Developing and promoting people is a plea against changing the personality of people.

It is therefore one of the most important tasks of managers to take people as they are – to find out their strengths and bring them into line with their tasks. Only then they can become active where they can achieve the best results with their strengths.

Weaknesses belong to every person's personality. Job design has the task of neglecting these as much as possible.

Everything else can neither be justified morally nor economically. You can hardly turn a gardener into a fireman. Therefore, a gardener is required to be patient in taking care of the garden and is not criticised for not courageously going up the fire ladder in the event of fire.

Empowering people – with the right job design

Job design is the best match between the individual human being and the strategic or current challenges of the organisation. The aim is to use the individual's strengths and self-motivation to achieve effective results.

To achieve this, the leader must first know his or her own abilities and strengths and relate them to the abilities of his or her employees. In most companies, this is done on the basis of the job description. But this is not sufficient, because the classical job description describes only the framework of the job. In addition, the job description is standardised and does not cover the individual strengths of the job holder. And: The job description is not adapted when the position is filled again.

This requires an additional process that takes into account the individual strengths, but also the changed challenges posed by the market and internal circumstances. The key question is: What are the key tasks for the job holder?

This process is based on trust and a culture that knows how to deal professionally with strengths and weaknesses. In principle, key management tasks are identified from three sources:

1. from the strategic challenges of the company
2. from the current situation in which the organisation finds itself and
3. from the main tasks of the job.

The following basic questions must be answered by superiors for a good job design:

• What is my department's contribution to the company's strategy? Which key tasks (assignments) can be derived from this?
• Which key tasks result from the current situation of the department or company?
• Which key tasks match my strengths and interests? As a manager, I carry these out myself.
• What are my management tasks that I am not allowed to delegate?

The dialogue to develop the key tasks leads to a clear alignment and orientation of the people in the existing position. It is not uncommon for key tasks to extend over a time horizon of 24 months.

The manager is responsible for the job design. The HR department supports the process with systems, training and documents:

• Job description
• Individual key tasks (assignments)
• target agreement

It is recommended that the supervisor first performs the job design for himself or herself. This may sound selfish, but a results orientation based on one's own strengths is particularly important for managers.