The Hindu Business Line : Achiever, activator, arranger... what are you?

Managers are categorised effective or ineffective not because of a lack of managerial skills, but because of a complete mismatch of their natural talents versus their job requirements.

This is the philosophy of an organisation that has started identifying the strengths and weaknesses of its managers and predicting the kind of behaviour they would display in certain situations and embed those behaviours in its culture.

In its latest HR initiative, Bangalore-based IT services company, Logica Pvt Ltd, has used the Gallup StrengthsFinder to maximise the performance of its managers at the workplace.

Sushil Tayal, Director, HR, who launched the first exercise with 35 people comprising the second line of leadership at the company, says that at the end of the exercise, at least 30 people got engaged in the tasks that they were passionate about.

The Gallup StrengthsFinder identifies 34 strengths required in managers, and also takes into account the fact that every manager has an intensity and order of different strengths. “The totality of this indicates what kind of a manager you are,” he says.

The Internet-based StrengthsFinder profile is the result of a 25-year, multi-million dollar effort to identify the most prevalent human strengths. It presents 180 items to the participant, with each item consisting of a pair of potential self-descriptors. The StrengthsFinder uses a questionnaire to identify different attitudes and behaviours of managers.

The top 10 strengths indicate the general behaviour/attitude of the manager and also guides HR on allocating job roles. The descriptors are placed at the polar ends of a continuum. The participant is then asked to choose from the pair the statement that best describes him or her, and also to what extent that chosen option is descriptive. The respondent has to respond to the given pair of descriptors within 20 seconds before moving on to the next pair.

Apart from providing such vital information to the organisation, the Gallup StrengthsFinder creates self-awareness and helps employees undergo strength-based coaching. “Otherwise, you’ll end up teaching music to piglets, which is a total waste of time,” jokes Tayal.

Though it has been used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of managers, the Gallup StrengthsFinder has not been used as a recruitment tool. The reason being that generally, an organisation’s behaviour and individual managers’ behaviour are inter-related.

“This is about how to embed individual behaviour in the culture and values of the organisation, not a selection procedure,” he clarifies.

He gives the instance of an HR team-member who was rated high on “harmony”. Tayal says that last year, the entire HR team concurred that this particular HR manager should lead the discussion rounds when managers were given their annual pay hikes. “Though there was no compromise on the hikes given and neither was anybody given unnecessary pay increments, this was the first time there was consensus throughout the exercise because of the harmony factor in the HR team,” smiles Tayal.

Then there is an instance of a business leader who expressed a desire to lead the training and development programmes in the organisation. Logica gave him the responsibility, thus expanding the effective leadership capability in the organisation.

So far, 70 staff members at (including the HR team, managers, project managers, employees in Europe) Logica have taken the StrengthsFinder test and Tayal says the best outcome has been in the areas of relationship management and in managing attrition.

“In our second line of leadership, there hasn’t been a single exit in one-and-a-half years, which was when we launched this exercise,” he says.

Logica is now all set to take this to the third line of leadership. “The whole exercise is about creating a culture, about being positive and looking at things in its totality rather than focussing on the negative aspects,” according to Tayal.

34 themes of the StrengthsFinder

Achiever, Activator, Adaptability, Analytical, Arranger, Belief, Command, Communication, Competition, Connectedness, Context, Deliberative, Developer, Discipline, Empathy, Fairness, Focus, Futuristic, Harmony, Ideation, Inclusiveness, Individualisation, Input, Intellection, Learner, Maximiser, Positivity, Relator, Responsibility, Restorative, Selfassurance, Significance, Strategic and Woo

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