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Vesa Purho
Development Manager, Nokia
Year's end is a good time to evaluate whether you are
actually in a job that suits your skills and talents, and if
not, to determine what you or your manager can do about it.
Recently, I attended a webcast seminar that was part of the
2002
Linkage Excellence in Management & Leadership series.
In that webcast, Marcus Buckingham from Gallup discussed
discovering your strengths; he raised some very interesting
ideas.
Buckingham talked about engagement in work and showed some
results from Gallup's extensive research on the subject. Not
many people are really engaged in their work because,
according to Buckingham, their basic needs are not satisfied.
In talking about today's work environment, we hear a lot about
teamwork, future success, development opportunities, and so on
without ensuring that basic needs are fulfilled. Basic needs
include knowing what is expected from you at work, having the
appropriate quality tools to do the work, and receiving
recognition for your work.
One of the basic needs that people have is the opportunity to
do what they do best. So the question is "do I (or my people)
have an opportunity to do what I (or they) do best every day
at work?" Buckingham talked about strength, which is a
combination of talent, skills, and knowledge. If an employee
is not performing well, you must first look at the reasons
why. If they lack knowledge or skill, those things can be
learned; but if they lack talent, which Buckingham defined as
"a natural recurring pattern of behaviour," that cannot be
changed and the person may be in the wrong job.
Buckingham used himself as an example. He used to manage a
group of people but never felt very comfortable doing
managing, as his employees noticed. So he discussed the
problem with his manager and they concluded that his talents
lay somewhere else, like writing books and lecturing about
management. Those tasks he does extremely well and feels
comfortable doing them but actually managing people is not his
talent.
Often, people think that talents are related to activities
like music, acting, or other forms of art, which are not so
commonly needed at work; however, a talent can be something
else as well. For example, some people may be very good at
categorizing information so that they easily see patterns and
can classify pieces of information (these people would be good
at creating information models). Or a person can be good at
persuading people; they know what to say and how to get others
to see their viewpoint. Further, some people are extremely
well suited for doing work that requires a lot of
concentration on small details and they enjoy doing it. These
are the kind of talents that people should be also able to use
in their work.
If people can use their talents, they find the job easy to do,
they get a sense of "flow" when doing it, they enjoy it, which
leads to greater motivation, and they can achieve far better
results than someone who doesn't have the talent for that
work.
Naturally, I am not saying that everybody has to be able to do
only work that they feel most comfortable with all the time.
We all have assignments and routines that don't suit our
talents but still need to be done. However, if people can
never, or very seldom, use their talents in their work, they
are very likely to lose motivation. They are "just doing the
work" without being engaged and enthusiastic about it. As a
result, the whole group suffers and some people are very
likely to leave.
As a manager when reviewing work goals with an employee,
discuss their talents. Explore how those talents can be used
in their work. Focusing on developing those strengths that a
person already has is likely to be more productive than trying
to improve their weaknesses especially when they are related
to talents. Their weaknesses cannot be ignored, but you may
find ways to manage around them instead of trying to improve
performance. As Buckingham pointed out, "Focus on each
employee's strengths, manage around his/her weaknesses."
With these thoughts, I wish all the readers a Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year.
This article is the personal opinion of the author and does
not necessarily reflect the opinion or practice of Nokia.
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