Creating your team’s brand based on it’s strenghts

Millennial Gurus uses CliftonStrengths to help individuals identify their top 5 talents from a pool of 34 identified talents. Knowing your talents, and turning them into strengths, helps individuals effectively exercise the skills that give them energy, both personally and professionally.

When you identify your team’s individual talents, and their talents as a group, it can help you:

• inspire your employees,

• ensure they’re in positions that are a good fit and tap their strengths,

• retain good employees

Just as importantly, you can create goals based on the talents of your team members. This will help them focus on the tasks they’re good at, help them apply their strengths to their job responsibilities, and identify areas where they can further excel.

HOW TEAM STRENGTHS HELP YOU DEFINE YOUR BRAND

Work teams, just like individuals, have talents.  Identifying a team’s talents can help employees reach their potential, teams achieve synergy and companies attain peak performance.

For example, one of my clients has a family business selling fabrics wholesale to the furniture industry. Their leadership team has these top 5 talents:

1. Responsibility. They take psychological ownership of what they say they will do and have strong values like loyalty and honesty.

2. Achiever: They work hard, possess a great deal of stamina, and like to be busy and productive.

3. Belief: They have certain core values that are unchanging that define their purpose in life.

4. Learner: They love the process of learning and thrive on continuous personal improvement.

5. Empathy: They can sense the feelings of other people by imagining themselves in others’ lives or others’ situations.

The leadership team posted their five team strengths on the wall for all employees to see every day. They wanted to affirm that this is what we—together, as a team—bring to the table.

Knowing their strengths as a team helped them identify priorities and articulate why these strengths might be important to potential customers.  It allowed them to say to customers: This is who we are and this is why, in 4 simple statements:

1. We take ownership in being your fabric company.

2. We believe in treating everyone like family.

3. We love learning and finding the right fabric in the right color at the right price for you.

4. We understand that you want to make people’s homes more colorful and happy.

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE

Example 1: If your team has Belief as a top CliftonStrength, it’s important that the values of the team align with team members’ personal values. People with Belief as a top CliftonStrength won’t deviate from their personal values so a team without this alignment could be in for a difficult road.

Here’s a team activity that can be very effective in this situation:

Gather your team and have each person write down their personal values and then, as a group, develop common themes that best define the team. It can be a bonding experience that draws your team together. Once you narrow the themes to a short list, you can print them, post them, or whatever works for your team to serve as a rallying point.

Example 2: If your team has Empathy as a top CliftonStrength, it’s very easy for them to build relationships with people and to step into other people’s shoes. However, as a work team, it’s important that they can also step out.

For example, let’s say a key customer is upset. A team member with Empathy as a top CliftonStrength finds it easy to understand the client’s feelings and discontent. But in order to do their job well, they must be able to step back and not take on that emotional baggage.

How can you help them do their job better? Consider providing training about how to handle the most difficult calls, even giving them visual reminders of how to take a deep breath, step back, and not take the tough feedback personally.  For many team members, it will be the first time a manager has helped them separate the realities of business from their personal feelings.

At team meetings you might have each employee talk about their favorite call of the week.  Anything you can do to reinforce the many wins that tend to get lost among a few angry calls will help employees not just do their jobs better, but feel better about doing them!

BUILD YOUR BRAND, MAXIMIZE YOUR STRENGTHS

Millennial Guru would love help your team build its brand while maximizing your team’s strengths. Contact us today for a free consultation to learn more about how we can work together to help you meet your goals.