“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.