Lacy Hodges and Savitra Dow: Synergistic Relationships Involve Maximizing Each Other’s Strengths

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“My strengths allow me to problem solve and provide creative solutions, Lacy’s  strengths focus on understanding the logistics and details.’” While Ms. Savitra Dow draws on her Restorative and Futuristic Strengths to arrive at ideas, Dr. Lacy Hodges focuses on the details and draws on her Deliberative and Input Strengths. Hodges adds, “It helps to have someone push me out of just thinking things through on a detail level and thinking about the big picture … not just how we can do what we’ve always done, but new ways of thinking about it.”

Though Dow and Hodges have very different strengths, they have learned that gaining perspective on each other’s strengths is essential to building synergistic working relationships. As Associate Director of Undergraduate Advising & Transition, Dr. Lacy Hodges was instrumental in introducing CliftonStrengths to all GT 1000 students at Georgia Tech and has integrated strengths into the GT 1000 course learning objectives and activities. Ms. Savitra Dow is the Academic Transition Programs and Operations Manager and reports to Hodges. Additionally, Dow and Hodges both serve as Gallup Certified Strengths Coaches and Facilitators.

Hodges’ #2 Strength in Learner is an important asset to her working relationship with Dow. Dow recognizes that she uses this strength in her role as supervisor: “I believe Lacy’s strength in Learner shows up in her role as a supervisor. Lacy is open to learning new things and encourages those who she manages to do the same, which I appreciate.  She doesn’t stifle my ability or desire to learn or grow. She’s always been open to professional development opportunities.”

On the other hand, Hodges highlights Dow’s strength as Developer as valuable in her role of working with student leaders. She says, “I’m so focused achieving the goal that I don’t always think about how this is benefiting the people we’re working with, but Savitra focuses on what we can do for the students: How can we make sure that we’re assigning students a role to best meet their needs and best develop them as people?” In all, their astute knowledge of each other’s strengths creates the synergy.

And undoubtedly when the COVID-19 pandemic became a stark reality, their awareness of each other’s strengths was significantly valuable. Amid such complex times of uncertainty, adapting and adjusting became the mantra for all. Gaining perspective on each other’s strengths—how they process information– not only helped Dow and Hodges readily adapt during the pandemic, it also strengthened their working relationship. Hodges pointed out that “actual physical distance” ultimately allowed for innovation to take place. “We couldn’t just do what we were doing in the past,” she points out, “I had to take a step back and stop overrelying on some of my strengths and allow myself to understand that it’s better to use a complementary strength.” Dow’s strengths in Futuristic and Restorative were quite fruitful in this new realm of adjusting and adapting. She notes, “I felt free and a sense of ownership using my problem solving and creative ability, while still checking in with Lacy to discuss details in depth.” Ultimately, the drastic shifts amid the pandemic improved their working relationship.

As teamwork activators and collaborators, they have some advice for others who would like to have synergistic relationships with their co-workers.

“Knowing each other’s strengths and being willing to trust that the other person knows how to use their strengths in a way that works for them is really important,” Dr. Hodges advises.

Ms. Savitra Dow adds, “Transparency is very important as it creates openness and understanding for each person to want to learn from the other person.”

Kerry Wallaert: Mentoring with a Focus on What is Right with Someone

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“Instead of focusing on what you don’t have when you look at a job description, what do you have? And how can you state that in the language that’s already in the job description?” Kerry Wallaert approaches mentoring with a focus on “what’s right with you.” When a student is applying for jobs, she helps them articulate their skills and experiences in language that captures their unique strengths. She also coordinates with trainers at the Career Center, where students receive practical job-oriented mentoring and encounter the CliftonStrengths material in a different context.

