Employee Evaluations.

I was chatting with a person I consider to be a superior manager of people, and the topic of employee evaluations came up. He said that he liked to hire people who may not have been the perfect fit in their last job, and give them the lattitude to excel in their jobs in his organization.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to attend an excellent management training course. The basic tenet of the course was that focusing on trying to improve employee weaknesses can be a waste of time. Employees are human beings, and no human being performs every aspect of their job perfectly. We all have areas that can be pointed to as weaknesses. There are a variety of reasons that we underperform in some aspect of our job. We may not have the necessary training and/or skills, we may not have the interest, or we may lack the aptitude. If the weakness stems from a lack of training or skills, then it pays to work on overcoming the weakness. If the weakness stems from a lack of interest or aptitude, then it would be best to find a workaround.

However, we didn't spend much time discussing weaknesses. The purpose of the workshop was to help us (the managers attending the workshop) find our strengths and then to teach us that focusing on improving our strengths is much more productive to us, and to our organization. We learned that the concept of focusing on strengths can be applied to all employees in our organization, including those who report to us.

I'd enjoy hearing your feedback about this concept of improving the strengths of employees, rather than focusing on their weaknesses.

Carole