“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
-John Quincy Adams
One role of a genuine leader is helping to discover the unknown inside organizations. Being able to have a clear helicopter view of the business helps leaders see where there are resources which already exist in the company which can be put to use.
The resources already within reach are hidden in employee strengths and transferable expertise and informal networks. The benefits of finding, and using, an organization’s hidden resources are many and varied.
Three ways to find your business’ hidden potential are:
- Helping employees discover their life’s purpose,
- Helping employees identify their areas of strength, and
- Discovering informal networks and utilizing them to the company’s advantage.
Life’s Purpose
People find their life’s purpose when they are aided in finding their inspiring purposes in their life — the reasons they get up in the morning. Purpose guides life decisions, influences’s behavior, shapes goals, creates a sense of direction and offers meaning. For some, purpose is connected to what they do. Do they have meaningful and satisfying work?
Lead your workers as they find their own answers to three central questions:
Who am I?
Where do I belong?
When do I feel fulfilled?
While some may feel hesitant about finding their life purpose because it sounds self-serving, the true purpose is about helping them recognize their own unique gifts and using those gifts to make a contribution to their corner of the world.
Strength
Does your job lean into your innate strengths?
If your workers are doing work which doesn’t tap into their greatest strengths, their prowess and motivates will suffer beside their careers. In contrast, when people align with their talents and interests, they gain confidence along with expertise.
Strengths in the workplace are defined by terms such as teamwork, leadership and problem-solving. One, often overlooked strength, is self-knowledge. It’s a powerful tool can helps an individual apply their greatest strengths to a variety of components of the job. For employees seeking to advance their career, assessing and leveraging their strengths is the most critical thing they can do.
To help leverage employee strengths, encourage them to:
- Listen to what others say you’re good at,
- Know what they love,
- Find their flow state,
- Know their relationship style, and
- Maximize their specialties.
Informal Networks
As researchers at McKinsey & Company studied social and informal networks, they made a startling find: how much information and knowledge flows through them and how little through official hierarchical and existing structures. Despite their value, these informal communities within the workplace often fly under the radar and can often boost complexity and raise confusion.
The Takeaway
In today’s business climate, where personal and professional growth are the main currency in employee satisfaction, discovering hidden internal resources within your business is helpful to everyone, regardless of where they are on the company ladder.
Photo by Razvan Chisu on Unsplash