As a member of the ETD leadership team, Wallaert loves facilitating ETD workshops in GT 1000 and 2000 classes because she is able to get the first-year and transfer students excited, and see the immediate impact. Because Empathy is her #3 strength, she connects with each unique group of students and adapts her teaching strategies accordingly: “I will read a class as they’re coming in, and get a sense of where they’re at,” she explains. “So while we always meet the same objectives, it doesn’t necessarily look the same, because I am tailoring my presentation to that particular class.” This dynamic approach resonates with students: she’s received feedback from professors saying that they’ve seen a difference in their students after her workshop, because “somehow [Wallaert] triggered something in them, and now they’re more engaged.”

Strengths will manifest differently for every person, Wallaert emphasizes, depending on their age, context, perceptions, and circumstances. “Not everybody’s strengths show up the same way. Because I have Achiever in my top five, it shows up as list-making and a satisfaction of checking things off. Not every Achiever will do that. In fact there are some Achievers I know who don’t understand why I’m even making a list. So it’s really very person-dependent,” she explains. “And your other Strengths impact how certain ones show up within your top five,” she continues. “So Learner is not going to be same for everybody across the board, because if you have different Strengths in your top five, it’s going to look different for each person.”

Based on her understanding of the importance of context, Wallaert tailors her advising approach to each individual student and specific situation. If a student is struggling with a Chemistry class, for instance, Wallaert will help them consider how their Strengths influence their learning style: “What Strengths are you using to learn that may not be jiving the way you think they should, or with how the faculty member is teaching? And how can we address this issue you’re having by utilizing your Strengths?”

To help students translate their Strengths into actionable strategies to do better in the particular class they’re struggling with, she helps them find the underlying issue causing their stress. She’ll usually look up the student’s top five Strengths before an appointment, so that she has access to that context before they begin the conversation. Then they’ll sit together and review the student’s Strengths, looking for patterns and insights. For instance, if Maximizer is in the student’s top five, she’ll explain to the student that “typically Maximizers like to look at what’s good, and how they can make it great.” Next she’ll ask the student, “where is that showing up for you, in terms of this academic issue?” And then, she says, “students are able to talk it through.”

Her #3 Strength in Empathy is an important asset to her work in academic advising. Georgia Tech students don’t always love to talk about their feelings, she says. By acknowledging students’ emotional struggles, she helps students open up about deeper issues and process their emotions. She uses her Empathy and Input Strengths to figure out what’s going on with a student, and her Intellection Strength to figure out what to do next. She doesn’t want a student to leave her office without an action plan. Drawing on her Learner and Achiever Strengths, she’ll recommend a plan, or the student will decide what the action steps will be. During the meeting she always has a notebook out, writing everything down, and after the meeting she follows up to make sure the student completed the agreed-upon plan.

As Wallaert helps students figure out who they are and what they care about, Strengths language is beneficial, she says, because it “really helps you understand yourself.” She supports students in being more intentional about how they’re approaching their work. And once students understand their own Strengths, they’re better able to appreciate others’ Strengths as well. For instance, if a student complains that a teammate is a slacker and not doing any work, Wallaert will help the student consider that maybe their teammate has Deliberative in their top five Strengths, and they need more time to think without giving you an immediate response. Or she’ll encourage the student to consider whether they are delegating tasks based on what they don’t want to do, and whether they could instead ask the teammate what they prefer. Wallaert says that it’s really nice to be able to use Strengths language as a tool to dig into some of the things that students are thinking about.

As a professional development tool, Wallaert says, Strengths training has the potential to positively impact Georgia Tech as a whole. Building on the initial GT 1000 and 2000 workshops, faculty could continue incorporating Strengths activities throughout students’ four years of coursework. “I would love to see more people at Georgia Tech involved in Strengths. How can we create sustainable change? I’d love to see Strengths incorporated in HR processes, so all incoming faculty and staff are trained in Strengths, and then they go out and put that into action – tying it into coursework and conversation. It would be super beneficial to help students, faculty, and staff move forward.”

This is the first article in a two-part series about Kerry Wallaert. Learn about her experiences applying her Strengths in the ETD Coaching Circle and her PhD exams here.

