Improving Team Collaboration with Strengths Mapping
A little exercise to identify strengths for personal and team development.
👋 Ciao, Alex here. Welcome to a new free edition of Not Just Bits, and thank you to all the readers and those who support my work. Every week, my goal is to share lightweight and informative resources for CTOs.
Improving Team Collaboration with Strengths Mapping
Do you know how your coworkers like to receive feedback? Do you know their preferred communication channel (a quick call or Slack message), or if they prefer to be rewarded with a personal message or publicly? Of course, there are company processes to follow, but understanding their preferences better could help in finding the best way to create an inclusive environment and offer opportunities for them to share their thoughts without feeling pressured.
There are a lot of simple questions you can use to understand more about your team members and there are also several tools you can use to discover and explore your team's strengths.
Have you ever tried the CliftonStrengths assessment?
It's like a map of what you're really good at “your strengths”. The results show your best strengths (your top 5) from a list of 34 cool themes and it gives a description for each strength so you can check if it matches how you see yourself like the example below:
Individualization: You are intrigued with the unique qualities of each person. You have a gift for figuring out how different people can work together productively
But what I find really interesting is your team map (image below). The first time I did it, while waiting to discuss the results with our workshop facilitator I was concerned about all the white space and gaps my team was missing. This was because we generally have a natural inclination to focus on what we see as "missing." However, the workshop facilitator finally arrived and clarified how CliftonStrengths works and that we should concentrate on the themes that the team does have, asking our team members how they can better use their talents to create the outcomes we need in our organization.
In fact, the philosophy behind CliftonStrengths lies in the belief that individuals thrive when they concentrate on what they do best.
Little Team Strengths Exercise
So, how can you use a strengths map (Online Assessment) to get to know each other better and improve collaboration? Here, try this exercise with your team:
Find Your Strengths: Everyone in the team figures out what they're good at using the Strengths Team Grid.
Team Pairs: People get paired up, making sure each pair has different strengths.
Share About Strengths: In pairs, team members talk about their best strengths and how they think these strengths help the team goals.
Discover Complementary Strengths: Pairs figure out where their strengths work well together. They chat about how this teamwork can be good for the team.
Team Challenge: Give the pairs a team goal. They think about how they can use their strengths together to solve the goal.
Group Talk: Everyone comes together to talk about their ideas. Each pair tells the team how they plan to work together using their strengths.
Think About It: Finish the activity with a talk where everyone thinks about what they learned. Each person says one thing they discovered about their partner's strengths and how they want to work together better.
This will help your team learn about each other's strengths and how to work together using those strengths for real team success.
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See you next week! Best, Alex Di Mango