What am I known for?
Identity
This post explores the leadership identity challenge: Great leaders help individuals align their personal strengths to the organization identity (firm brand) and to customer expectations.
When we meet someone, we often categorize them by where they work, what they wear, how they smile, or how they speak. These are at best superficial indicators of real values and competencies. Underneath our role, profession, appearance, or observable talents are what psychologists call signature strengths: the character traits and values most central to who we are. Organizations also have identities and project images that shape the perceptions of both customers and employees. We call an organization’s signature strengths its capabilities – what that organization does best in the service of its core purposes
Sometimes when employees’ signature strengths intersect with the signature capabilities of their workplaces there is a seamless fit; other times there is a clash of values and goals.
As a leader, you create a more abundant organization when you help employees clarify their personal identity and enhance their signature strengths, then help them see how those strengths fit with the goals and values of the organization.
This occurs in four steps:
1. Help employees define and grow their personal strengths
Self-awareness is capricious. At times, we are very aware of our flaws. Not only do we magnify our flaws, we ignore the strengths we have.
At other times, we tend to flee from our flaws. Leadership researchers find that most leaders are better at identifying their strengths than their weaknesses. We run and hide from things we do not do well out of embarrassment or uncertainty about how to change. Realism about both our strengths and our weaknesses is essential to a strengths-based identity. Great leaders build on their strengths, but also bring their weaknesses to at least neutral. They help employees and companies to do the same.
When you as a leader help employees develop honest self-perceptions you help them invest in the real dreams that bring meaning to life. You can help employees discover their identity by formal assessments, informal observations, conversations, and assignments.
2. How does a leader define an organization’s strengths, or capabilities?
Think about two restaurants, computer stores, hair salons, or other companies you have visited. While two companies in the same industry might offer similar products or services, can you sense a difference in how the companies work? These differences reflect an organization’s identity. Just as an individual’s identity is shaped by his or her strengths, an organization’s identity emerges from its capabilities.
Capabilities represent what the organization is known for, what it is good at doing, and how it patterns activities to deliver value. These capabilities include many of the intangible assets that investors pay attention to, the firm brand to which customers can relate, and the culture that shapes employee behavior. These capabilities also become the identity of the firm, the deliverables of HR practices, and the keys to implementing business strategy. An organization’s capabilities are rooted in its values and reflect its reputation or brand.
Abundant organizations not only help individuals deploy and use their personal identity; they shape organizations with a clear identity.
As a leader, you can commission capability audits to determine which of the capabilities are most critical for your organization to reach its goals.
When employees, customers, investors, and other stakeholders know what the organization is known for and good at doing, these capabilities build trust that the organization has enough and to spare to accomplish its purposes.
3. How do leaders meld personal and organizational identity?
One of your leadership tasks is to help employees know if and how they fit in the company. Sometimes fit or misfit is easy to define.
As a leader, you meld organization and personal identity by hiring, training, and compensating employees whose personal identity melds with the identity of the organization or its subparts. People find a sense of meaning, even abundance, when they are in an organization where they fit and feel valued for doing exactly what they do well. Leaders who are thoughtful about bringing in people who fit both technically and culturally help people find an abundant work setting.
Go to dinner at your neighbor’s. What are their routines? Something as simple as having dinner at a friend’s house demonstrates the many ways that two groups can differ in how they function. Fitting in to someone else’s family or work team or industry is seldom straightforward. In organizations with layers of complexity in history, rules, hierarchy, and routines, the job of helping others fit is much more difficult than serving a meal. But, when employees match their personal identity with the organization’s identity, they are more able to use their strengths and to find meaning through work.
4. How does a leader make sure that the fit between the individual and organization also fits with customers and investors?
Fit for service does not just mean that individuals work well within their organizations, but that there is a match between the employee inside and the organization’s stakeholders outside. In the management literature the mantra “build on your strengths” has gained quite a bit of attention. When leaders help individuals shape their identity, clarify the organization’s capabilities, and match individual strengths with organization capabilities, employees build on their strengths. But, fully leveraging those strengths requires using those strengths to strengthen or serve others.
Conclusion:
These steps are simple, but not easy. They require leaders to identify the organization’s key strengths and use them consciously to connect with targeted customers. Working from their strengths, they know they have enough skills and to spare to get the job done right. Connected with their values, they have a sense of contributing something they care about. Grounded in their character traits and virtues, they feel their own goodness in operation. This is abundance in action.
Photo of man holding magnifier by 姒儿喵喵. Photo of man holding up woman by d_vdm. Photo of a dinner table by brum d. All photos licensed under CC.
