Today I am
going to share with you an idea that will help you get the most out of people.
So – are you completely happy with how you interact
with everyone in your family and at work? Is there any scope for improvement?
If so, here’s an true story which I still find rather enlightening.
Years ago I
worked with someone, let’s call him Tom, who was in most ways a really nice
guy - except for one thing.
It was part
of our office culture to make rounds”of
tea for each other. Now Tom liked his
tea as much as the next person. He was a very willing beneficiary of the system. Months passed yet Tom had never made
tea for anyone else. He was a free rider. After a while we started to notice and
whispers began about whether we should
stop making tea for Tom. He appeared completely oblivious to this resentment. He wanted to
do as much work as he could and would probably have said he was far too busy
to make a round of tea
One day this
all of this changed when the technical whizz-kid in our team devised an
on-line system which recorded tea rounds. You scored a point for every tea
you made. You lost a point for every tea that was made for you. You would be plus or minus depending on how
many rounds you made
Obviously, after
a day or two, Tom was bottom of the league table, Once his lowly league position
was brought to Tom’s attention, a dramatic change took place. Whereas before
it had seemed as if Tom knew neither the location of the kitchen or the tea tray,
now he and the tray were seldom parted.
Tom made two or
three rounds every day and before long
he leapt to the top of the tea-makers table.
A key question.
What do you think was Tom’s dominant strength? You guessed it, Competitiveness.
The moral? If
you want to change someone’s behaviour, think about their strengths and how
to activate them. Once Tom’s competitiveness strength was activated, his
behaviour changed dramatically and in a positive direction
This works with other strengths too
If his
strength had been leadership, we could have put him in charge of finding a
fair system for making tea.
If it had
been kindness, we could have framed making a cup of tea as a random act of
kindness to brighten up his colleagues’ day.
I’m sure you You
get the idea. If you want to know more about strengths, have a look at Chapter 4 of my book Achieve Your Potential
With Positive Psychology or visit the
via website at viacharacter.org.
One final
thought. This absolutely is not about manipulating other people for your own
benefit, its about finding solutions that work best for you and them.
It’s about
finding what the legendary self-help
writer Stephen Covey called win-win solutions.Tom benefited
- he enjoyed being top of the table. And we all enjoyed the tea he made. It
was a win-win.
So why not
when spend a few minutes now thinking
about the strengths of someone you interact. It could be a family member, it
could be a work colleague.
Then spend a moment or two thinking about their
strengths. What are they good at? What are their character strengths? Which
strengths energise them?
Finally, reflect
on how you can activate their strengths perhaps by redesigning or reframing a
task.
We got the
most out of Tom by activating his strength. Who can you turn from villain to
hero?
Listen to this episode at https://anchor.fm/tim-lebon/episodes/How-to-Get-the-Most-of-People-by-Understanding-and-Activating-their-Strengths-e2jcjk/a-a3fde3
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Thursday, November 15, 2018
How to get the Most of people by understanding and activating their strengths - Practical Wisdom for Busy People Episode 5
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