Get your team to talk about teammates’ strengths.

The beauty of the solution-focused approach to leadership is the ability to create a constructive environment, focused on positive outcomes. You build this type of environment because you look for resources rather than deficits and you start to treat team members as experts. Below, you can find a simple process to help you bring positive feedback about your teamwork.

How can you boost your team’s attitude in 5 min?

You can design questions that elicit strengths and resources!

Team members need a starting point to primarily focus on strengths and resources when they talk about other people.

Step 1. Come up with a question that will elicit strengths and positive resources. For example:

• Describe the best action you took this week. What was your role in it? What was the outcome? 
• What is the best news you can bring to this meeting?
• What was the most inspiring feedback you received recently?

Step 2. At the beginning of a meeting ask the question you chose to your team. Give them time to think about their answers.  

Step 3. Ask the team members to share their answers with the group. As they answer, give them genuine compliments and elicit the strengths and/or positive resources they used to achieve a positive outcome. Encourage other members to compliment these achievements, too.

With regularly practising this activity, you will help your team develop the ability to bring up positive comments about each other’s work and you, as a group, will work from a position of positive outcomes, instead of building on negative comments about each other.

I designed this activity based on different concepts and techniques, including the ideas of Solution-Focused Leadership. To read more about how you can use the solution-focused approach, check my article Look ahead! Solution-Focused Leadership at a Glance. 

This 5-minute activity comes from the worksheets I created to help you easily step into action mode. You can find tons of these activities in my worksheet library, just sign up here to get access.

Try it out and let me know in the comments. How did it go?

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