44 •
The Lion King
• October - December 2016
By Babs Olugbemi
Feature
Living in your Strength Zone
able.
2. Define Your Latent Strengths:
Unused latent strengths are toxic fac-
tors and contribute to dissatisfaction
among people. Employees who use
all their strengths in the workplace are
agents of value and positive change
to their team, and the organization.
Define how your latent strengths can
be used to support the objectives of
the company to enlighten people,
improve the brand and reduce cost.
Peter is good at football and used
his defined latent strengths to win tro-
phies for his company at the annual
industry football competition. This has
influenced his level of fulfilment and
commitment toward the organization.
3. Compliment, Not Compete:
Any strength that competes with the
employers in terms of accrued ben-
efits for the employee is creating a
conflict of interest. Employees’ latent
strengths should not be a distraction in
any form. Avoid a situation where you
will deny your employer of any benefit
whatsoever. It is avoidable!
4. Volunteer The Value:
Having satisfied the above condi-
tions, create additional value to your
team, supervisors and company by
volunteering your strengths. There are
O
ne of the assets of a Strength-
based organization is a pool
of engaged employees who
volunteer their latent strengths to the
company. Employees’ latent strengths
are knowledge, skills and abilities out-
side their job requirements, which can
be productively deployed to the ben-
efits of the team.
Latent strengths are natural gifts. They
are talent craving for expression and
can be productively used with consis-
tent practice to produce near perfect
performance. Marcus Buckingham
and the Gallup Strength Centre have
over the years adopted the Clifton
Strengths Finder to help individuals
and organizations to be effective and
efficient in the management of peo-
ple. This movement wants employees
to be assigned roles that play to their
assessed strengths in order to create a
sense of fulfilment and loyalty.
In practice, qualifications and pre-
vious work experience take prece-
dence over strengths in job place-
ments. However, a properly built cul-
ture of strength will help any organiza-
tion maximize its employees’ engage-
ment.
I do like to adopt the bottom-up
approach in my discussion of strength-
based organization starting from the
employees and the benefits of volun-
teering your latent strengths to your
employers. Here is a simple five-point
step for living in your strength zone at
work.
1. Set Your Engagement Priority:
The first priority is your primary engage-
ment function if this is outside your
latent strengths. You have the profes-
sional strength to deliver on your KPIs
and this must be your primary focus.
You will be measured by this, and you
must always be on point for what you
have been hired to do. One way to
merge your job requirement with your
latent strength is to seek for roles that
play to your strengths if this is avail-
huge benefits to you and the com-
pany. Doing something extra for your
employer increases your level of emo-
tional engagement. Take some time
to study people who speak negatively
about your brand, you will find out
that they do nothing extra aside from
their primary functions which they do
grudgingly most of the time.
5. Measure The Influence:
You will be encouraged to volunteer
more if you can value the influence
of your latent strengths. If you can
coach, coach your team to deliver
more output, if you can Compere
events, do that for your company to
save costs. One value all employees
owe the employer is to speak posi-
tively about the brand and influence
the customers.
One of the numerous benefits of
volunteering your strengths to your
employer is a sense of fulfilment in giv-
ing extra outside the required deliver-
ables. The employers stand to benefit
from avoidable cost of disengage-
ment and low productivity. Creating
an atmosphere where strengths can
be volunteered is one of the edges
any strength-based organization has
over others.
