According to Debbie Whitaker, Standard Chartered’s Head of Sustainability, ‘everyone has talents that we wish to leverage’.

This is a bold statement, considering Standard Chartered is a bank with over 60,000 employees in 56 countries. Their reasons for focusing on talent are fourfold:

i) greater growth potential
ii) better people performance
iii) increased employee engagement and
iv) attracting and retaining talent.

Many big organisations are sceptical of applying Strengths at work, yet Standard Chartered’s experience shows that it can make sound business sense.

A strengths-based approach to management has been operating in the organisation for the past 7 years, using Gallup’s StrengthsFinder tool. Whitaker describes a strength as the combination of talent, skill and knowledge, which motivation can transform into world-class performance. In her words, given equal skills and knowledge, talent is what differentiates superior performance from the rest.

So what does Standard Chartered actually do differently to other organisations? Well StrengthsFinder wasn’t designed for recruitment purposes, but it can be used to ensure good role fit and that’s exactly what has contributed to Standard Chartered’s success.The essentials for a salesperson, for example, are good product knowledge and to be able to negotiate and close a deal. But if the salesperson has the additional talents of competitiveness and building rapport with customers, they can become a world-class performer. Not only does Standard Chartered look for specific skills and knowledge, they take innate talents into account too.

It has to be said that there are several definitions of a strength, and the one used here is based on Gallup’s research. The VIA-IS or CAPP definitions are different; as always you need to be clear what you are trying to measure.

Standard Chartered also focuses on building employee engagement, and like Royal & SunAlliance which we featured here, they take volunteering seriously, offering two days paid leave for staff to contribute to voluntary organisations.

What the Standard Chartered story shows is that focusing on strengths can make a big difference to the business and to the people who work there. And applying Positive Psychology at work shouldn’t be something you do in addition to everything else. Look at your existing people-related processes (e.g. recruitment, development, coaching, mentoring and so on) and see how a strengths-approach would make a positive contribution.

In this post we look at new ways of applying 3 more of the VIA character strengths, Perseverance, Vitality and Hope.

If you haven’t already done the VIA-IS online strengths test, why not take some time out now to complete it, and when you’ve got your list of top 5 (or signature) strengths, come back to find out how you might use them differently.

Just to remind you, the purpose of using your strengths in a new way every day is because research (Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson, 2005) shows that this has a long-term positive effect on your happiness.

PERSEVERANCE:
i) Finish an important task before the deadline
ii) Work for several hours straight without interruptions – divert your phone and don’t check your email
iii) Make a list of things to do and do one thing on the list every day
iv) Notice your self-talk about stopping a task and ignore it. Focus on the task in hand.

VITALITY / ZEST:
i) Do something physically vigorous in the morning
ii) Volunteer for an activity at work
iii) Do something because you want to, not because you need to
iv) Get a good nights sleep, and eat a healthy breakfast to give yourself more energy during the day
v) Say ‘why not?’ three times more frequently than you say ‘why?’

HOPE / OPTIMISM
i) Think of a past disappointment and the opportunities that it made possible
ii) Notice your negative thoughts. Counter them with positive thoughts.
iii) Write down your goals for the next week/month/year and make concrete plans for accomplishing them.
iv) Keep a journal and every night record a decision that you made that day which will impact your life in the long run

As mentioned before, if the activity doesn’t work for you after a couple of days, try another one.

If you would like to find more activities related to using Fairness, Kindness, Open-Mindedness, Curiosity, Love of Learning or Creativity, click here.

For more activities related to the strengths of Integrity, Love, Humour, Appreciation of Beauty or Social Intelligence, click here.

For more activities related to the strengths of Leadership, Gratitude, Perspective, Forgiveness, Teamwork (Citizenship) and Bravery, click here.

In our next post we will be looking at the remaining 4 character strengths, Prudence Self-Regulation, Humility and Spirituality.

Please also remember to send us examples of activities that worked for you, we’d love to hear about them.

Thanks to Jonathan Haidt and Chris Peterson for many of the suggested activities.

