Strengths-based management means tapping into your team’s talents and allowing them to shine as much as possible in their roles. It’s been pushed in the leadership world as a best practice for helping employees be seen and teams perform. 

However, there’s either a limitation of strengths-based leadership or an all too common superficial reading of the concept. What I’ve noticed as a downfall of this approach is when managers focus so much on playing to strengths that they neglect their role of developing employees’ weaknesses. It’s more comfortable and just plain easier to always have Tara do the team’s presentations because she is naturally excellent at public speaking and because no one else volunteers. But if “presenter” is not a specific part of Tara’s role, you’re posing 2 vulnerabilities to your team. 

First, no one else is getting trained or pushed to learn how to do presentations. Second, Tara’s “natural talent” has relegated her to carry all of the presentations, not leaving her with time or opportunity to try out new skills. 

One reason why this occurs is because it’s hard to say that someone else on the team should do a task when you already know the person on your team who does it best. Solutions to this problem are going to require patience and trust. If you start delegating presentations to other people on your team and asking Tara to help you develop others’ skills, those first presentations by others are probably not going to be as good as when Tara does it. That’s okay! Because perfection isn’t real. Leading a strong team means diversifying roles and helping your team get comfortable with stepping outside of what comes naturally to them.