As business leaders, HR professionals and managers we are juggling a lot of people, projects, responsibilities and task in our organizational roles while also working to strike a balance outside the office and in our personal lives as well as home. It takes a village to raise a child, however I’m of the belief it takes a village to develop, communication effectively not just manage but lead a team.

Employee Development: It Takes a Village to Develop an Employee

Employee development is not just an area of opportunities for our own personal development as employees but our own employees as well. It impacts the organization in the form of employee morale, communication and ultimately productivity. When the performance of neither is seen as effective, employee engagement levels drop by nine times according to a 2015 Towers Watson Study.

More of their research points to behaviors and practices that help managers achieve synergistic connections with executives across all of these strategic priorities. These things are essential to building a team.

Build a Team In our consulting work, we see many hiring managers and executives trying to do it all and failing miserably. They attempt to do the micromanage employees, miscommunicate or are absent in the employees training or career development. Their biggest failing is not in their own efforts. Instead, it is in their inability to build a team and wrap the right kind of strategic partners around them.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” But how do you build a team? How do you find the right people? How do you remove from your plate all the things that you struggle with, while keeping only those things that you do well? Gallup StrengthsFinder 2.0 Assessment We have found the Gallup StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment to be an invaluable resource in helping the business leaders and team members answer these questions. The assessment, released to the general public in 2007, identifies your dominant Signature Themes — those natural talents that you do so easily.

Develop Your Talents And Avoid the Energy Drain

You use these talents as Strengths when you are using them with excellence in a positive way. With the results, you have an opportunity to add skill and practice to make these natural talents work for you more effectively. They reveal your “come from,” your perspective, the way you view the world and those in it. Learn Where You Need Help When your dominant talents are revealed, so are your lesser talents. These are the talents that you don’t use automatically. They are the talents that you typically do not function in with excellence or with any regularity. When you use these lesser talents, it’s more difficult, takes you longer and at the end of the day, drains you of your energy. When analyzing the outcome of the test, you are able to determine exactly where you need help.

Take it a step further and ask yourself where are the gaps in your business as well as your personal and professional development? What areas should you outsource? Where do you need someone else’s expertise in order to grow your business? Who do you need to come along beside you and make strong where you are weak?

These answers can be found in learning a simple “common language” that allows you to create the best team for the greatest opportunity of success found within the Strengths Finder system, development and training.

Strengths Finder Identifies Four People Types

There are Four Types of People Generally speaking:

• DO-ERS, who get things done through implementing processes and achieving goal-oriented results.

• PROMOTERS, who influence people and bring excitement and enthusiasm to others about your product or service.

• THINKERS, who research, plan, see patterns, bring fresh ideas and are often good at analyzing data.

• NURTURERS, who build strong relationships by servicing, empowering and uplifting people. When you know what type of person YOU are, you can readily see what else is needed in your business.

With this knowledge, you now know how to find the others you need to grow your own team of partners — whether formal or informal — and forward your personal, professional and business development. Application Creates Change All this from a simple test? You bet! Once you learn what it takes to apply it, you’ll make subtle changes in your company and find yourself with a competitive advantage.