How to Use Your Top 5 Character Strengths in New Ways – Part 3. If you’ve just completed the VIA-IS online survey and are wondering what to do with your Top 5 Strengths, read on…

There’s increasing research to show that focusing on your strengths at work rather than on your weaknesses brings huge benefits, not just to yourself but also to your organisation. As mentioned in one of our previous posts, companies like Norwich Union are using strengths-based approaches successfully in the business, for example in recruitment. Other organisations are focusing on strengths for personal development, using them as the basis for the Annual Appraisal, for example. It gives employees a boost of confidence and really helps them feel good about themselves, in a way that leads to further performance improvements.

In the last couple of posts we’ve looked at new ways of applying strengths (from the VIA-IS online survey, not from the Clifton StrengthsFinder, which actually measures talents). Today we continue on this theme with six more strengths. Try picking one activity from one of your Top 5, and stick with it for a couple of weeks. If you find it isn’t working after a day or so, try something else.

LEADERSHIP:
i) Organise a social get-together for your team or department
ii) Go out of your way to make a new colleague feel welcome
iii) Take responsibility for an unpleasant task at work and make sure it gets done

GRATITUDE:
i) At the end of the day write down three things that went well
ii) Write and send a gratitude letter
iii) Keep track of how many times you say thank you during the day and increase the number every day for a week.

PERSPECTIVE / WISDOM:
i) Think of the wisest person you know and try to live one day as if you were them
ii) Resolve a dispute between two work colleagues, or two family members
iii) Don’t give advice unless asked, and then do so as thoughtfully as possible

FORGIVENESS:
i) Let a grudge go every day
ii) Write a forgiveness letter, do not send it, but read it every day for a week.
iii) When someone does something you don’t understand, stand in their shoes and try to work out their positive intention

TEAMWORK / CITIZENSHIP:
i) Pick up litter that you see on the ground
ii) Volunteer your time to a charity, community group, Parent-Teacher Association, Parish Council etc
iii) Organize a team / department dinner
iv) Act as a facilitator

BRAVERY:
i) Speak up for an unpopular idea in a group
ii) Stand up for someone even if you disagree with them
iii) Protest to the appropriate authorities about an injustice that you observe

These are just some examples of activities, you can of course adapt them to suit your circumstances.

We’d be delighted to hear your experience of using some of these activities in practice, or if you have any ideas for new ones, so please send us your comments.

We’ll cover the remaining 7 Character Strengths in future posts.

Thanks to Professor Jonathan Haidt , author of The Happiness Hypothesis, and the students in his psychology class at the University of Virginia and Chris Peterson for many of the suggested activities.

How to Use Your Character Strengths in New Ways – Part 1

Have you completed the VIA-IS online character strengths survey yet? We find it an excellent starting point for coaching conversations since many people are completely unaware of their strengths, so it can be an instant confidence boost, as well as providing insight into where to make changes to increase overall life/job satisfaction.

Having identified their strengths, many people think ‘What now?’ so in this post we look at new ways of applying strengths day-to-day. We start with the most common top strengths shown in the UK (Linley et al 2007):

Women: 1.Fairness 2.Kindness 3.Open-mindedness 4.Curiosity and 5. Love of Learning
Men: 1.Open-mindedness 2.Fairness 3.Curiosity & joint 4th Love of Learning and Creativity

FAIRNESS:
i) Act as a mediator – stay impartial in a disagreement between friends/colleagues despite your beliefs
ii) Allow someone to say their piece without interupting them
iii) Notice when you treat someone based on a stereotype or pre-conception: resolve not to do it again.
iv) At least once a day, admit a mistake and take responsibility for it
v) At least once a day, give due credit to a colleague you don’t particularly like

OPEN-MINDEDNESS:
i) Every day, pick something you believe strongly, and think about how you might be wrong
ii) Play devil’s advocate – discuss a work-related issue or business problem from the side opposite to your personal views
iii) Go to lunch with a colleague who is different to you in some way
iv) Go to a multi-cultural event or to a different church/religious event

