By Diane West 
While reading an article about recruiting on LinkedIn Pulse recently the title of another article caught my eye “Become a Better Leader By Looking for This One Thing — in Everyone”. Hmmm … What is the one thing successful leaders have in common?
This article by Justin Bariso speaks to the one common thread among those who have achieved success: potential.
In the article Justin references research done by Adam Grant for his best-selling book Give and Take. His research showed that when someone is believed to have high potential and given special attention they, in fact, will bloom and achieve that potential. His conclusion is that when managers show “genuine interest and belief in the potential of their employees” and “[engage] in actions that support others and communicate that belief”, it leads to increased motivation and effort on the part of employees.
Think about that teacher, coach, or manager who saw potential in you and challenged you to see your mistakes as a chance to learn and grow.
Adam Grant poses four great questions at the end of the article that could help us all be better leaders and co-workers:
- What are my team members’ individual strengths?
- What sincere, authentic praise can I offer?
- How can I help them improve weaknesses through appropriate, constructive feedback?
- What small wins can I celebrate? (At the same time, help team members to see how these small wins are building blocks for larger gains and overall development.)
Have you taken the time to see the potential in yourself and your employees?
While everyone may not see themselves as a leader it’s still important to find the potential in each member of your team. And, like it or not, we may all be called on to lead at some point in our personal or business life.
Assess the Potential of your Current and Future Team Members
This topic is of particular interest for Leading Home Care because we work with home health agencies and home care companies to help them find the best talent for their team. Using a series of scientifically validated, proven self-assessment tools, we can help you identify attitudes, behavioral styles, workplace motivators, core competencies, and cognitive ability of team members.
The assessments we have available to help you in selecting candidates or developing team members are:
- Executive Assessments
- Leadership Team Assessments
- Sales Assessments
- Nurse Assessments
- Caregiver Quality Assessments.
By using one or more of these assessments you can better determine the individual strengths of your applicants, and current team. This will enable you to be a better leader by helping them realize their full potential, making them a valued team member, and increasing the performance of your company.
That’s what we all strive for, to be recognized and valued for our strengths, and encouraged to succeed.
Contact Leading Home Care and let’s work together to build your successful team.
Call us today – 502-339-0653.
About the Author: Diane West is the Chief Operating Officer at Leading Home Care, and Program Manager for Home Care Talent Solutions.
