Strengths, Skills and Project Managers

A talent or an ability is a strength if you can find yourself doing it happily, repeatedly, successfully. These kind of strengths are transferable from situation to situation but is limited to the person.

Skills enable people to avoid trial and error and incorporate discoveries from best performers in the industry. Skill is transferable from person to person but is limited to specific situations

Project Managers find themselves to be the at the intersection of the senior managements search for value and an individual team members search for identity.
Project Managers add value to their team and their sponsors, when they build relationships upward, downward and sideward.
Project Managers can hold up the mirror to their team members as individuals to discover their skills and strengths.

People are wired to need attention of some kind. Project Managers are wired to give attention, feedback, encouragement and support. The Project manager's role is not to teach strengths but to match strength to roles and activities. It is to understand subtle differences in people and match the task to the right person.
One of the signs of a good project managers are that they can understand the unique strengths of their team members and utilize it for the Sponsors search for value. Human Resources is the last vast reserve of value left on planet earth and Project Managers have it in them to extract it and utilize it.