Strengths at Work Program

Strengths at Work Program

A strengths-based approach to building a skills-based team

Open-enrolment program for leaders from different organisations

Strengths at Work is a practical one-day program that helps leaders:

• identify the capability already in their teams
• identify the skills their priorities require
• make better decisions about how work, development and opportunities are allocated

Participants learn alongside leaders and HR professionals from different organisations and leave ready to apply the approach with their own teams.

Before the workshop, each participant completes a validated psychometric assessment of 80 behavioural skills. During the program, participants explore their own results and the combined results of the group. They then learn how to map the challenges and opportunities facing their team and match them to the skills available. This shows which strengths to build on, which gaps to address and which skills can be shared across the team

Participants leave ready to interpret their own profile and facilitate a structured skills conversation with their team. The program draws on positive psychology, strengths research and more than 20 years of coaching and leadership development experience.

Why this matters

A skills-based organisation makes decisions about hiring, development, promotion and deployment based on the skills people have, rather than job titles, qualifications, industry background or years of experience. Skills become a shared currency that can move across roles and teams as priorities change.

Many leading organisations are moving in this direction, but many still lack a clear view of the skills they already have. CVs, job titles and self-reported skills lists provide only a partial view.

When leaders lack visibility of the skills in their team, roles become unclear, workloads fall unevenly, capability goes unused and recruitment may target gaps that do not exist. The effects are felt in performance, retention, wellbeing and culture.

Strengths at Work provides a practical starting point for leaders who want to work in a more skills-based way, without requiring them to redesign their organisation’s broader talent systems.

What’s included

• Skills assessment: every participant completes Cappfinity’s Skills Discovery assessment (formerly Strengths Profile) before the workshop.
• One-day workshop with a group debrief: a full-day workshop exploring individual results and the combined results of the group.
• Group skills map: a combined view of all participants’ results, showing where skills overlap and where the gaps are. It demonstrates the approach before you apply it to your own team.
• Take-home facilitation guide and templates to run the challenges and opportunities exercise with your own team in 60 to 90 minutes.
• Practical workbook and online resources to support learning after the workshop.
• Available separately: an optional one-to-one coaching program providing an individual profile debrief and follow-up sessions to support application.

The skills assessment

The program uses Cappfinity’s Skills Discovery assessment, which is used by organisations worldwide to build a shared language for capability. Measuring energy alongside performance helps show which skills people are likely to sustain over time, and where there may be capability that is not yet being used. Each person’s 80 skills fall into four areas:

What you’ll cover

• Use your profile to examine how your strengths influence your leadership choices and where the contribution of others is needed.
• Identify practical opportunities to deploy and develop capability that is currently underused in the team.
• Recognise skills that drain people and can contribute to overload and burnout.
• Learn how to share skills across a team by pairing people whose profiles complement each other.
• Explore how a shared skills language can support recruitment, feedback, role design, performance conversations and goal setting.
• Understand the drivers of motivation at work: autonomy, growing capability and connection with others.
• Use a structured team map to decide where capability can be deployed, developed, shared or sourced.

What it means for your organisation

Participants return to their organisations with a strengths-based approach they have already practised, and the tools to apply it. Applied with their teams, the approach can support the following outcomes.

Clear roles and psychosocial safety

Skills analysis helps organise and clarify roles, so people have a clearer understanding of what they are responsible for and why. Lack of role clarity and poor reward and recognition are both identified as psychosocial hazards in Safe Work Australia’s model Code of Practice. A skills-based approach gives leaders a practical way to start addressing both.

Better performance and goal setting

Skills insights can feed into performance conversations, development plans and goal setting. Goals can then build on what people do well and can grow, not only on what needs fixing.

Fairer, more connected teams

When people understand their colleagues’ skills, leaders can distribute work with greater visibility of who is contributing, who has capacity and where capability is being overlooked.

Engagement, meaning and purpose

Research links using strengths at work with higher engagement and a stronger sense of meaning. This matters for every generation. It is often a priority for millennials and Gen Z, many of whom say they want work that uses their abilities and feels worthwhile.

Wellbeing and resilience

Research also links using strengths, and being recognised for them, with better wellbeing and resilience for individuals and teams. The approach helps leaders notice when someone is relying too heavily on skills that drain them.

A common language for the team

A shared skills language gives leaders and HR a consistent way to compare current capability with future needs when considering recruitment, internal mobility and succession.

Who should attend

Managers, leaders, emerging leaders and HR professionals who:

• Want a clear picture of their own skills and the tools to build the same picture in their team.
• Are working towards a skills-based approach to recruitment, development or mobility.
• Want to improve role clarity, engagement and wellbeing in their team.
• Would value learning alongside leaders from other organisations and sectors.

About the facilitator

For nearly two decades, Andy Roberts has helped managers and teams, from oil and gas to secondary schools, identify their strengths and build stronger team cultures around them. Andy trained in the Cappfinity strengths model and studied under Dr Alex Linley, Cappfinity’s founder, at Warwick University. He holds a Master’s in Applied Positive Psychology and brings more than 20 years of facilitation and coaching experience.

Program details

Beyond the workshop

Organisations that want to extend the approach beyond an individual participant can access additional team and organisation-wide options:

• Skills Discovery assessments for team members, so a team map can be based on assessment results as well as observation.
• An in-house version of Strengths at Work, delivered for a whole team or organisation.
• One-to-one coaching for individual leaders or members of their team.

Contact us to discuss your requirements.