We frequently speak about discovering the nice in our college students, however can we do the identical for the adults? Can we faucet into their passions and strengths, or can we repeatedly give attention to what they aren’t doing excellent?
I will provide you with an instance.
I typically see leaders pop up their “information” to their employees and spotlight “areas for progress” (which typically seems like “issues we suck at” with a nicer tone) and dig deeper into why and the way individuals have to get higher. But, they typically gloss over the areas the place persons are crushing it and focus extra on what’s unsuitable as an alternative of analyzing why sure issues are going so proper.
Can we develop? After all!
However there’ll at all times be areas for progress and the extra we’re laser-focused on what’s unsuitable, the extra we play video games of instructional whack-a-mole.
I will provide you with slightly anecdotal story on why specializing in strengths is usually useful. Going to the health club is a ardour of mine, and I do bicep curls like Homer Simpson within the episode the place he did fixed curls, however with each arms.
When somebody says, “Your arms are trying jacked!” (which is never heard however at all times appreciated!) I wish to do extra arm workout routines and sustain with what I’m at the moment doing. However it additionally will get me into the health club to work on different issues.
Nothing builds confidence like acknowledged success.
And confidence in what you’re good at can typically make you higher at what you aren’t.
In “What Makes a Nice Principal,” I mentioned the significance of figuring out and constructing on strengths as an academic chief getting into a brand new area.
So if I had been to enter a brand new constructing as principal and alter nothing, what would I do?
That is going to look a bit technical, however as I used to be attending to know everybody, I might create a spreadsheet and write each employees member’s identify down, and in a column to the proper of their identify, I might write, What is that this individual’s ardour and/or energy?
Till I can fill out that kind in its entirety, and—that is actually necessary—individuals know I do know their energy and or ardour, nothing modifications in that college.
“However received’t that take endlessly?”
It received’t be fast.
Are you aware what takes longer? Employees pushing again on each initiative and thought as a result of they don’t belief you, and they’re questioning how lengthy it is going to be earlier than the subsequent individual is available in to take over the function.
That is such a essential course of as a result of if individuals suppose you’re there to “repair them,” they may combat you on every little thing.
If individuals know they’re valued and see that you’re attempting to carry out the most effective in them via what’s already there, they are going to be way more keen to discover new concepts.
I shared this in The Innovator’s Mindset and imagine it to at the present time: “To create a tradition the place innovation thrives, now we have to understand that, in lots of circumstances, we have already got every little thing we’d like; we simply want to determine tips on how to faucet into it.”
You don’t at all times have to tear down the outdated to construct the brand new.
However you possibly can’t construct the brand new by yourself.”
George Couros
If you’re an academic administrator studying this, I hope it helps.
If you’re a trainer studying this and considering, “I want my principal would do that for us!” additionally take into account the way you do the equal in your classroom. A lot of our college students’ presents are typically ignored and even suppressed as a result of they don’t match the “field” that we typically attempt to match each child into.
Living proof, I do one thing for a residing (discuss) that I used to be typically advised to not do at school (discuss). I’m not saying you must permit me to be disrespectful of others as a pupil, however the lecture rooms I thrived in had been the locations the place lecturers tapped into that and introduced out what I used to be already good at.
The presents of these we serve are already there, and they’re much simpler to seek out in case you select to look.