as leaders, we really want to focus more on identifying and developing each person's innate talents and strengths, rather than concentrating on improving their weaknesses. And that's really important. And that doesn't mean that we all don't have to improve. We all have developing areas and we all need to put some energy into improving our developing areas or our weaknesses as well as in our strengths. But it does mean proportioning a larger amount of energy towards developing our strengths in a strength space organization. Getting to know your people is an absolute fundamental.
That's how we learn to recognize their strengths and how to support them and how to grow them. Every person has natural abilities that can be leveraged in addition to learning new skills. And if we understand our natural abilities well, they can actually help us learn new skills faster. So, for example, ten years ago I took an evaluation. It's a psychometric assessment tool that I took and it evaluated my natural abilities, different kinds of strengths, motivation, style, personality style and learning style. And one of the things that I learned was that, and I'm a voracious reader and I've been reading my entire life. My parents still tell tales of the bookathons that I used to crush, right? And I didn't learn until I was like 30 years old that actually reading is not my strongest learning channel. My auditory learning is much stronger than my reading.
And so once I learned that I had a more natural ability to learn through listening, I was able to pivot that. And now I almost exclusively listen to audiobooks instead of reading books on paper. And that has significantly improved my ability to remember the things that I'm hearing now. Right? So how do our workplaces and our workflows change when we pivot from correcting weaknesses to amplifying strengths? How does our collective output transform when each person is not only permitted, but encouraged to bring their full selves, their most authentic selves, their virtues and their strengths to their roles? And how does this approach change the way that you work in every single facet of your organization? Let's walk through the employee lifecycle, right from recruitment all the way to offboarding or transition or retirement recruitment. Let's start there. Recruitment selection. So in the traditional approach, you have candidates that are assessed, usually against a standardized set of criteria, which can sometimes overlook unique talents and potential. Because the only thing that you're seeing is the information that you're being provided by them via their resume.
And their resume may neither be evidence of their successes nor their potential. It really depends on how they view themselves and their personal brand and if they've done a lot of self awareness work. And I'll tell you, most people haven't done a lot of self awareness work. And so it's a lot of the time up to the organization to introduce this as a theme. But even before you even glance at a resume, you have to put out a job description or job posting for a role. And a lot of the time you may not even glance at a resume that doesn't meet the most important criteria in terms of the competencies. And that's not to say that competencies are important. They're definitely important, especially when it comes to equity, having a complete set of competencies and understanding exactly how we're evaluating those competencies is really important.
But the strengths based approach also focuses a little bit more on identifying what candidates naturally do best. So character, curiosity and the desire to do the work are also valuable considerations. In addition to those acquired skills and experiences. We know that if somebody has a desire to learn a new skill, they will much more often exceed our expectations if we provide them with a learning environment where they're both supported and pushed outside their comfort zone. So interviews and assessments are designed to uncover that Latin talent and potential contributions beyond the job description. For example, we might use strengths finding tools or behavioral interviews that ask candidates to describe when they have felt most engaged or energized. When it comes to onboarding, the traditional approach is often that new hires receive a fairly standardized introduction to company policies, procedures and tasks. And if we're lucky, the culture, job shadowing and mentoring is often included as well.
But it's usually more task oriented to help the employee get up to speed with their job faster. And so the strengths based approach, the onboarding, becomes much more personalized, with a strong emphasis on understanding the employee at a more personal level, helping the whole team understand how their unique strengths fit and contribute with the company's goals. Mentoring and coaching programs are also very commonplace, and the onboarding process now becomes a training ground, a breeding ground for inspiration, aspiration and potential. And it's often in the onboarding process that employees are introduced to the idea that our success is our success. In strengths based environments, teams support each other. They care about each other's career development, they care about each other's productivity and performance, and they care about each other's health and wellness. Also, when it comes to training and development, the traditional approach, if it exists at all, then some organizations, they barely do any training and development. It's often focused on addressing weaknesses or gaps in skills.
