Using strengths to add more meaning and flow

According to the Self-Determination Theory, humans have three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Using your strengths supports your wellbeing, particularly through experiences of autonomy and competence. Studies show that achieving flow becomes easier when people can use their strengths and thus give their best to the group. In group work, it’s easier to experience a sense of relatedness when everyone is at their best.

Leveraging strengths in teamwork requires recognizing one’s own and others’ strengths. Strengths can be identified through various psychological tests, but also through self-reflection. You can consider what you look forward to the most, when are you at your most effective, or what brings you a genuine sense of satisfaction. Additionally, you can ask for feedback from friends or colleagues (see below). Whatever method you use, it's essential to observe your reactions to the feedback. Do the identified strengths feel authentic and exciting to you? The results shouldn’t be taken as a given, and you can always develop strengths that are important to you by seeking opportunities to use them more often, and by practicing related skills.

Feedback on strengths

Giving feedback on each other's strengths is one way to recognize strengths within a team. Those who have worked together for a long time may be able to do this easily after a bit of reflection, but you can also take turns in sharing stories of successes or flow experiences with each other. The listener tries to identify the storyteller’s strengths by paying attention not only to the content of the story but also to the storyteller's expressions and gestures — shining eyes and enthusiastic gestures can be signs of strengths that are important to the person. After the story, the listener shares which strengths they identified. Meanwhile, the recipient of the feedback considers how the feedback makes them feel and whether they recognize the identified strengths as their own.

Once some strengths are identified, you can think about how to use them in your teamwork. Assigning tasks and roles based on strengths can promote collaboration and increase the chances of achieving group flow; for instance, someone might enjoy seeing the big picture due to their strengths, while another might thrive in detailed research or ideation. Offering support to others in your area of strength can also enhance the sense of relatedness and help everyone develop, if task distribution cannot or should not be entirely based on strengths.

More meaningfulness and flow through job crafting

Job crafting can be applied in both individual and group work situations. By modifying tasks towards your natural strengths, you can achieve flow more frequently and find more meaning in your work, without needing to search for an entirely new job, for instance. Crafting your work based on your own strengths or values promotes wellbeing, motivation, and efficiency. This, in turn, facilitates the emergence of flow or group flow.

Try job crafting by choosing one of your identified strengths at a time and find a few ways to implement it in your current job or studies. Continue testing out different ways to implement this strength for a week or two and observe how it affects your wellbeing or ability to perform. Aim to identify situations where both your energy levels and pleasure are high; this is when you experience work engagement. Work engagement is also contagious: the more of it there is in your team, the more individual team members experience it. You can continue experimenting with different strengths and share your identified strengths with your team as well to gain the full benefit.

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Read more i.e. Kuijpers, E., Kooij, D. T. A. M., & van Woerkom, M. (2020). Align your job with yourself: The relationship between a job crafting intervention and work engagement, and the role of workload. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 25(1), 1–16.