The Strengths Superpower

WORLDWIDE, ONLY 13% OF EMPLOYEES ARE ENGAGED AT WORK

In a global research poll carried out by Gallup, only 13% of people going to work every day are engaged… that means 87% of us are just turning up, or worse causing total mayhem for our company and colleagues because we are just not happy in work!  Scary thought isn’t it?

Now we know that most organisations want to develop and engage their employees’, but to get there virtually all follow the conventional wisdom that we must find what’s wrong with people and then attempt to “fix” it!  And unfortunately, research suggests this can result in a culture of mediocrity and disengagement.

But did you know that people who use their Strengths every day in their work or daily activities are 6 times more likely to be engaged and 3 times more likely to report having a better
quality of life

So here are a few questions for you…

Do you know what your core talents and strengths are? Do you know what you bring to the table? What are your superpowers? Can you articulate exactly who you are, what you offer and how you can lead others? 

Or how about this…

Do you ever wonder why you don’t get on with certain people? Or how about the project or team you are working on… ‘Why don’t they understand where I am coming from?’ Or ‘how can I really develop and motivate my team’?

These are questions and challenges that plague us every day…

So here’s a thought..... what if you had the opportunity to do what you do best every day? What if you could articulate exactly who you are, and what you bring to the table? What if you could say with complete confidence that you are happy in your work and that you are fully engaged in your current everyday activity? What if you could motivate your team by giving them projects and tasks that suited their strengths so they were highly motivated and engaged in their roles and exceeding their goals?

At FUTURENEERZ we’ve found that in a strengths-based culture, employees have the opportunity to do what they do best every day. Their development is grounded in what they do right, not what they do wrong. As a result, employees look forward to going to work, achieve more while they are there and stay with their company longer. Companies can all but eliminate active disengagement by emphasizing strengths over weaknesses: Managers who predominantly focus on employees' strengths reduce active disengagement to an astoundingly low 1%. That’s an enticing stat isn’t it?

PEOPLE WORKING IN THE STRENGTHS ZONE....

•  look forward to going to work

•  have more positive than negative interactions with their co-workers

•  treat customers better

•  tell their friends they work for a great company

•  achieve more on a daily basis

•  have more positive, create, and innovative moments

FUTURENEERZ can help your organisation tap into the power of a strengths-based culture through an innovative online assessment known as the Clifton StrengthsFinder.  Don Clifton, the Father of Strengths Psychology invented it in the late 1990’s following a landmark 30 year study.  Clifton StrengthsFInder empowers people to identify and develop what they do best.  It provides the basis for meaningful coaching and ongoing conversations that create a culture of coaching and intensive development. Today, more than 16 million people around the work have discovered their strengths through the assessment.

Taking the Clifton StrengthsFinder solves one key issue – identifying employees’ individual talents – but there is more work to be done to develop a true strengths-based culture.  FUTURENEERZ will work with you to form a highly individualised strategy for building and maintaining a strengths-based approach to developing your young talented workforce.

Our Managing Director, Ciara is a GALLUP strengths coach and would be delighted to chat with you on how we can help you develop your teams and drive high performance through a strength based approach. If you’re interested in finding out more, please Contact Us at FUTURENEERZ.

Conditions to thrive

By 2025, over 75% of the workforce will be Millennials, ARE YOU READY?

The modern workplace presents many challenges for employees and managers, including changing job requirements, fast-moving technology, global connectedness and matrixed teams.  Millennials also place new demands on managers. The workplace is evolving, and so must the way employees are managed and developed.

At FUTURENEERZ, we have seen this clearly through our research to date in Ireland as well as highly reputed international research reports such as Gallup's latest report, How Millennials Want to Work and Live. Over the past 40 years, Gallup has studied tens of thousands of teams globally to learn more about the issues, pain points, challenges they face, the techniques managers, teams and organisations use to create highly engaged teams, and most importantly, the things that high-performing teams do that distinguish them from others. 

At FUTURENEERZ, we call these distinguishing factors ‘Conditions to Thrive’. There are 3 core conditions that companies focus on in order to drive high performance and engagement.

1. Passion & Purpose

•   Organisations provide a Clear Vision, Company Purpose & Inclusive Culture to their workforce.

•  Team success ultimately depends on the team’s ability to identify and focus on a compelling vision or common purpose and understand the role each member plays in reaching that vision.

 2. Trust & Strengths Based Culture

•  Trust is a core company value & cornerstone of organisational behaviour.

•  Companies embrace a strengths based culture. Team members are aware of their unique talents and how they can help the team respond to or achieve the common goals.  They also know how the others on the team can best contribute. As such, they act interdependently.

•  They have an understanding of how each person is inclined to think, act, and feel.  This awareness helps the team navigate the issues all teams encounters. Certain talents make team members adept at conflict management, documenting the team’s work, setting direction, influencing others etc.  In short, they understand how the team can work best together.

3. Cash + Love

•  While a competitive package is required to recruit and retain Millennials.  The No.1 driver for Millennials is development! They are most interested in opportunities to learn and grow, as well as a manager who cares about them as people. They want interesting work that makes a difference in the world and aligns with their personal sense of purpose. They don’t want to be micro-managed, they want to be coached with constant feedback and communication with the opportunity to advance as they develop.

•  Interested to learn more?  Please Contact Us, we’d be delighted to discuss our research & practical solutions with you.

It turns out that what is really important in building a great team is the individual.  It is how each person thinks about his or her contribution within the context of the others on the team and how each person combines his or her strengths with the complementary strengths of others to tackle challenges together.

The team’s aim is to achieve excellence and get the most out of each team member’s natural talents. In building great teams, it is therefore important to start by understanding and appreciating each team member’s talents and intentionally leveraging these to reach the collective team goal.

If you want to find out more about how to develop a high performing team based on a strengths-based approach, Contact Us at FUTURENEERZ.