Case Study: Understanding the Power of Strengths Awareness in Team Collaboration

In this latest blog, I want to share the story of a digital health company I’ve recently worked with, Antidote.

Antidote, Bringing Clinical Trial Sponsors and Patients Together

Antidote is working to enable faster medical innovation by transforming research, and connecting researchers with the patients they need. Their VP of People, Adele, got in touch to explore some challenges with having teams located in multiple countries.

I hope that sharing Adele’s story will give you some insights into the real benefits gained in team collaboration through understanding individual strengths.

What were Antidote’s Key Challenges?

Adele shared “My role as VP People is to oversee the HR strategy in our global locations and provide support to employees. Antidote is a digital health company with a mission to enable faster medical innovation by transforming how sponsors and patients connect through precision recruitment, a high-tech approach, and the largest global partnership network of its kind.  We are a small business (under 50 employees) and although our employees are engaged, it’s important to ensure we continually grow and develop individuals as there is not always a promoted role available due to our flat organisational structure.”

Why Choose Personal Strengths Coaching?

She continued, “I attended a brilliant free workshop with Nic and thought our management and Exec team could benefit from identifying their own strengths and of those in the wider team. I also wanted employees to be in the mindset of using their strengths to support others, allowing us to improve our collaborative and knowledge-sharing culture.”

How did this work?

While the focus of the work was better collaboration across teams, Adele also recognised the importance of understanding individual and team strengths.

The work began with the director team, with individual debriefs helping each member understand their personal strengths. Then, through individual coaching, we looked at ways to optimise these within their roles.

Through a team workshop, we then looked at how the developing leaders could use these strengths to work more with more collaboration globally across the organisation.

Further to the initial work with the management team, the Exececutive team were keen to engage in a similar process, increasing their awareness of their own personal strengths and looking for opportunities to optimise these to drive the organisation forward.

Antidote also made use of the Personal Strengths Coaching eResource – our eLearning platform and library of resources available to support your team’s professional growth. These resources helping embed a strengths culture within Antidote.

Let’s talk about outcomes

Adele confirmed that the organisation has really benefited from this work. Having discussed their initial view of individual and team development needs, we were able to identify and understand their strengths, how to improve them and then use them more effectively.

“One of the big benefits of completing the Strengthscope exercise is the variety of strengths individuals have and how much talent collectively there is across teams.”

It’s wonderful to see how the work has impacted Antidote, giving a new perspective by adopting a strengths culture and strategy. Adele describes how “This has also not been a ‘one-off’ exercise but instead, we are using our strengths to drive our culture … by assigning people with particular strengths to lead certain projects and supporting other team members whose strength in a certain area may not be as strong.”

They have described seeing some amazing results, including:

• “A deepened awareness of each other’s strengths.”
• “Employee’s willingness to seek support and advice from others who may have a particular strength that could support them.”
• “Managers general confidence building of junior members.”
• “Greater willingness to collaborate inter-departmentally.”

Effective Team Collaboration with Strengths Coaching

As our work with Antidote shows, supporting your employee’s individual development and professional growth is just one area in which the benefits of strengths coaching can be seen. There are so many ways Strengths Coaching can help from providing insights to Senior Management and Executives teams, to working with your teams to optimise their strengths together.  

It was great being able to work with Adele to take strides in creating a strengths culture within Antidote. In fact, one of the benefits almost all my clients talk about, is how strengths coaching can give your organisation a shared language as the foundation to promote collaboration and joint working.

If you’d like to find out more about how Strengths Coaching can support your team or business, I’d love to talk – Get in Touch.