Grant Anderson Coordinator of Housing & Residential Life

  Focus on where you can be excellent   Leads to higher engagement   Most employees (maybe students) feel

ignored or focus on weakness fixing   Weakness fixing is purely damage control   Learning to apply what you do best to

challenges you face   Strengths = Talents + Skills + Knowledge

  Command   Individualization   Strategic   Analytical   Activator

Why does this matter to you?

  6300-6600 students on campus   Manage 11 buildings   Residence Life Staff – 10 Residence Directors,

5 Assistant Residence Directors, 10 Business Operations Supervisors, and 4 central managers (like me)

  First took StrengthsQuest in January 2010

  Many personality theories/typologies are not support or weakly supported by research

  Over exposure to trendy approaches to understanding students

  Too many people using personality gimmicks as key educational tool

  Analytical + Command = Doubt

  Was not pushed on us as truth, but offered as an approach we might want to consider

  Research, research, research   Connects with more research on intrinsic vs

extrinsic motivation (Punished by Rewards, Deci and Ryan)

  Tools provided by Gallup for students and educators

  Started by training managers to use in supervision and student advising

  Focused on benefits to building teams   All 150 Community Advisors went through

training and use in regular supervision   Part of residential curriculum pilot in Frontier

and Territorial Halls   Expanded to student leaders   Team analysis throughout department

  Still seeking means to measure, but early numbers show CA engagement may have increased

  Anecdotal evidence from employees   Working towards larger assessment of

student in Frontier and Territorial Halls   Gallup has pretty overwhelming data that we

hope to find ways to replicate

  Continue with professional staff, student staff, and student leaders

  Expand program with other student staff groups

  Increased focus on teams   Seeking increased connection to Student

Development Outcomes   Remodeling how we construct training,

development, and evaluation