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Monday, April 25, 2005
Antonio: Questions great managers ask
By Kiko Antonio
Night Manager
DISCOVERING TALENTS. As discussed last week, average managers treat all their employees the same. Great managers discover each individual’s unique talents and bring these to the surface so everyone wins.
Managers will succeed only when they can identify and deploy the differences among people. It takes time and effort to gain a full appreciation of an employee’s strengths and weaknesses.
The great manager spends a good deal of time outside the office walking around, watching each person’s reactions to events, listening, and taking mental notes about what each individual is drawn to and what each person struggles with.
There’s no substitute for this kind of observation, but you can obtain a lot of information about a person by asking a few simple, open-ended questions and listening carefully to the answers.
According to Marcus Buckingham, a leading consultant and speaker on leadership and management practices, two queries in particular have proven most revealing when it comes to identifying strengths and weaknesses, and he recommends asking them of all new hires—and revisiting the questions periodically.
To identify a person’s strengths, first ask, “What was the best day at work you’ve had in the past three months?” Find out what the person was doing and why he enjoyed it so much.
Remember: A strength is not merely something you are good at. In fact, it might be something you aren’t good at yet. It might be just a predilection, something you find so intrinsically satisfying that you look forward to doing it again and again and getting better at it over time. This question will prompt your employee to start thinking about his interests and abilities from this perspective.
To identify a person’s weakness, just invert the question: “What was the worst day you’ve had at work in the past three months?” And then probe for details about what he was doing and why it grated on him so much.
As with a strength, a weakness is not merely something you are bad at (in fact, you might be quite competent at it). It is something that drains you of energy, an activity that you never look forward to doing and that when you are doing it, all you can think about is stopping.
Although you’re keeping an eye out for both the strengths and weaknesses of your employees, your focus should be on their strengths. Self-awareness is a good thing. It’s the job of the manager to identify weaknesses and create a plan for overcoming them. (kiko_antonio@yahoo.com)
(April 25, 2005 issue)
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