Gallup Identifies Benefits of Strengths-Based Initiatives
The research-based organization Gallup has identified a number of benefits of strengths-based leadership, from increased sales and profits to higher customer and employee engagement, as reported in its 2015 Strengths Meta-Analysis.
Strengths-based leadership is a management process that begins with hiring, carries on into onboarding, and continues well into the perpetual training and development of each employee as they become an integrated — and hopefully engaged — member of an organization. The concept, in short, is for employees’ unique strengths to be identified by managers and then become integrated into the goals and values of the organization as a whole.
There are four ultimate objectives for employees in this process that Gallup has identified: to become aware of their own and their colleagues’ strengths; to utilize and see the benefits of their applied strengths at work; to see and share a commitment to the process with colleagues; and to feel a shared commitment to the process from leadership.
In Gallup’s 2015 Strengths Meta-Analysis, over 49,000 businesses including over 1 million employees across 45 countries were studied for the effects of strengths-based interventions. Specific outcomes measured were sales, profit, customer engagement, turnover, employee engagement and safety.
The results in Gallup’s study reflect some of the positive effects that strengths-based initiatives can achieve. Overall, 90 percent of the organizations studied saw performance increases of up to:
- 7 percent in customer engagement
- 15 percent in employee engagement
- 29 percent in profit
Furthermore, when employees were asked whether their manager focused on their strengths at work, over half (67 percent) of those who said yes are categorized as engaged. Of those employees who said no to this statement, only 2 percent are currently categorized as engaged — additional evidence for strengths-based leadership as fostering engagement within the workplace.
The full Gallup 2015 Strengths Meta-Analysis report can be downloaded here.