Who was your best boss ever?

Maybe it was that manager who cared about your development. Or maybe it was someone who inspired you with her vision. Perhaps it was that hardworking, tenacious drill sergeant type who pushed you to your limits.

Whatever you remember, you´re likely to describe that manager in terms of his or her talents -- those recurring patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that can be productively applied. Managers who use their greatest talents leave an indelible impression on their organizations and the people who have the privilege of working for them.

So, what talents would the perfect manager have? Would she have exceptional Individualization -- the uncanny ability to see the unique qualities of each person? Would she possess great Woo -- the instinctive capacity to win others over? Or would she be a take-charge person whose Command talents naturally cause people to defer to her the moment she enters a room?

According to Gallup, the best managers may be particularly talented in all of these themes -- or in none of them. The fact is, there is no perfect manager and no ideal set of "management talents." The best managers succeed because they have an acute awareness of their own talents, they understand how to use those talents intentionally to motivate and develop their direct reports, and they maximize others´ performance by helping them identify their greatest talents and turn them into strengths.

Acute Awareness

The road to becoming an effective manager starts with an awareness of one´s own talents.

Take Wilma, a top manager in a hospital. During one holiday season, she became aware of how she draws on her Individualization talents to overcome staffing challenges.

"Staffing in the hospital over the holidays usually ends up with me having to insist that certain individuals work this or that shift in order to get optimum results," Wilma says. One busy season, however, as she fretted over the staff roster, she had the unusual thought that it would be much simpler if she would just let the employees determine who should work over the holidays. "That idea sounded good to me," Wilma says. "So, I allowed my imagination to roam free."

Using her Individualization talents, Wilma could clearly envision which tasks needed to be done on each shift and which individual was best equipped to perform them. Her challenge was to match the tasks with those best suited to complete them. "So instead of writing a roster, I made a list of the tasks that needed to be accomplished on each shift," Wilma explains.

"Lo and behold," Wilma says, "by the end of the day, the shifts were fully staffed by individuals who enjoyed doing the assigned tasks and did them very well. I have stopped making holiday staff rosters. Instead, I make ´I would like to do this´ task lists. I am amazed at how easy it is for me to identify who is likely to sign up for specific tasks."

Wilma´s Individualization talents help her be a highly effective manager. "It helps me see who has the talent to do the work," she observes.

Intentionally Using Talents

Although many managers are aware of their talents, what sets highly effective managers like Wilma apart is that they are intentional about using their talents. Anthony, for example, is aware of his Command talents. When he walks into a room, he notices that people instinctively defer to him. Anthony is OK with this. What he´s less comfortable with is that people expect him to lead, to take over and be responsible. There´s a whole other part of his personality that just likes to have fun: to play games, to laugh, and even to be silly at times. But he doesn´t get opportunities to do this often because Anthony is a general in the U.S. armed forces.

When I met Anthony, he was a participant in a strengths-based leadership workshop that I facilitated. The first thing I noticed about him was his intensity. Anthony´s questions were smart, articulate, and challenging. The next thing I noticed about him was his sharp sense of humor; he asked questions that were actually quite funny.

You see, Anthony possesses Positivity. He enjoys making people laugh. He likes to make work fun, and he tends to look at the bright side of things. As I have gotten to know Anthony by spending time with him and his team, I have observed how he intentionally uses his Command and Positivity talents to manage and lead. On more than one occasion, I´ve listened as he said things like, "Thank you for doing that now, and thank you in advance for doing it in your usual superb fashion." This kind of direct order, when delivered in Anthony´s easy-going conversational style, has his direct reports scrambling to obey.

Leaders and managers like Anthony, who intentionally use their talents, discover that their employees respond by using their own talents more consistently.

Helping Others Discover Their Talents

Most people are unaware of their talents. So the best managers start by creating opportunities for that awareness to occur. They watch for recurring patterns of thought, feelings, and behavior in their employees, and they place people in roles where those patterns may become more obvious to the person and others.

Julio is the CEO of one of the most engaged and successful workplaces Gallup has ever studied. He provides a clear illustration of how this awareness-building process works. When Julio became CEO of what was a depressed and underperforming organization, he inherited a recently hired COO, Juanita.

"From the beginning," Julio says, "I noticed that the employees jumped higher and moved more quickly when Juanita spoke." Instead of taking that as an affront to his management style, Julio saw an opportunity to maximize Juanita´s Command and Relator talents. Using his Maximizer and Focus talents, Julio positioned Juanita so her take-charge patterns could motivate and unite a staff that had been disempowered and ostracized.

Over the past four years, this arrangement has inspired world-class performance. In 1999, just 23% of employees at this organization were engaged, and business performance and outcomes were at an all-time low. By 2001, engagement levels had soared -- 71% of employees were engaged -- and in 2003, engagement levels remain high (in the top quartile in Gallup´s database). Juanita is often called upon to talk about how she uses her strengths to drive success in her workplace.

That is what the best managers do. Like Julio, Anthony, and Wilma, they intentionally use their talents to help others discover just how good they can be.

Author

Kenneth A. Tucker is a Seminar Leader and Managing Consultant with The Gallup Organization.

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Copyright " 2003 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.