Chapter 38.
Know Your People’s Strengths

Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don’t divide themselves, those people are very rare. In any generation there are a few and they lead their generation.

—Moshe Feldenkrais, Psychologist

Know your people’s strengths.

It’s the fundamental business insight that inspired the book Good to Great by Jim Collins (HarperBusiness, 2001). And this idea of going from good to great also applies to the people you motivate. It’s far more effective to build on their strengths than to worry too much about their weaknesses. The first step is to really know their strengths so you can help them to express them even more.

Most managers spend way too much time, especially in the world of sales, trying to fix what’s wrong.

Your people may identify negative things and say, “Oh, I’m not good at this. I need to change that. And I’m not very good on the phone. I need to fix that....” But listen to their voice tones when they say these things! They’ll always sound depressed and world-weary.

Here’s the simple formula (and once we recognize this formula, we can do some wonderful things): If people focus on what’s wrong with them, just focusing on that puts them in a bad mood. People grimly, glumly, confront with a kind of morbid honesty, what’s wrong. And the voice tones go down, because the enthusiasm goes down, and the dreariness sets in. And pretty soon, they’re putting off activities. They’re procrastinating. They’re saying, “This makes me uncomfortable. I don’t even like thinking about this right now. For some reason (I don’t know why, I was in a good mood before I started...), I’m not in the mood to work on this. I can tell that I can’t work on this problem until I feel a little more energy. I mean, you can’t work on something when there’s no energy to work.”

We went into a computer company and listened as the manager, Matt, talked about his team.

“I wish my salespeople would do more research before their sales calls,” Matt said.

And then when we sat down with one of Matt’s salespeople, Byron, he said, “Yeah, that’s something I’m not very good at.”

“Okay, you’re not very good at that. So let’s move on.”

“No, no, I need to fix that,” said Byron. “That’s something that needs to be fixed. I need to get better. Why don’t you coach me? How do I get better at that?”

And we could hear his low voice tone. We knew Byron would never get better at that because of the negative mindset the very subject put him in.

To really take something on and to grow and strengthen it, people need to be in an upbeat, positive mood. People need to have energy. That’s when they’re at their best.

“So, when will my people have energy?” manager Matt asked us after we explained the concept of moods to him.

“They get energy when they think about the things they’re really good at in sales. Have them ask themselves, ‘What am I really good at? What are my strengths?’ The minute they start focusing on those things, their energy will pick up. Their self-esteem will pick up. Their enthusiasm will pick up.”

That’s where the fastest infusion of productivity always comes from. First, you find what this person is good at, and then you move good to great.

When we worked with Matt’s salesperson Byron, we said, “Okay, Byron, forget about your weaknesses, forget about what you’re not good at. That’s probably all you’ve been thinking about for a few months, right?”

“Right,” said Byron. “You know, my manager counsels me on it. I’ve had things written up about it. I’ve been given activities to do to correct it. But the problem is, I just go deeper, and I don’t produce.”

“Listen, Byron, set those activities aside. Forget about all the problems that need to be fixed. We’re not going to fix anything for now. We want an infusion, we want a stimulus. We want a burst of sales to take you out of the cellar and put you up there where you belong in the upper rankings of the salespeople. Later, when we have the luxury, and we’re bored, and we can’t figure out what to do in coaching sessions, we may take a weakness and play around with it, for the pure fun of it. But for now, we’re not going to do it. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to acknowledge one thing: You’re not going to be great at anything until you enjoy it. We want to find out what you’re already good at, and we want to build on that.”

“Well, one of my strengths is in-person,” said Byron. “I love to be in-person. I’m bad on the phone, I’m bad with faxes, I’m bad with e-mail. But in-person, I can just close deals, I can talk, I can expand, I can upsell, I can cross-sell....”

“Okay, great. So rather than fix the phone thing and fix the e-mail thing, let’s leave those aside for the moment. Only use them if you must to get an appointment. Don’t use them to sell anything. We want to increase what you’re good at. Get out there, sit with people. Keep increasing that and get even better at it. Don’t say ‘I’m already good at it, and that’s that.’ Of course you’re good at it. But the way you’re going to be really tremendous in this field is to turn good into great, to get great at that thing, because you’re more than two-thirds of the way there. Because you’re already good at it.”