Kerry Wallaert: Applying Strengths in the Coaching Circle and PhD Exams

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As a certified Strengths Coach speaker-trainer, within her first week on campus Kerry Wallaert immediately connected with ETD Director Dr. Mary Lynn Realff. Wallaert has been working with CliftonStrengths since 2007 (at Southeast Missouri State and Georgia State before she came to Georgia Tech in 2016). As a member of the ETD Initiative’s leadership team as well as the Educational Outreach Manager in the School of Materials Science & Engineering, Wallaert has applied her expertise in Strengths by leading workshops at staff meetings, facilitating undergraduate teamwork training, and mentoring students one-on-one.

When Wallaert wants to take time to reflect on her own Strengths, she turns to the ETD Coaching Circle, where she serves as a coach and also has her own coach. With one-on-one as well as group sessions, the program supports coaches – who spend most of their time supporting others – with a space to focus on their own Strengths. For instance, Wallaert might reflect on how she brings her best self to a team by drawing on her #3 Empathy and #1 Input Strengths to make sure everyone has a voice and feels included. She might consider how she loves making lists, and communicates this to her co-workers as part of her #4 Achiever strength. Or she might receive affirmation from her peers that because Ideation is her #6 Strength, she is constantly generating new ideas.

Members of the Coaching Circle share their own experiences and receive suggestions from their peers tailored to their unique context. They might be encouraged to draw on one of their Strengths to approach a situation a different way, or to explore a new project. Wallaert says she loves the Coaching Circle, and she’s brought a couple of her close friends and colleagues from other areas on campus into the group. “I think it’s very beneficial to be able to continue to have conversations about our own Strengths and our own development. It gives us space to really stop and think about what we’re doing. How are we using our Strengths, or how are we not, and what is hindering us?”

Wallaert appreciates how the Coaching Circle allows her to connect her personal growth and professional development: “I have been able to talk about the things going on in my personal life and my academic life, and bring them into my work life, and I’m getting some feedback on both of those, which has been wonderful. You’re not always thinking about that when you’re in the day-to-day grind, so it gives you that pause to reflect on where those strengths are showing up.” For instance, she received Strengths coaching to prepare her for her PhD comprehensive exams. She and her coach identified what could be a hindrance, and what would be helpful. “It definitely has been helpful to pause, and then reset, and make adjustments.”

As a PhD student in Educational Policies Studies, Wallaert draws on her #1 Input, #2 Learner, and #5 Intellection Strengths for her research process, while her #4 Achiever Strength helps her move from input (reading) to output (writing). She worked with her coach to devise strategies to effectively balance these strengths throughout the PhD exam process. “Because I have Input, Learner, and Intellection in my top five, sometimes I spend too much time gathering information,” she explains. “And so we talked about how to balance that with my Achiever, so I would be getting something done. She gave me some really great tips.” Based on her coach’s advice, Wallaert was able to stop herself from “going down the research rabbit hole” and make sure she was writing at regular intervals. And because her #7 Strength is Maximizer, when she was done writing her PhD exams she thoroughly reviewed and edited her work to keep improving it. She reflects that her conversations with her coach helped her become “more aware of how my strengths were both hindering and helping me through that process.”

She has also made a point to openly discuss her Strengths with her dissertation committee, so they can more intentionally support her research and writing process. For instance, her advisor was able to help her move past perfectionism during the PhD exam process: “I’m a high achiever, so I like things to be really on point, and it’s very difficult for me to turn in something that’s not 100% perfect. And my advisor knows that even though I was mentally drained, I was constantly worrying about whether it was good enough, and she said, ‘just stop, turn it all off, dial down the Achiever. You are fine. Just stop worrying.’”

