Development 301: Managing & Motivating Others, Part 3

Hi! Thanks for reading this series on how to manage and motivate others by discovering their strengths and helping them find tasks that they can excel in! These descriptions are taken from the book, “Now, Discover your Strengths” by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, and I am indebted to them for their years of research with Gallup to create these 34 types.

The first part in this series talks about their book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths,” the ideas behind it, and begins to talk about how to manage the 34 different types at work. The second part continues with the different types of people and how to manage them. The third part continues to talk about these types, and finally, we’re going to finish talking about these types today.

Managing Maximizers
This person wants to learn about their strengths, and understand that you value these strengths. Ask this person to lead a task force to discover best practices, and design a program for measuring and celebrating the productivity of each employee. This person is not so interested in fixing broken things, but rather taking things that work and figuring out how to maximize their performance.

Managing Positivity people
They love to celebrate things. Their enthusiasm is contagious, and they can’t deal with cynics, so keep them around basically positive people who just need a spark. Ask this person to plan events. They can help people be more excited about their work, and they are more creative than most people.

Managing Relators
This person can be generous, and likes to develop bonds with others through knowing their goals. They are loyal and trustworthy. They want to know that you care about them, as they organize their life around their close relationships. When they manage others, their direct reports will work harder for them because they know the Relator will be there for them.

Managing Responsibility people
This person has serious ethics. They care about quality first, and about getting new responsibilities. They define themselves by their ability to live up to their commitments. Protect this person from taking on too much. You may want to be careful about promoting this person because they want to be responsible for their work, not other people’s work.

Managing Restorative people
This person can be relied upon to respond in a focused, businesslike way to problems. They are real problem solvers. This person should be paid to solve problems for your best donors or customers. When this person solves a problem, make sure to celebrate this achievement. Ask this person in what ways they would like to improve. Agree that these improvements should serve as goals, and they will appreciate this kind of attention.

Managing Self-Assured people
Put this person in a role that they need to be persistent in. They can project calm, and stability, and will want to make meaningful decisions. Make sure this person knows which decisions produce outcomes. And they want control of their world. But they need clear feedback if they mess up. You will have to rein this person in because they are not always aware that they have weaknesses.

Managing Significance people
This person is very independent. Encourage them to praise other top achievers as they enjoy making others feel successful. Give this person the opportunity to stand out and be known. Acknowledge that this person thrives on meaningful recognition for their contributions. This person will make claims to excellence, and you need to help them keep benchmarks for developing their strengths. Their self esteem can suffer when others do not give them the recognition they deserve.

Managing Strategic people
Always give this person time to think a situation through. Involve this person in organizational and strategic planning. Then get them to write up their ideas and present it to a group. If you hear of new strategies that work in your field, tell this person, it will stimulate them. Ask this person to sift through all possibilities and find the best way forward and report back on this.

Managing Wooers
Strangers energize this person. Ask this person to be a goodwill ambassador to your community. They might like to meet, greet, win over, and move on to the next person. They can help strangers feel comfortable with your organization.

Do you recognize several themes for yourself? Apparently you can have up to five dominant themes.

Do you recognize ways you have tried to manage people here? Do you recognize ways people have tried to manage you here?

What works best on you?

What seems to work best on the people in your office?

What did you learn from this series?

Try to do one on one assessments of people you work with, and reward them in certain ways that seem consistent with their strengths. Do you notice an increase in productivity or a lift in mood?

I took the test, and my strengths are:
Achiever
Strategic
Focus
Positivity
Individualization

What are yours?

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