What we wanted to steer Byron away from is this thought: “Well, I’m already good at it, that’s sort of natural, that comes easy to me. That’s sort of cheating when I do a lot of that. What I really need to do is work at what I’m bad at.”

To be great motivators, we need to look at human behavior differently. We’ve been taught the wrong way since we were young! If we got an A in science, but we flunked English, our parents said, “Hey, I don’t care about your other grades, what you really need to do is work hard on your English, because you flunked it. So you’re going to focus your life on English for a while.”

All of our lives, we’ve been taught that the way to succeed is to take something that you’re not good at and change it. Take your weaknesses and spend time with them so that you can bring your weaknesses up to “normal.”

Do you know how little an effect it has on someone’s productivity if they take their weaknesses and work hard and finally bring them from “subnormal” to “normal”?

All throughout life we’ve been taught that when we’re good at something, it just means it’s innate. Our parents say, “Oh, he’s really good at the piano. He must have gotten that from his grandfather, he must have inherited that, he’s got a natural talent at that.” So we’re taught not to focus on it. We’re taught that that will be okay by itself. People tell us, “You really need to put your attention on all the things you’re bad at!”

Jennifer was on a sales staff we were coaching, and she was kind of intimidated because the sales staff had a lot of flashy, good-looking, well-dressed fraternity-type guys and sorority-type girls on it. Jennifer was more of a shy person. She was very bright and very compassionate, but she just couldn’t make herself do things the way the other salespeople did. And so she was frustrated, and all she tried to do was work on her weaknesses, and whenever we met her, she would bring in this long list of things she wasn’t any good at.

“These are the things I want to talk about,” Jennifer said. “These are the top seven things I’m terrible at.”

“Throw that list out.”

“What?”

“We don’t care about that list. We really don’t. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have the basic skills to be here. So stop it. Here’s what we’d like you to do. Think back for a little while. Think about your life. When were you really happy? If you can look back and get in touch with moments in your life when you were really happy, it’s going to give us some clues about where to go from here.”

“Well, I was a waitress not too long ago, before I came here,” Jennifer said. “There was a restaurant that I worked in that, originally, I didn’t like, but finally just loved. I really enjoyed it. It was like I was in heaven, I just got so good at it. I was serving customers and I was taking their orders and I got the biggest tips of anybody there. It was just wonderful. It felt like a dance, it felt like a musical. And also, the money coming in to me was greater than anyone else there.”

“We’ve hit on something here!”

“Well, I can’t do that,” Jennifer said. “I’ve got bills to pay, I’ve got kids. I can’t go back to that. There’s not enough money there, no matter how good you are. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to get the big accounts. I’ve got to get the big commissions I know I can make.”

“So we’re going to do that. But we’re not going to do it from being a back-slapping, flashy salesperson. We’re going to go with your strength.”

“Well, my strength is waiting on tables and serving people.”

“Yes! So that’s what you’re going to do. That’s who you’re going to be. You’re going to serve. You’re going to take orders. You’re going to present menus. You’re going to explain what the dishes are like. You’re going to ask clients what they like. You’re going to give them options, and that same person you were in the restaurant, you’re going to be in this selling situation. You’re going to tap into that same love of serving and presenting options, and fulfilling orders. That’s going to be who you are, but you’re going to do it in this context, selling this product. And when you get on the phone, you’re going to be that way, you’re going to be the person who wants to know how you can help. Not a salesperson. Not a salesperson at all. You will use all the words you used when you were a happy waitress. ‘You’re not quite ready? I’d be glad to come back. Take your time. I want you to know what’s here. I want you to know what the specials are, so you can make your decision.’ And come from that point of view. That’s who you are. That’s a way of being that you loved being. And you can be that here. You can serve rather than sell, and it will work for you.”

Two or three months later, Jennifer was doing extremely well. She had made a remarkable breakthrough. She came at the whole job from a completely different place. She took what she loved to do the most, and she did that all day. She took what she already knew she was good at, she took a strength, and she moved it from good to great.