Based on her own positive experience applying Strengths language to the PhD process, Wallaert would love to get more PhD committees talking about Strengths – the grad students’ as well as the professors’ – to improve the interpersonal dynamics. “In a dissertation committee, wouldn’t it be awesome if everybody was on the same page? Like this faculty member is going to take a long time to read through materials because they are Deliberative, or because they are Restorative and they want to make sure you have every single piece in place – wouldn’t that be helpful?”

This is the second article in a two-part series about Kerry Wallaert. Learn about her empowering approach to student advising here.

Renita Washington: Bringing CliftonStrengths to Academic Advising

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An hour away from Georgia Tech at Gordon State College, deans, chairs, and classroom leaders from all across campus gather for the kick-off of a new leadership program. Tables are clustered in small groups, interactive activities are dispersed around the room, and the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafts through the room. At the center of all of the action is Dr. Renita Washington, Georgia Tech’s Academic Advising Manager in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, iPad in hand and questions at the ready to help guide these leaders on how to use strength-based language to navigate through challenging team dynamics.

Dr. Washington sees the world as a place where everyone has something unique and powerful to contribute to society. She works daily to help all people see their strengths in a way that allows them to be successful leaders in their role. Whether she’s interacting with students, faculty, or staff, she brings her passion for recognizing each person’s particular talents and cultivating excellence in individuals and teams.

Washington first became interested in the importance of effective team dynamics as an instructor for GT 1000. “I was noticing firsthand the struggles students had working in teams when it came to the course’s team project,” she says. Motivated by the desire for a better way to lead her student teams, Washington joined the Effective Team Dynamics Initiative (ETD) and became a Strengths coach and a certified facilitator of the CliftonStrengths Discovery course.

Becoming an ETD facilitator has helped Washington “introduce the students to how to work better as a team, how to resolve conflicts, and what strengths each brought to the team to do so.” She expertly guides students in acknowledging unhelpful attitudes toward group projects based on past negative experiences. She supports individuals and teams in addressing any difficulties and teaches communication and problem-solving tools to collaboratively achieve positive outcomes. “I really connect to and appreciate the way ETD helps students have a language and skills to work more effectively as a team and to work through conflicts,” she explains. Now if you walk into one of Washington’s GT1000 courses, you are sure to find the students sitting in groups discussing past sources of tension and brainstorming actionable items to avoid future problems.

Beyond the classroom, Dr. Washington shares her expertise in effective team dynamics and CliftonStrengths with Georgia Tech’s academic advisors. The positive impacts of a Strengths-based approach to academic advising are clear. “A one-size-fits-all approach to advising is not beneficial to students,” Washington emphasizes. In contrast, a Strengths-based approach helps each student discover their own unique path. As an advisor herself, Washington is the ideal candidate to lead the way in training advisors to more effectively mentor students in their academic pursuits. She has been doing this work for years and can relate to struggles advisors may face and share personal stories of how using Strengths language has empowered students.

Washington not only trains her advising staff to consider each student’s unique strengths and contexts, but also encourages advisors to let their own strengths influence their particular approach to advising. The more an advisor is in tune with her own strengths, the more effectively she can develop methods to support students. For example, drawing on her own Individualization Strength helps Washington tailor her advising to each individual student’s strengths and specific situation. As she explains it, “I lead with Individualization in my advising. I understand that finding the right personalized plan for each student helps them to more effectively persist through their academic program.”

In doing this trailblazing work, Dr. Washington plays a key role in spreading awareness about the benefits of CliftonStrengths for fostering effective team dynamics, and the results of her efforts have been incredible. The last two trainings Washington facilitated, a half day and full day workshop, trained over 88 advisors from departments all over campus! She remarks, “We’ve seen the interest grow among our advisors to continue to learn more about Strengths and also to become Strengths coaches themselves.” And tracking the positive impacts of the ETD curriculum on the teamwork process further motivates her to support students in developing productive and harmonious team dynamics: “Seeing how the students can identify past problems they’ve had while working in teams and realizing they now have tools to work better with each other is encouraging, and helps to further establish a collaborative environment.” Washington is also leading the way in applying the Strengths language in new contexts, including a dissertation group, her women’s outreach program, and supporting Strengths-based leadership in the wider University System of Georgia with partnerships such as Gordon State College’s Highlander Leadership Academy.