KINDNESS / GENEROSITY:
i) Do a random act of kindness every day. Make it anonymous if possible.
ii) Send an e-card to a different friend each day
iii) Pick up the whole bill when you are out with friends
iv) Ring a friend/family member/colleague specifically to find out how they are. Ask them how their day was and actually listen to the answer before telling them about your own day.
v) When driving, give way to pedestrians; when walking, give way to cars

CURIOSITY / INTEREST IN THE WORLD:
i) At lunch, eat something new that you never otherwise would have tried
ii) Ask questions in a meeting (if you don’t usually), or find a work-related online forum (such as the CIPDs) and ask questions there
iii) Travel to work by a different route
iv) Go to your local library and pick and interesting-looking book – spend 20 minutes skimming it
v) Read an interesting article in your professional/trade magazine
vi) Go to a meeting or lecture on a topic you know nothing about

LOVE OF LEARNING:
i) Read a different newspaper to the one you would usually read
ii) Find a mentor in a different department at work and set up a regular meeting
iii) Think of an area of the business where you know very little and find a colleague who is prepared to help you learn about it
iv) Take up a new hobby
v) Watch your children playing and reflect on how one learns through play
vi) Find a colleague at work who has a skill you want to learn and model them

CREATIVITY:
i) Keep a journal or work on a picture or a poem
ii) Find a new word everyday and use it creatively every day
iii) Pick one object in your office and think of new uses for it
iv) Wear a new combination of clothes/ shirt & tie to the ones you usually pick
v) Enrol in a pottery or painting class

These are just some examples of activities you can try, you don’t have to do them all! In fact, it’s recommended that you pick one activity and stick with it for a couple of weeks. And if you find after a couple of days that it’s not working for you, switch to something else.

We’ll cover the remaining 18 VIA strengths in subsequent posts. In the meantime, we’re always looking for new ways to apply strengths in practice, so please send us your comments.

Thanks to Professor Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis, and the students in his psychology class at the University of Virginia for many of the suggested activities.

Norwich Union is a company at the cutting edge of leadership and management techniques in the UK, for the past 18 month piloting the use of a strengths-based approach in various areas of Organisation Development and Human Resource Management, such as recruitment.

For most candidates and companies, the interview process is something to be endured rather than enjoyed , but according to KarenStefanyszyn , Head of Organisation Development, focusing on what people are good at and what makes them tick has transformed the interview process at NU and had some remarkable knock-on effects in the business.

For example: over 91% of NU staff recruited using strengths-based interview techniques said that the interview prepared them for their new roles; over 72% agreed that it was easy to settle into their new role; and over 73% said that they now use their natural talents at work every day. I find these results astonishing when I consider a typical interview outcome – that the job is not what was expected, the honeymoon period lasts a matter of weeks before reality bites, and results in lower morale and motivation.

In addition, Stefanyszyn reports that 100% of recruits scored above 90% in quality audits, and staff turnover figures in the first 6 months were halved. As a result of such positive feedback, the company is piloting the use of strengths in other areas of OD andHRM such as talent management. We look forward to hearing how this progresses.

The use of strengths in business is not entirely problem-free however. As an organisation you need to be clear which strengths model is the best fit – there are many well-known and well-validated models to choose from (such as StrengthsFinder and VIA-IS), others are being developed (for example by Dr AlexLinley , Director of the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology ), or you could always create your own.

As with any management tool, it can provide a useful common language with which to explore and resolve issues. You still need to be mindful, however, of the downside – that some people get quickly attached to labels, and forget that tools are only a means to an end.

That said, the use of strengths is gaining traction in UK businesses for one very good reason – for creating positive energy and excitement at work, nothing beats it. Imagine actually having fun during a job interview, and coming away from it feeling that you had learnt something new about yourself – now that really would be radical. I believe that using strengths in recruitment has the potential to transform the interview process in this way.

If you have had experience of using a strengths-based approach at work, we’d love to hear from you.