Tools for Coaching Talent

Research by the Gallup organization and others has discovered a basic difference between highly successful managers and leaders and their more common counterparts. The best managers and leaders spend far more time focusing on people's strengths than working on their weaknesses. The typical leader notices mistakes and tries to get people to manage their deficiencies. What Buckingham and Coffman (1999) have discovered is that it is more important to discover what talents exist on your team and make plans to capitalize on them.

Certain talents are "hard-wired." Some people purposely try to nurture and deliver these talents while others either take them for granted or dilute their use by trying to become good at everything. Excellent performers are not really well rounded. They are good at certain things and they find ways to contribute these strengths. They don't ignore their weaknesses but they spend the majority of their time using their strengths. They use training to develop the knowledge and skills associated with their weaknesses not with the thought that they will become great at those things. They just want to make sure they can do those things adequately so they can avoid catastrophes ” essentially a damage control strategy. They find others to partner with who can handle the things they don't naturally do well.

Coach yourself to excellence in addition to coaching your teams . You took the first step back in chapter 2 when you assessed your own talents (see exercise 5, pp. 33 “34). What do you do consistently in a near-perfect way without hardly thinking about it? What comes naturally to you? You have been given some gifts, and it is your responsibility to nurture and deliver those gifts. Start with yourself and then help team members discover their talents, too. It is important for the team to be aware of the talents it has to work with. You and your teammates can dedicate a session to discovering your strengths on your own using exercise 27, the "Designated Bragger Exercise." It is designed to spare individuals from having to state their own strengths. Pairs of teammates interview each other, and then each partner in turn announces to the team what talents the other partner brings to the team. The inventory of talents resulting from this exercise provides a starting point for negotiating team roles and responsibilities. It can also help uncover what talents needed for task accomplishment are missing from the team. Once talents have been identified, you need to encourage their use.

EXERCISE 27

The Designated Bragger Exercise

Directions: Have each team member pair up with another member and follow steps 1 and 2 below. Then, as a team, complete steps 3 “5.

PAIRS

1. Choose which partner will be the "designated bragger" first. This person (partner A) will

   • Interview the other partner (partner B) to help identify which key skills, knowledge, and personal qualities partner B brings to the team that are directly related to the performance of his or her job assignments, as well as which things partner B does that help the group of individuals function as a team.

   • Add to partner B's responses any perceptions partner A has of the talents partner B brings to this team that partner B might not have thought of.

   • Prepare an attention-getting "reintroduction" of partner B to the rest of the team. It will be partner A's job to brag to the team on behalf of partner B. However, the bragging must be genuine and clearly point out the job- and teambuilding -related talents partner B brings to the team.

2. Switch roles (partner B is now the designated bragger for partner A) and repeat step 1.

   TEAM

3. Each member in turn as designated bragger is to deliver a great "introduction" of his or her partner to the rest of the team.

4. Someone should volunteer to record on a flip chart a running inventory to capture the collective talents of the team members.

5. After all the introductions have been made, the team discusses the inventory, focusing on these questions:

   • What does the inventory tell us about this team?

   • To what extent is the talent of this team being utilized? What is our plan for using this talent?

   • What talents ”knowledge, skills, and personal qualities ”are missing from the team?