Many off-sites and retreats have a motivational speaker or somebody with a new book. The team listens to them, nods… and moves on. Some may make you better, but most do not. Think back to the speaker you had at your last offsite? Did your team get transformed from the experience?

Most leaders ask questions like,  “What do my team members need to ADD or ACQUIRE in order to improve their performance?” And, most consultants also recommend ADDING or ACQUIRING new skills, knowledge, etc.

Traditional thinking and advice is that you can improve performance just by ADDING SOMETHING, usually EXTERNAL to you. Adding enablers like additional training could help, but many people feel that something still holds them back from greater successes. That got me thinking…

We used inversion thinking and asked different questions,

“What if instead of adding something, we REMOVE something?” and,

“What if that something to be removed is not external, but INTERNAL to the individual?”

We have found that most people have hidden strengths that they never leverage. Leveraging those can quickly improve their performance.

We have also found that most people ignore their disablers or have not mitigated them. Mitigating their disablers can quickly improve their performance.

We have also found that it’s often easier to improve a person’s performance by identifying and mitigating (or eliminating) their key disablers (what holds them back) than by simply adding more enablers.

 “Everybody has hidden strengths and weaknesses, some that are unknown even to the individual.”

Most people power through their early lives leveraging known strengths (and ignoring their disablers). We have have observed that particularly during and past our mid-career, our enablers and strengths can be improved LITTLE (think about it… really).

Once people graduate, start families, and gain more seniority and responsibilities, most of them put little effort into expanding their knowledge, skills, capabilities… or building on their strengths. Most people coast…

On the other hand, long-ignored disablers (weaknesses) often become huge impediments to our greater success. They become our baggage! They accompany us through our lives like shadows. You know they are there… just don’t know when they will hurt you!

Most people do NOT work on their weaknesses and disablers. They ignore them in the hope that they will go away. Some work on mitigating them a little, and give up. Most people make little progress. They ride on their strengths to the extent that the disablers don’t “bite them.” Over time, the disablers become a bigger piece of their big obstacles to further success. 

Most people also have hidden strengths that they have not identified, and therefore do not leverage. They keep leveraging their “go-to-strengths” over and over again. After a while, particularly after mid-career, those don’t improve dramatically. They start to plateau, and so do people’s performance.

Few people know how to diagnose their own disablers or identify their hidden strengths. Even if they knew their disablers, few know how to mitigate or eliminate them. Very few people know whom to turn to for assistance.

Consultants, advisors and managers often avoid speaking about a person’s disablers because they don’t want to be the bearers of bad news. They ‘kick the can down the road’ and hope that the individual will figure it out on their own.

“Successful leaders address issues others ignore.”

At this point, greater performance improvement comes from identifying and mitigating the disablers in individuals on your team AND helping them identify and leverage their hidden strengths. Good questions are:

“How can I help my team members identify and leverage their hidden strengths?”

“What obstacles can I help team members clear that will enable them to perform better?”

If more leaders ask these questions, performance and morale within companies could improve dramatically. Feeling heard and seen, and getting assistance is very important to individuals, particularly when it comes from their leader.

Business and life, in many ways, are like running a race. Many people in the race have several issues, some external and others internal. Everybody is looking to run faster. Think about this… if you are carrying a 50 lb. backpack, you can’t run very fast. ALL of us carry the equivalent of our 50 lb. backpack. Shedding some, or all of the weight, will instantly enable you to run faster. Similarly, a person’s performance can sometimes be improved more quickly and easily by identifying and mitigating (or eliminating) their key disablers and weaknesses.

Many organizations hire consultants and advisors. In our running analogy, they recommend new running shoes, new shorts, exotic hair gel… as if looking good or having a new tool will make you a much faster runner. Most of them overlook (sometimes intentionally) the EXTRA BAGGAGE you carry, or your weaknesses. Disablers are harder for most people to diagnose quickly, and even if they did, they don’t want to be “the bearer of bad news.”  Moreover, most people want quick results and these consultants and advisors simply want to make a quick buck with a motivational talk or gimmick. They simply “kick the can down the road.” In the meantime, you’ve spent several thousands and see little improvement with your team.

Success may be near, but… your disablers remain with you like your shadow. Disablers are like self-sabotage buttons. Most of us go through life unaware of many of them… until they ‘bite’!  Few know how to find them, and fewer still know how to mitigate/eliminate them!!

