014 Lisa Cummings | How to Lead Through Strengths
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Lisa Cummings, owner of Lead Through Strengths, is an expert on personnel strengths; she helps organizations worldwide find their employees' greatest strengths and how best to utilize them.

She joins us on today's episode to explain how to uncover and tap into the strengths of your employees, the biggest myths around skills development and a few simple things you can do right away to start leading through strengths.

Listen to this episode and discover:

• What is the path of most resistance?
• What to do if someone in your company seems to be in the wrong role for their strengths.
• What is the biggest step you can take to lead through people's strengths?
• The simple way to make your team 6x more productive.
• And so much more…

Episode Overview

While it may seem apparent that we lead our teams based on what they're best at it isn't always apparent on how to do this. Generally we focus on doing the work at hand, giving feedback and performance reviews on what to improve. But what if we spent just a few seconds every day telling someone we appreciate how well they did something that day?

It is possible for it to be so simple, says Lisa Cummings. It doesn't mean we stop fixing what isn't working, that is important as well. The goal of leading through strength is for people to spend fewer hours working in weakness zones and more in areas of strength.

Two simple ways to find those areas of strength are to read StrengthsFinder and do their assessment, and to just notice our actions for a week. When are we most productive? What are we doing? Who are we talking to or interacting with? How are we doing what we're doing - are we on a sales? Are we in a sales meeting? Are we in a particular environment at the time? All of the answers to those questions will point us toward our own strengths.

Once you have assessed that in yourself you can take action to do the same with your team and your company. Start with your leaders, once they latch on to what you're doing they will pass it along to their teams.

And the key is to create an appropriate context: let people know what you're up to and why you're doing. Do you want to be a better leader and support them as best you can? Begin by telling them that, and then ask questions like: "Who was your favorite boss and why?" "When are you at your best and when are you at your worst?".

Next start changing the dynamics of all of your communication within your company: your one on one conversations, your team meetings, your company-wide announcements, etc. Doing so shows people you really are committed to creating an environment that truly sets people up for success. Then notice what happens when you do: it may take some time but you will see increased productivity from your team members and more profitability.

Also Lisa and I talk about how to work with someone's lack of interpersonal skills, when you should partner people up and how best to do so, plus Lisa shares some real-life examples! Listen in to hear all of that and more on today's show.

Learn more on http://www.growmyrevenue.com/business-cast/