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Find Your Strengths Among Your Team

by JD

image“Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.” — August Wilson

As a parting gift at the end of one of my projects, I wanted everybody to walk away with their list of personal strengths.

Not just a list that I made up, or their own list, but a list of strengths through the eyes of the team.

I wanted everybody to know exactly how the other team members valued them.

Know Your Strengths for Future Adventures

I wanted each person to have a new lens on their strengths that they could carry forward for their future adventures.

I’m a fan of focusing on strengths, but part of that means knowing what your strengths are, as you see them, and as others see them.  I know too many people with hidden talents, simply because they just don’t know how valuable their skills and strengths are to the situation or to other people.

A Simple Process for Finding Strengths on the Team

I kept the process simple.  I sent an email to my distributed team around the world, and then compiled the results, and shared with the team.   It was nothing fancy, but it meant a lot to each person on the team because it was real.

How I Asked for Everyone to Identify Strengths

Here is the simple mail I sent to my team:

For today … Take 15 or so minutes to …
… send me 3 unique strengths for each person, you’ve seen demonstrated during the project.

The Results Are In …

Here are the results …

(I’m included in the results, but for privacy I used “teammate” as a place holder for each team member)

J.D.

  • Driving project forward
  • Providing vision for the end result
  • Making decisions quickly and efficiently
  • Effective leadership
  • Drive to execute
  • People management
  • Vision for customer impact and results
  • PM ability to manage multiple threads and bring them together at the right time
  • Framing out new areas, new chapters, guide structure, etc. So that the team can follow behind.
  • Management
  • Vision
  • Architecture
  • Keeping things on track
  • leadership/ mentoring
  • Political interference for team
  • Visionary
  • Great networking skills
  • Good mentor
  • Always knows what he wants. Driven by a vision.
  • Has a positive vibe that infuses confidence in the team
  • Very vocal

Teammate 1

  • Reliable
  • Consistent
  • Pragmatic
  • Seems to be knowledgeable about architecture
  • Consistently working on updating docs
  • Work ethic and speed
  • Persistence
  • Discipline
  • Technical
  • Feedback
  • Writing
  • Good at reviewing and asking questions
  • Good at filling out documents to get something to start with
  • Eye for details
  • Committed
  • Strive for Project Goals
  • All round performer.
  • Does a good job with the tasks assigned to him.

Teammate 2

  • Fast
  • Reliable
  • Consistent
  • Writing skills
  • Accuracy of details
  • Team player
  • Video creation
  • Ability to learn new tech areas
  • Familiarity with MS and p&p
  • Editing
  • Writing
  • New Technologies
  • Rewording and editing
  • Starting documents.  Getting something going.
  • Video creation
  • Fast in execution
  • Resourceful
  • Focused on task at hand
  • Very articulate.
  • Knows how to express practice in words.

Teammate 3

  • Fast
  • Results focused
  • Solution-oriented
  • Managing project when required
  • Steering others and confirming tasks and requirements
  • Technical skills
  • Perfectionist
  • Technical
  • Writing
  • Architecture
  • Pruning down text
  • Security experience
  • Team leadership
  • Knows to reduce the flab (compressor)
  • Quick at task in hand
  • Great sounding board
  • Frames crispier sentences from long-running paragraphs.
  • Driven by vision.
  • More or less knows/expects a given outcome from a task.

Teammate 4

  • Knowledge and experience of architecture
  • Fluent writer
  • Willing to provide assistance when required
  • Robust thinking
  • Great experience
  • Open to new ideas
  • Technical skills
  • Influential
  • Problem-solving ability
  • Architecture knowledge
  • Patterns knowledge
  • Technical ability and information in head
  • Application development experience and wisdom
  • Standing up for useful over “marketing speak”
  • Good at technical knowledge
  • good reviewer
  • can talk in architecture lingo
  • Highly knowledgeable.
  • High motivation.

Teammate 5

  • Managing day to day activities
  • Planning and executing the plan
  • Producing and refining content
  • Hard working
  • Results focused
  • Solution-oriented
  • Motivation
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Big picture thinking
  • Understanding of the quality bar
  • Driving releases
  • Retains knowledge of old areas and can synthesize new knowledge into his existing framework
  • Collaboration
  • Writing
  • Technical
  • Only doing what needs to be done
  • finishing and shipping
  • positive attitude on how to deal with pressure
  • Gets stuff done one way or another.
  • Prioritizes tasks well.
  • Precise. Doesn’t like beating around the bush.

Teammate 6

  • Consistent work on improving content
  • Pragmatic
  • Ability to be wrong / no ego
  • Solution-oriented
  • Detail oriented and thorough
  • Customer focus, understands the right quality tradeoffs for customer impact
  • A good writer, his suggestions and changes are almost always very high quality
  • Feedback
  • Technical
  • Architecture

Teammate 7

  • Finding and maintaining contacts with reviewers and advisors
  • Maintaining consistency and eye for detail
  • Willing to help when required
  • Due diligence
  • Teamwork
  • Eager to learn
  • Networking
  • Team player
  • Willingness to do whatever is necessary or needed of him
  • Growing SEO knowledge
  • Interaction with and management of reviewers/contributors outside the team
  • SEO
  • Collaboration
  • Writing
  • Great passion and energy
  • Good marketing skills
  • Striving to improve himself
  • Great team player
  • Wants to be involved in everything.
  • Process based.
  • Loves Visio and drawing figures.:)

Some people were surprised by the strengths that others saw in them.   Some were deeply touched.  Everyone felt stronger with a clear picture of what they brought to the table and how they were valued for their contribution.

Category: Career, Effectiveness, Personal Effectiveness, StrengthsTag: Career, Strengths

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