As the Strengths community continues to grow, Georgia Tech’s students and advisors will continue to benefit from this innovative approach to mentorship that focuses on a positive asset-based model for teamwork. With Washington’s leadership and energized commitment to the ETD Initiative, Georgia Tech is paving the way for better teaching and learning for all. Whether you’re a student, teacher, or advisor seeking to better understand yourself, how you learn and team, and how to apply your strengths in leadership roles, talk to Dr. Renita Washington. Her energized commitment to the ETD Initiative’s vision is certainly a crucial element in its continued success – we’re so glad she’s part of our facilitation team!

Meltem Alemdar and Christopher Cappelli: Innovative Curricular Assessment

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Assessment is often treated as an afterthought, Dr. Meltem Alemdar remarks, tacked on to the end of a project to validate the results. For the NSF-IGE grant-funded project “Integrating Team Science into the STEM Graduate Training Experience,” this is, thankfully, not the case. As Alemdar emphasizes, “we’re part of the leadership team, which is unique to this project. Assessment is being recognized as integral to the process.” Mr. Christopher Cappelli adds, “We’re part of every meeting. It’s a collaborative process.”

Alemdar and Cappelli enjoy doing assessment work with the “Integrating Team Science” project, which seeks to train STEM graduate students in that key 21st-century skill, collaboration. The need for the project was clear, they explain, because there is a clear gap in graduate training in effective team dynamics. And “putting the grant together was a smooth process,” Alemdar says, “because we’re working with people who are thinking about how to work well in teams.” Best of all, her co-PIs recognize the enormous value of assessment throughout the entire process of researching, strategizing, designing, developing, implementing, and revising curricular materials.

Assessment is crucial to research in effective team dynamics because it determines which aspects of the curriculum are producing long-term change, and which aspects need improvement. Drawing on their background in educational policy, Alemdar and Cappelli use qualitative and quantitative research methods (surveys, focus groups, and interviews, for example) in order to gather “formative and summative” feedback from workshop participants. The assessment process involves developing and adapting program-specific research instruments that will accurately measure graduate students’ reactions to the training modules. Balancing breadth and depth, Alemdar and Cappelli look for data that reveals patterns in participants’ knowledge-retention and readiness to be involved in team science. They want to find out what’s confusing, how the sequencing could be refigured, and whether there could be better examples of the concepts.

Because the “Integrating Team Science” team incorporates assessment at every stage of the project, the curricular design process is iterative rather than linear, moving from feedback, to revision, to implementation, and back to feedback. Even before the team started developing curricular materials, Alemdar and Cappelli arranged focus groups with graduate students. Understanding graduate students and the team challenges they were facing helped ensure that the first team science workshops would immediately be relevant to grad students’ actual needs and contexts. For instance, they discovered that reactions to conflict-management training differed depending on the field, because of the diversity of grad student experience.

As Cappelli puts it, “assessment for this project is purposefully cyclical – every rendition of the Team Science curriculum is impacted by direct feedback, so that the workshop becomes more and more applicable to grad students.” This innovative cyclical process continuously strengthens the materials. And because academics appreciate research-based practice, Alemdar and Cappelli can also fold the new assessment data back into the workshops by providing it for participants.

Always team players, they have some helpful advice for others who want to do this type of assessment work:

“Do an extensive literature review with a strong grounding in theories and contexts,” Alemdar suggests. “You don’t know what you’ll find.”

“Be adaptable,” Cappelli adds. “It doesn’t always go as planned – expect surprises.”

This is the second article in a two-part series featuring Meltem Alemdar and Christopher Cappelli. Learn more about their collaborative interdisciplinary research methods here.