RPO and Talent Management Blog by Ochre House | Ochre Talk

So what are ‘strengths’?

Are they knowledge, skills, or abilities? Well in the context of positive psychology they are defined as “something that energises you, which leads to your personal growth and development and which results in peak performance” (Strengths Partnership). But what does this mean to you? Are ‘strengths’ different to competencies? Are they a fad that’ll come and go? Why spend time trying to persuade your managers that there is yet another thing to consider?

Well, perhaps like you, I have observed the growing interest in the ‘happiness agenda’ with some cynicism. However, three years ago when I started learning about (and implementing, at a local level) a strengths based approach to work, I started to see some differences. We started dividing the workload on a team so that it aligned to people’s ‘strengths’, and there seemed to be an increase in engagement, and they did a better job. Logically it makes sense – if you give people work they are energised by then they’re much more likely to do a better job of it. We then took it a step further and started recruiting using strengths and talking to our clients about how they could do it too.

Having dabbled in strengths for the last few years alongside a competency based approach, I am not alone in arguing that strengths can offer something else to recruitment. The purists in positive psychology would argue for the total replacement of competencies with strengths. Personally, for recruitment, I think strengths in it’s purist form is only suited to specific roles and organisational cultures. I see greater value in using strengths to add to a competency based recruitment approach, as for me it’s the missing link in trying to tap into people’s motivations.

So what do you think about strengths? Have you tried to implement strengths in your organisation?

If the concept of strengths is new to you, join me on a webinar hosted with Ochre House on February 23^rd where we’ll discuss strengths in detail.

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Comments

1. Jane Harper says:

   January 31, 2012 at 6:21 pm

   This is interesting. Is there some evidence to support the ‘strength’ being better in recruitment than the ‘competency’? Or is it anecdotal at this stage?

   I can see why it would work, it makes sense, I just imagine that if I ask my line managers to adopt a whole new approach, that I’d be opening the door to challenges around how I was going to justify them learning something new.
2. Rebecca says:

   February 1, 2012 at 11:32 am

   They are different approaches, whether one is better than the other depends on your organisation and the role being recruited.

   Strengths are about looking at people’s individuality and how that would create success in the role, where as competencies are more of a ‘do they fit in the right box’ approach and will they do things in a way that you want. In that way, strengths is less about ‘how someone does something’ but more about the outcomes of what they do. For example, when recruiting a call centre operator for an insurance company the ‘how they do the job’ is very important, but for a managerial role in a creative company, the ‘how’ is less important.

   Certainly recently I’ve seen some case studies and statistical evidence of it working for some companies which I was going to share in the presentation. Hopefully this will help you identify if it’s something suitable for you.