As a manager, I am excited about team management focused on individual Strengths. Organizations are traditionally focused on the problem – solving models and tend to focus on identifying gaps rather than individual Strengths. Unfortunately, focus on gaps normally drain energy and motivation of employees who try to improve their weaknesses without realizing a significant performance evolution.
Management focused on individual Strengths is transformational in the experience of individuals as it creates space for personal development and allows self-knowledge of individual talents. Employees optimize the execution of daily tasks as they put energy in the development of talents. The personal experience is motivational and inspiring.
Aligned with management models based on individual Strengths, I share in this post the Appreciative Inquiry, a model that comes from Psychology and Coaching and proposes a management vision focused on collective Strengths. This approach certainly can promote an incredibly positive impact on the leadership of teams in the Healthcare sector.
Think for a minute in a project where the group seemed to be in perfect tune, where everyone worked hard and the collective results were extraordinary. The purpose of Appreciative Inquiry is to elaborate questions and explore the Strengths and Behaviours that made it possible to achieve such positive result. Understanding the extraordinary moment, it is possible to focus on the group Strengths and Behaviours to replicate the experience in new projects and processes.
The concept of Appreciative Inquiry is not new, it was published in 1987 in the article from David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivasta. The application of the concept demands knowledge of the stages of the Appreciative Inquiry process. Without intentionally intend to simplify such an elegant model, I summarize the stages below just to inspire practical application. The model consists of the 4D cycle: Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny.
In the first stage, the Discovery, the task is to do the identification and detailed description of the moment where the team acted in an extraordinary way. When applying the model with your team, try to look at the period of maximum one year before the investigation and it will be easier to evidence the details of skills and Behaviours of the group that made the difference in an event that generated extraordinary results.
Once the skills and Behaviours are clear, it is time to envision the possibilities of applying those collective skills and Behaviours to replicate the results in new projects or improve current processes. It is interesting to note that the author of the model invites us to Dream. In fact, envision an innovation is dreaming.
The Design phase comes with planning. It is necessary to go beyond the vision of the future in order to design stages of the execution and align skills, behaviours, and actions. It´s the moment to figure the implementation of new processes or new activities in existing processes, always focusing on the achievement of what was envisioned in the Dream stage.
Take in mind that the entire team should participate in the Appreciative Inquiry process. As the group is working on the Design stage with their own successful skills and Behaviours, the plan seems to be feasible. Awareness of the innovation plan as viable can make all the difference for a successful execution. Destiny stage depends on the motivation of each member to execute and carry out the plans previously designed.
Dear Reader, below you can read about Appreciative Inquiry in practice by the testimony of a woman leader that applies the model in her leadership role, Dr. Nadia Ismiil, my guest writer for this topic.
Women in leadership
by Nadia Ismiil I May 17, 2018 I
My name is Nadia Ismiil, a physician leader and a pathologist with expertise in gynecologic pathology, an educator, a wife and proud mother of two. I am a product of a beautiful but war torn country who immigrated to Canada in 1992. I am a reluctant and quiet leader who was thrown into the storm of laboratory Medicine instability at a major institution and survived to tell the tale. Today, our department is a model of stability and innovation. The wounds have healed and the scars are a reminder. To all those leaders and fellow bloggers, sounds familiar? Which raises the question; what was it about being a woman that made the difference?
I would argue that as women, we pull our negotiation skills, multitasking, and patience and dare I say our insecurities. We throw our heart and soul into fixing the problem and prove once and for all that we are strong and capable of tackling issues however challenging. We pull our collective age long experiences as women and see the potential in everyone for the better good. We use our primitive instincts to see through the fog and are fiercely protective of our team.
Does that mean that women in leadership positions are clones? Never! We may have some common traits but we are individuals and unique. My style is a quiet, soft spoken appreciative and a servant leader. I believe in the power of the collective in an interprofessional collaborative model. What is your style?
Throughout my journey, I was mentored by many. My father was a feminist who believed in me and supported me every step of the way. He showed me the value of self-respect and pursue of dreams even when they seemed unattainable. My supervisor saw the strength in observant quietness and the need for other than the stereotypical charismatic leaders. He encouraged me to take so many leadership courses and executive coaching. My boss celebrated my decision to obtain a Masters degree in international health leadership and encouraged to write down my path and trajectory. She is my hero. Who is your mentor?
Today, my friends, I ask each one of you to reflect on your leadership journey and salute all those women and men who paved the way.
Do you think that being a quiet leader is useful when dealing with your superiors or those reporting to you?
How can you deal with people that interpret it as a weakness?
Excellent question with multiple layers! Being quiet and observant has helped me in assessing my surroundings, listen and observe people and their style of governance or behavior. As an example, one of my bosses is an accountant. I always go well prepared with anticipated questions and short but to the point answers.
I agree that some individuals interpret quietness as a weakness. My only comment is to be patient. There is strength and determination behind the quiet and observant leaders. As time goes by, people start to witness them make bold decisions and actions. The value ad is that those decisions have been in a thoughtful and reflective process.
Leadership in medicine brings its own unique challenges. Unlike in business, growth is constrained by restrictions on funding, particularly in a public healthcare system. What have been your greatest frustrations with having to build and manage a team in this type of environment?
To use individual strengths as a platform to seek for growth sounds extremely reasonable, although not obvious. It is not rare to hear that with appropriate time and guidance, we are capable of learning virtually everything. Indeed, I agree with this sentence. Having said that, the “appropriate time” certainly means a different amount of time to me than it means to other individuals.
And this is something that enhances the value of the 4Ds. The Discovery step is crucial because this is the opportunity to identify the unique characteristics and skills of each team member. This is highly important once we are in a competitive environment, and leads to a question: what is the point in taking longer if we could go faster (and deeper!) with the skills that we already posses?
As someone who had experience in education, the perspective of using the strengths platform may found some convergent points with the Zone of Proximal Development (ZDP), from Lev Vigotski. ZDP is “the next and the closest” zone of learning of an individual. When exploring something that we are already good at it, instead of exploring a new territory, we have a short road to cross and more “internal tools” to go further, i.e., we are closer and able to move faster into our ZDP.
Considering that steps 2 (Dream) and 3 (Design) are those that are intimately related to looking into the future, I believe that questions about what we can foresee, what we can do about it, and several other questions about planning are already hard enough. And they involve the “fear” of uncertainty. After all, we are talking about future. In these circumstances, as it is not optional to deal with some uncertainties, I believe that is a smart choice to avoid those that we can. In other words, if we could rely on our greatest strengths instead of relying in our weakness we are reducing the number of “fear variables”. And possibly seeing better solutions, once we are (hopefully) questioning less ourselves.
Destiny. Well, is there a way to make someone more motivated than exploring his or her main skills? I think that in this stage, as the individual was a part of the process, the perception is that the goals of the project and the individual goals walk side. And, in sum, that they are one.