Creating a Positive Work Environment: Integrating Strengths-Based Language

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If you have been on this strengths journey with us so far, you have an understanding of what the CliftonStrengths assessment is and have heard about the CRC’s quest to become a strengths-based department. In a little under four years, Georgia Tech’s Campus Recreation Complex (the CRC) has integrated strengths and a strengths-based language into the fabric of our team. Armed with the knowledge of the “what” and the “why,” the final chapter to this three-part series will equip you with the tools you need for the “how.”

The first and most obvious thing to do is decide on which assessment your department is going to use. The CRC decided to go with the CliftonStrengths assessment for a number of reasons. Out of some of the more popular personality assessments available (Myers-Briggs, DiSC, True Colors, 360-Degree), we felt CliftonStrengths offered the most applicable language for our department to use and was the only one to focus explicitly on howwe could productively aim and leverage our strengths, not just understand who we are. Said another way, CliftonStrengths helps us tangibly describe what we do, how we do it and why we do it that way.

The positive psychology framework of CliftonStrengths gave us permission to name, claim and aim our natural talents – and put us in the right mindset to accept and recognize the natural talents in each other. It didn’t hurt there were a handful of staff members that were familiar with the strengths assessment either, or that Gallup offered a vast catalogue of activities, continuing education opportunities, as well as extensive valid research and data to accompany the assessment. Whatever assessment your team ends up using, ensure you have enough supporting materials to help you build a solid infrastructure to weave the results of the assessment into the fabric of your department.

After you have chosen your assessment, you then need to take the assessment and have dedicated time to unpack the results. For the CRC, that meant a two-day retreat that took a deep dive into both our individual strengths as well as our team strengths. We had a Gallup-certified strengths coach, Dr. Mary Lynn Realff, lead this retreat, and I would recommend your team bring in an expert or certified coach to help you unpack your results. Having an outside perspective is also helpful for your team and you to discover blind spots you weren’t aware of before.

 

Implementation Beyond The Retreat

The assessment is completed, the results have been unpacked and now it’s time to start integrating strengths into your department. A few simple ways to get started include encouraging your team to put their Top 5 strengths into their email signatures, or placing their Top 5 strengths in a prominent place in their workspace – perhaps on their desk or in a communal spot like the mailroom. Having your Top 5 strengths on display in a public space or email invites continued dialogue around CliftonStrengths and what they mean.

Another easy implementation of the strengths language is to incorporate an easy strengths reflection question at the start of any regularly scheduled meeting. During our bi-weekly team meetings at the CRC, we begin every meeting with one reflection activity that has each person thinking about their own strengths and/or the strengths of others. Here are two example reflection activities we do:

  1. Write down one to two ways you saw your strengths in action over the past week. Turn to a teammate and share your response. Time: three to five minutes. Purpose: naming and aiming individual strengths.
  2. Pick a partner. Write down one to two ways you saw their strengths in action over the past week. Total time: five to seven minutes. Purpose: naming strengths in others and creating a culture of positive feedback and encouragement.

Finally, another easy way to incorporate strengths into your department if you send out a regular email or newsletter to your team is to consider closing your emails or newsletters with a reflective, strengths-based question such as “How are you going to productively aim your strengths this [day/week/month]?” Or, put another way, “Where will your strengths lead you to success this [day/week/month]?” It is a simple question that gets your team thinking about how they can aim their strengths toward achieving their goals or tasks in the days or weeks ahead.

 

Diving Deeper

After you have established a few staples of regular reflections on strengths, you can now begin a deeper dive into this rich language. At our spring 2018 retreat – two years after our initial strengths assessment – our team decided to take a look at our annual department goals and figure out how strength-based objectives would help us reach those goals. For us, this showed up in our goal to “be the world class standard for healthy lifestyles through dynamic programming and diverse, inclusive well-being opportunities” with a specific, strengths-based objective to “provide experiences that develop multicultural competencies and promote global citizenship by expanding CliftonStrengths initiatives internally for all CRC staff.” In our end-of-year reports for 2019, we will have data that meets this objective – team experience survey data as well as data from our employee satisfaction surveys – to support this goal.

We also weave strengths into our annual team experience training, purchasing the strengths assessment for all of our 350-plus student employees and designing our all-staff training around strength-based activities, ice breakers, and team-building initiatives – see Part 2 of this series for a deeper look at our team experience. Specifically, we turned to Gallup’s CliftonStrengths Team Activities Guide for group activities we could deploy in our team experience, with a deliberate focus on the reflection debriefs of each activity. We also use this guide for activity suggestions for our bi-weekly staff meetings, our student staff in-service meetings and our annual retreats.

Yet another way to bring strengths into your department is to use this language in your annual performance reviews. Embed a few reflective questions or statements into your reviews such as “Describe [employee’s] successes over the past year and how they used their strengths to accomplish them” and “How did [the employee] work collaboratively on this team over the past year? In what ways did you see their strengths in action?” Questions like these require the manager think about their direct report through a positive, strength-based lens first and also gives them the actual words to use when describing their strengths. Since our annual review form is restrictive on format, we use this strengths-based approach to describe our accomplishments and critical feedback in the comments section of our review. Both the manager and the direct report phrase their comments in the language of strengths.

