When was the last time you sat down with someone on your team and asked, “What helps you do your best work every day?”
Not in a formal review, but in a real, curious conversation.
Here’s what I see happen all the time—teams take assessments, learn their strengths and weaknesses and then nothing really changes…
And that’s where great leadership matters.
When employees are utilizing their strengths at work, everything shifts.
They enjoy what they’re doing.
They perform at a higher level.
They collaborate and contribute more.
But when they’re not, they feel underutilized…or stretched in the wrong areas.
And that’s the gap.
It’s about taking the time to truly know your team and intentionally aligning their work so they can show up at their best.
That’s how you unlock their genius.
In this episode, we’ll explore how to move beyond assessments and start using your team’s strengths to optimize performance.
Move Beyond Assessments to Real Impact in IT
There are a lot of personality and strengths assessments out there—and chances are, your company is already using one.
The one I’ve used most in my career is CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder), and I’ve found it to be incredibly valuable—not just for individual awareness, but for how teams function together.
When team members share their results, it creates a common language and you start to understand why people approach work the way they do. That alone can shift team dynamics.
But here’s where I see leaders get stuck…they stop at awareness.
Teams take the assessment, have a conversation about it—and then everyone goes right back to working the same way.
And that’s a missed opportunity.
The real value isn’t in knowing strengths. It’s actually using them.
When people are working to their strengths, they’re more engaged, more innovative, and far less likely to burn out.
I’ve seen this across multiple teams I’ve led. When you intentionally align work this way, performance improves.
And your role as a leader is to make that alignment happen in a way that benefits both the individual and the team.
While it’s important to focus on strengths, it’s also meaningful to be aware of weaknesses. CliftonStrengths indicates that weaknesses aren’t ever going to become your top strengths, so it is best to place your energy in your top 5 strengths.
When people feel like their strengths aren’t being used… they disengage quietly. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re not working in a way that energizes them.
The ultimate goal of CliftonStrengths in the workplace is to create a culture of excellence over a culture of adequacy.
I’ve used this approach across multiple teams in IT—and I can tell you, when you get it right, the difference in performance is noticeable.
Here are a few examples from teams I have managed through the years:
One woman on my team loved documenting processes and creating help guides. Most people avoid that kind of work—but she thrived in it.
At the time, many of our processes were not automated, so having them clearly documented and broken into simple steps made it easy for team members to understand and follow.
A former team lead was great with numbers, budgets, and forecasting, so I gave him the opportunity to manage the budget for my organization. I still owned the work package, but he reported the monthly budget variances and projections each month.
It gave him the opportunity to attend leadership meetings and to take more ownership in how the organization was managed.
Another member of my team was skilled in working with spreadsheets and created a streamlined way to track certain aspects of our work by applying conditional formatting, drop down lists, etc.
It kept us organized and became a tool I could share with my manager when he had specific questions about the status of our work.
These are just a few examples of what’s possible when you intentionally align work to strengths.
So how do you do this with those you lead?
Here are 5 ways to optimize the strengths of your team:
- Stop Relying Only on Job Descriptions and Start Aligning Work to Strengths
- Job descriptions define what needs to get done…but your job as a leader is to align how the work gets done with each person’s strengths.
- Consider Forming Strategic Pairs Within Your Group
- For example, pair an Activator with a Deliberator. The Activator will push for immediate action while the Deliberator sits in analysis mode. The pairing prevents analysis paralysis and allows work to proceed more quickly.
- Customize Your Feedback and Recognition
- Strengths determine how team members process praise and criticism. For example, an Achiever wants to be recognized for their output, while a Learner will feel more valued if you recognize something they learned and mastered in their work.
- Build a Strengths Inventory for Managing Critical Incidents
- Consider having a shared spreadsheet of your team’s top 5 strengths and identify those with: Restorative strength to triage and restore operations. Those with Command strength can keep order across teams, while those with Relator can manage communication and relationships with stakeholders.
- Use your One-on-Ones to Invest in Strengths
- During one-on-one meetings, intentionally ask team members how they are using their strengths in their work. By periodically asking the question, it helps them consciously connect their natural talent to their professional success, which builds their internal efficacy.
If you’re new to your current position, I encourage you to have your team members take an assessment to identify their strengths and weaknesses. It provides great insight to help lead your team to optimum performance.
And if you’ve been in your position for a while and forgotten what everyone’s strengths are, there is no time like the present to dust it off and think about how to re-align your team to their strengths.
If you’re not actively aligning work to strengths today, this is one of the highest-impact shifts you can make as a leader.
You’ll not only see a shift in team performance, but also each member of your team will be more engaged, more confident and doing the work they enjoy doing every day.
Stay empowered and lead assertively!