"Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses." - Marilyn vos Savant. [Click to share on Linkedin]

Framework #3 for building a world-class Customer Success team is strengths.

The research institute Gallup conducted thousands of interviews over 40 years to understand what makes a high-performing team. This statement summarizes their research: "The highest performing teams have individuals in roles that maximize their strengths." Simply put, people excel when they focus on their natural talents.

The challenge is explaining what you are naturally talented to do. For example, if you are asked, "What are you most naturally talented to do?", you might hesitate or say "I don't know." You might be able to explain the things you like to do or the things you hope to do, or the things that are interesting to you. So, how can you explain what you are most talented to do?

Other assessments like DISC and Myers Briggs categorize people with a label, like 'Conscientious' or 'ENTJ'. These profiles are useful, but strengths provide a language to describe your talents. There are 34 strengths, and this assessment gives you a personalized list of your most dominant to least dominant strengths.

Strengths give you an easy way to describe what you've always known but haven't been able to communicate in the past. This new language becomes a powerful bonding agent and trust-builder between employees and leaders. Strengths bring awareness and recognition to the fact that every single person has unique strengths which present themselves in a different way.

If you know what someone's natural strengths are, you can understand a little bit more about their behavior and worldview. To do this, you must accept that their intent is positive and not malicious. When you accept that, then you can appreciate somebody's natural talents and say, "Well, their most dominant strength is X. I need to change the way I present this information to align better with what they want because they do not think the same way that I do."