At Georgia Tech, the CRC weaves strengths into our bi-weekly team meetings and in-service trainings, our all-department staff training, our annual performance reviews, our department goals and objectives, and, most importantly, into our everyday vernacular around the office. We deliberately mix up our seating arrangements every few months in our team meetings so we interact with different people who possess different strengths. At every single team meeting, we set out our name cards with our Top 5 strengths listed front and center, so we are constantly reminded of the talents our members are contributing to the team. This creates opportunities for continued growth and learning among our team members and deep conversations from different viewpoints and experiences.

 

Is it Working?

The activities and reflections listed here are just the start of integrating strengths into your department. Implementation will often feel slow, but every touchpoint you offer your team adds to the rich tapestry of your strengths-based story. Gallup’s Strengths Center offers a whole host of ways you can take your team on this journey, and the professional development your team gains from this ride is invaluable. From an internal survey of 22 of our professional staff members, conducted in March 2019, 86 percent minimally agreed they were able to regularly identify and/or apply at least one of their strengths at work; 73 percent minimally agreed that, because of CliftonStrengths, they understand and/or work better with their co-workers; and 86 percent minimally agreed the strengths assessment/related activities have had a positive effect on our team environment.

With almost four years under our belt, we are seeing the collective strengths of our team come together in ways like never before. We have watched our culture shift to a more positive environment, with a focus on team contributions and connection. For the CRC, committing the time and financial resources to become a strengths-based department has been worth the investment, and we can’t wait to see what’s next for us and Georgia Tech as we continue to reach new heights on our strengths journey. Won’t you join us?

So where can your team actively embed a strengths-based language into what you do as a department? What are some things you are already doing that you can now approach from a strengths-based lens? I’d love to hear what your department or campus is doing to build a strengths-based culture. Please contact me with your strategies, ideas or questions at caroline.dotts@crc.gatech.edu.

Integrating Team Science into Graduate Training

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Over the past few decades, research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has experienced a major shift towards collaboration. On a quest to prepare graduate students for today’s team-based research environments, Dr Susan Cozzens at Georgia Institute of Technology is leading an interdisciplinary team in the development and implementation of evidence-based ‘team science’ professional development materials for STEM graduate students.

 

The Rise of Team Contributions in Science

Over the second half of the twentieth century, STEM research started to become increasingly team-based, with a growing number of multi-authored publications and studies carried out by groups of scientists. Despite this notable shift, there has been little or no change in the preparation of students entering STEM careers that involve greater collaboration.

Science of Team Science (SciTS) is a new discipline that aims to understand and enhance the success of collaborative research. Developed in response to the observed trend towards larger research teams, SciTS engages scholars from a variety of fields, including organisational science, social psychology and health promotion, in addition to groups outside of academia, such as private companies.

The findings obtained from SciTS studies are already helping researchers to develop evidence-based tools and programs to improve the effectiveness of team science initiatives. These tools can be used to prepare students for collaborative and interdisciplinary work, ultimately assisting them in tackling their future professional endeavours.

Several universities worldwide have started to recognise the increasing shift towards team-based research and are implementing strategies that promote a cultural shift towards team science. These strategies include establishing on-campus interdisciplinary research centres and seed grants for team-based proposals, as well as building strong ties with local laboratories and companies. Such university-driven initiatives that foster collaboration can provide students with a better understanding of how to best operate in teams. Unfortunately, however, graduate programs almost never pay explicit attention to the skills students need to survive and thrive in these settings.

To equip graduate students for success in today’s team-based research world and foster more effective science collaborations, an interdisciplinary team of STEM researchers at Georgia Tech, led by Dr Susan Cozzens, has been developing, implementing and assessing evidence-based team science training experiences for STEM graduate students. Joining Dr Cozzens in this work are Dr Mary Lynn Realff from Materials Science and Engineering, Dr Kata Dosá of the Center for Teaching and Learning, and Dr Angus Wilkinson of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Dr Meltem Alemdar and Christopher Cappelli from Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing, are assessing the curriculum materials.

 

A Team Science Program for Graduate Students

Integrating Team Science into the STEM Graduate Training Experience, a project initially devised by Dr Nancy Devino, now of the University of Texas at ClearLake, builds on prior evidence of the efficacy of team training to promote teamwork skills and enhance team effectiveness. It draws on some of the best practices for team training in a variety of sectors, including education, industry, healthcare and the military, as well as undergraduate team training at Georgia Tech, while also taking inspiration from previous NSF-funded team science initiatives.

The project design is based on a three-dimensional C.A.S. approach, which stands for competencies, audience and settings. It aims to introduce team science competencies to a diverse student audience, in a variety of settings. These competencies include knowledge about the nature and value of teamwork, skills in communication and conflict management, and attitudes about diversity – both cultural and disciplinary.