And so the standardized program for employees, they have standardized programs with similar tasks and accountabilities. And honestly, I think in a lot of organizations we're lucky if learning and development exists beyond onboarding. And if it does exist, very often it's like a subscription to coursera or LinkedIn learning, or something like that. And that's about it. When we're developing a strengths based approach to learning and development, like any program, it starts with the commitment to learning. You literally can't take a strengths based approach without a solid learning and development ecosystem and structure. You just can't. The entire philosophy is contingent on growth and development in order to achieve high performance.
It's kind of like a choose your own adventure a little bit. So the only alternative to creating this type of environment, the strength space environment, with the learning and development embedded as a core commitment. The only alternative to this would be to hire people who already possess the skills to do the job, which is what a lot of organizations do for good reason. It's a lot simpler, that's for sure. But you'll never get the same level of creativity, collaboration, innovation and purpose, and you certainly won't be advancing your DEI and accessibility goals. So in our strengths based approach, development programs are tailored to amplify employees'inherent talents and curiosity while still providing opportunities to address those areas of improvement. Employees are encouraged to take on projects and roles that align with their strengths, which enhances both their learning, the absorption of information, and how much they love their jobs. Now, performance management in the traditional approach, performance reviews tend to highlight what went wrong or where the employee needs to improve, right? If you're lucky and your organization is a bit more mature, you may have a more equitable competency based performance management model as a standard that each person is being evaluated against.
If you're even luckier, you'll complete these performance reviews more than once a year, which is a crazy thought for a lot of people. And they'll be used to generate legitimate feedback and used to create a personal development plan. And if you're even luckier, your managers will have some coaching skills and can use the results to support your talent development and career advancement process in your organization. AnD if you're really, really lucky, your organization is not using performance evaluations to coincide with salary reviews, which is always a bad idea. They should always be two separate and disconnected conversations. Now, in the strengths based approach, performance management becomes performance development. Performance management is kind of overrated, to be honest. In a strengths based organization, we don't manage performance per se.
We develop performance. It's a continuous improvement process at the individual level. While we don't ignore areas of growth, performance conversations happen frequently, like all the time, ideally weekly, and center around how employees use and expand their strengths to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. They become coaching conversations. Your success metrics now are way more aligned with output and results when it comes to promotion and advancement, rather than the traditional approach where promotions are often based on tenure, past success and prior roles, mastery of a specific skill set, or who likes you in the organization. Because that happens typically in a strengths based organization. Advancement really is about identifying where an employee's strengths can best contribute to the organization. And this might involve even creating new roles or adjusting existing roles to allow employees to continue to grow their strengths while maximizing their impact and ability to support your customers.
Remember, Albert Einstein famously said, everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. An individual strengths, their job fit, their job and performance, and their employee engagement, their retention and their advocacy for their employer and their loyalty for their employer are all intrinsically connected. Our jobs are not simple anymore. In the last 30 years, jobs have become more and more and more complex, and so it's not surprising that not every single person can do every single job well. We need to be really, really thoughtful about how we're matching roles to specific types of people and like in the last episode, like specific types of personas as well. Tom Rath, the author of Strengths Finder 2.0, said, if you spend your life trying to be good at everything. You will never be great at anything. And that's kind of the philosophy by which strengths based organizations thrive.
And yes, it does make human resources a bit more complicated, that's true. But if you do it well, your organization will thrive. So ask yourself, in your workplace today, do we have the right people doing the right jobs at the right time? How can we make small but highly impactful changes to the work that we're doing and the different workflows and the tasks and accountabilities? Remember, everything's incremental. We don't have to change the world. We don't have to have a revolution. We can just make really small, tiny changes and see how it goes. Most importantly of all, the leadership style that you take with a strengths based organization really surrounds empowerment. We want to empower others to recognize and use their unique capabilities.
Erin Patchell:
We want them to feel like heroes and put them on a stage. Just like Lao Tzu said, a leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, we did it ourselves. That's all for today. I hope you enjoyed the 33rd episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, diving into strengths based organizations. If you'd like to hit me up, you can email me at Erin at Positivist, Ca Erin at P-O-S-I-T-I-V-I-S-T Ca. You can find me on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or. I think that's about it.
Erin Patchell:
Until next time, stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.
