Slacker Manager has linked to a survey on whether people are given ’strength-training’ at work; that is, are trained to improve their strengths and use them more often.
The answer appears to be a resounding no.
I say “appears” because the data seems based on self-reporting, which is not very reliable.
But I believe it when 55 percent of workers say they’ve had no training in their strengths, because organizations usually target training at weaknesses, at what we don’t know how to do. In fact, that number seems low.
Other salient numbers:
- 18 percent of those surveyed say they spend less than a fifth of their time using their strengths;
- 9 percent say they use their strengths more 80 percent of the time;
- Only 30 percent say they use their strengths a majority of the time.
Earlier this year I posted on the idea of Freak management, which argues that we know our weaknesses because they correspond to our strengths, and we can then focus on making our strengths even stronger.
Should businesses focus more on strength training for employees?