In order to maximise the flexibility of the program and its transferability to other institutions, the curricular material is created in small units that can be delivered within different settings. For instance, the same curriculum can be integrated into semester-long academic courses or combined into half-day or full-day workshops.

Integrating Team Science into the STEM Graduate Training Experience is designed to be innovative and transformative. In contrast with other team science endeavours, it does not limit the training to students in one discipline, but is instead offering it to all STEM graduate students at Georgia Tech.

Dr Cozzens and her colleagues believe that team science training will eventually become a standard part of graduate education and reach nationwide institutionalisation. Their work could offer an important example of how to equip STEM graduate students for collaborative and team-based work environments.

 

Project Implementation

The new professional development team science materials available at Georgia Tech follow a multi-dimensional approach. They are based on an innovative design that allows Dr Cozzens and her colleagues to study the development of transportable team science competencies for a graduate student audience and in a variety of settings.

The project’s implementation plan follows a series of key steps. Firstly, it involves the adaptation and design of instructional materials that could help to achieve the desired objectives. Secondly, these instructional materials will be tailored to fit a variety of institutional settings.

As part of the project, the team is assessing the effectiveness of the learning materials, then revising in response to student feedback. This cycle is set to be repeated several times, with the researchers learning from previous implementations and using their observations to perfect and improve the program.

Once these materials have been developed, refined and tested, the researchers will make them available at Georgia Tech, initially for students completing MS and PhD degrees in computing, engineering and science. In Years 2 and 3 of the project, the researchers aim to engage with other institutions, to test their curricular materials in other educational settings.

 

Program Structure and Content

The team science curriculum is designed to teach graduate students to appreciate the importance of collaboration, cultivating the interpersonal skills required for effective team performance. During each of the modules, students will participate in team-building exercises, discussions, and interactive activities, designed to strengthen their collaboration skills. As many STEM research teams now collaborate remotely, the course content also highlights some of the challenges and opportunities associated with virtual work spaces.

The six modules under development address the following core competencies: the value of teams; team composition, roles, and leadership; communication in teams; conflict management in teams; diversity in collaboration and team science; and technical tools for distributed teams. Each module has multiple components, which are designed to be delivered in time segments of 15–45 minutes each.

Each of the modules features complementary instructional resources, including interactive and web-based exercises, case studies, facilitated discussions, team building exercises adapted from other sources and assigned readings. Participating students will also be asked to complete self-assessment questionnaires to better understand their strengths, weaknesses, conflict resolution styles, and social sensitivity, as well as those of their team-mates.

After completing the modules, the students should have a better understanding of the differences between working alone and in teams. They should also be more aware of communication challenges associated with team-work, roles and conflict management styles, the implications of diversity, and effective tools to collaborate remotely. The training should enhance their collaboration skills, teaching them strategies to tackle communication challenges, diversity and conflicts.

 

Evaluating the Project’s Outcomes

Georgia Tech’s Competencies, Audience, and Settings (C.A.S.) approach includes a robust and comprehensive assessment plan that will allow the project team to answer research questions such as: ‘Which instructional materials and approaches are more effective for students’ development of team science competencies?’ and ‘What setting is most suitable for learning and retaining specific transportable skills?’.

Assessment results will provide Dr Cozzens and her colleagues with crucial guidance on how to improve the training, while also measuring its impact on participating students’ team science knowledge and skills.

The project’s assessment leader, Dr Meltem Alemdar, and her colleague Christopher Cappelli, are also contributing to the curriculum design process, so as to maximise the potential for measuring the impact of the program on participating students’ knowledge and skills. Dr Alemdar will work with peers at other institutions that are testing the materials, to collect and analyse data measuring the effectiveness of the team science materials.

The assessment data will be collected using both quantitative and qualitative methods, such as student and faculty surveys, institutional records, observations collected during student focus groups, and document analysis. As well as determining whether the program’s objectives have been met, this assessment might also provide key insight about the effectiveness of specific SciTS modules, strategies and techniques, which could inform further work and initiatives.

 

A Transformative Team Science Project

Integrating Team Science into the STEM Graduate Training Experience is an innovative project aimed at preparing STEM graduate students to enter careers that involve team-based research and collaboration, whether in academia, industry, the government, or the non-profit sector. While the project at Georgia Tech primarily targets MS and PhD students graduating in STEM disciplines, the same course content could be transferred and adapted to serve different student populations in a variety of educational settings.

The SciTS modules developed by Dr Cozzens and her colleagues offer a flexible and complementary team science curriculum that can be delivered to diverse audiences in a variety of settings. As the researchers hope to develop a curriculum that can be adopted nationally, they plan to test its effectiveness in different content delivery settings and schedules and train graduate program staff to use the modules on their own.

In future, the training could be implemented at other universities, promoting effective team science preparation on a far larger scale. By developing, implementing and assessing the impact of these comprehensive team science processional development materials, Georgia Tech could become a key contributor to the evolution of STEM graduate education.