Focus: Strengths vs. Weaknesses

Congrats to Joel Terry on his recent promotion to Assistant Manager at Wal-Mart. He's been working hard for the past couple of years in various departments and has proven himself to upper management. He is taking over as supervisor of the cashiers department and is the primary contact for customers that want to speak to a manager.

As such, he's heading into a very different world. He does have experience in Returns with handling customer complaints but this will be one step beyond that. The tougher part, in my opinion, is that he will be supervising a group of people now. He has to help others, especially new employees, improve in their jobs and further themselves. Eventually he has to find and groom his own replacement at the management level.

So how does this happen? Why do some managers seem to get the most out of their group while other managers just burn people out? How can we make sure that people enjoy their work every day, that they're motivated, that they have the tools they need? To me, becoming a supervisor relates strongly to the question of "discipleship" for Christians. Granted, a supervisor's relationship is not nearly as deep as that of a spiritual mentor but there are many parallels.

There are a lot of ideas that can kick in here so here is just one that I think is useful:

Focus on strengths.
Almost anybody can focus on weaknesses. Criticism comes easily to most of us. We can dish it out in the form of gossip, sarcasm and insults. We can keep a running total of things that people have done wrong to us. We can become offended at the simplest of actions. We speak wisely as we give "constructive criticism."

Conversely, we have come to expect criticism from the authority figures in our lives: our parents, our bosses, the church. Our grades in school were black and white reminders of what we did not know. Our yearly assessments at work are stressful times of confrontation. Church sermons remind us of our sins and our friends remind us about how we have failed.

And specifically with work and as a supervisor, we often think that we need to correct people. We need to show them their flaws and that's how we can get them to improve. We use phrases like "development opportunities" instead of "weaknesses." We make a good show about having a three-month action plan to fix things.

Back in the day when I first started out as leader of the youth worship team, that was definitely my (unintentional) approach. The band would play along with the music and I would stop things once in a while to correct someone or to teach a new technique. Though I consciously tried to be nice about how I corrected the youth, I was still focused on the mistakes. No amount of pleasantries and jokes could hide the fact that I was looking at the wrong thing.

I should have been focused on their strengths instead. Eventually and with their help, I did learn about the power of encouragement and positive feedback. At first I learned this only with my head, then I learned it through action and finally I learned it with my heart. One compliment can go so much further than a dozen pieces of constructive criticism.

People feel empowered with positive feedback. People gain confidence with compliments. People feel accepted when we note their accomplishments. People feel proud when we point out their performance.

Leonard Terry has gone so far as to say that he never offers negative feedback to someone, even when it's specifically requested. He always prefers to remark on the positive traits and built a person up instead. I've also heard other ideas like "always offer three compliments before offering one critique."

The point is that we can excel in the things that we already do well. By improving on our shortcomings, we can really only become adequate in those areas. Sure, it may be necessary to shore up our weaknesses but that will never make us stars. We need to look at our areas of greatest potential, at the things that we already love and do naturally, and open those up so that we can light up the night sky.