 “Many people who could perform better with a little bit of assistance would rather suffer than let others know they need help (ego!).”

How do enable them to ‘find out’ what help they need, and get the help ‘safely’?

Everybody has strengths, weaknesses, enablers AND disablers. Many factors can be EITHER enablers OR disablers depending on a particular individual. For example, two individuals may consider themselves smart… one may be arrogant and be a poor team-player, and the other may use the smartness to find team-members with complementary skills and achieve better outcomes. Every team has both kinds of people. Creating a high-performing team without glaring weaknesses is a task of a good leader.

Most leaders use personal experience (not data) to build and lead teams with their known skills and strengths. Besides learning about individuals from personal interactions, most leaders know little about their people. Applying generalities across disparate team members always brings mixed engagement and results.

 They do not know the enablers and disablers (personal beliefs, values, rules, principles, rules of thumb, etc.) of individual team members that are not visible during personal interactions. These are generally part of the person’s mindset (often unknown to the individual as well).

 Which ones matter, and how do you identify some of them?

We’ve found FOUR areas (besides functional competencies such as marketing, finance and technology, that we do not address) that are most important for success in business leadership positions (based on the 80/20 principle):

1. Relationship with money and money-making (businesses).
2. Business-mindedness.
3. Factors within and around individuals that enable or disable their greater success.
4. Factors that affect people who consider themselves ‘smart’ (irrespective of their IQ score, college, accomplishment, etc.).

Each of those factors can be enablers OR disablers for an individual. 

As a leader, you can affect individual and team changes if you know:

1. the COMPOSITE of enablers AND disablers on your team, and
2. the enablers AND disablers of INDIVIDUALS on your team

Many individuals do not know their strengths and enablers; MOST individuals do not know (or acknowledge) their weaknesses and disablers.

Do you know your leadership team’s individual enablers AND disablers?

If you learn your team’s new strengths and enablers, you could leverage them deliberately. If you know your team’s new weaknesses and disablers, you can mitigate (or eliminate) them deliberately.

There are many assessments that identify the strengths of individuals. There are few that identify the weaknesses and disablers of individuals. There are fewer still that assess individuals that assess individuals on relevant factors and determine if those are enablers or disablers in those individuals. We have a set of such assessments.

“The problem for many people is not what they need to acquire, rather what they need to eliminate or change.”

Assessments provide “dead on” insights on what they were developed for. Administering them online makes them “safer” for the individuals. And using several together can be quite enlightening for individuals and groups. It identifies what they need to work on to become better performers – leverage hidden strengths and/or mitigate hidden disablers.

We will aggregate the responses for the whole group so the entire team can see the strengths and weaknesses on the team (without identifying individuals). We will point out the nature of the enablers and disablers that are pervasive within the group, and address how the group can leverage the enablers, and mitigate the disablers in order to improve the performance of the group.

You, as the leader, will get a clear picture of the current composition of the team and can address some of the disablers as a group at the meeting, and, perhaps, others with individuals.

Here’s a sample… you can take the “Is your smartness enabling or disabling you?” assessment at: https://www.businessthinking.com/assessments/is-your-smartness-enabling-or-disabling-your-success/

Smartness & Success – Composite Enablers & Disablers

Here’s another sample… you can take the “Do you have an Silent Killers of Success” assessment at: https://www.businessthinking.com/silent-killers-of-success-general/

Silent Killers of Success – Composite Enablers & Medium-impact Factors

All individuals will get reports with their individual scores.

We will:

1. Administer the assessments to every member of your team weeks BEFORE the meeting.
2. Compile and present the composite view of your team – their enablers and disablers (and their pervasiveness) among your team members.
3. Provide a quick overview of the major challenges on your team, and how to mitigate them.

OPTIONALLY:

1. OPTIONAL: Conduct a workshop on the most common disablers and missing enablers on your team.
2. OPTIONAL: Work with individuals one-on-one to work on their disablers and missing enablers.
3. OPTIONAL: Administer a post-assessment so you can see the change in the mindsets of the individuals on the team.
4. OPTIONAL: Conduct quarterly refreshers on the key disablers for your team, so they can continue to mitigate them; and missing enablers, so they can develop them.
5. OPTIONAL: Return for a future offsite with your leadership team for a refresher.

We will also provide access to a trove of articles, tools, assessments and a podcast. We publish new articles weekly on becoming achievers.