LRI to receive national Excellence in Innovation Award

Leadership Rhode Island (LRI) will receive the Excellence in Innovation Award from the Association of Leadership Programs (ALP) at its national conference in Phoenix, AZ on June 23, 2017.

LRI was selected to receive the award among hundreds of programs across the nation for its multi-year social enterprise initiative to transform Rhode Island through positive, strengths-based psychology. The initiative, Make RI Stronger, was a response to a 2013 State of the American Workplace Report showing that RI had the highest percentage of “actively disengaged” workers in the nation and also to the pervasive concern that RI suffers from low self-esteem and negative attitudes; the former has been proven to cost employers approximately $3400 per $10,000 in salary, i.e. a $50,000 wage earning employee who is “actively disengaged” costs an employer approximately $17,000 in waste due insufficient workplace productivity.

“When we announced the statewide effort three years ago, many were doubtful we could accomplish the mission,” said Mike Ritz, Executive Director of Leadership Rhode Island. “I’m excited to accept this honor on behalf of over 2000 LRI alumni and the 10,000 Rhode Islanders who participated. This was LRI’s most ambitious effort ever. We are very proud of our results and honored to receive this national award from our leadership program peers.”

Leadership Rhode Island surpassed its 3-year goals by delivering and influencing over 10,000 Rhode Islanders to take the Clifton StrengthsFinder, an online assessment tool that identifies a person’s top five natural talents for the purpose of elevating one’s confidence, productivity, performance, and overall well-being.

By leveraging LRI’s alumni to build a statewide positive psychology movement with professional training and coaching, in a national comparison by state, Rhode Island saw unprecedented improvements in workforce engagement. In the most recent State of the American Workplace Report:

  • RI moved from #50 to #15 on the actively disengaged scale. The most conservative estimates by Gallup show that the sharp decrease in the percentage of “actively disengaged” employees saved RI employers $112 million dollars.
  • RI moved from #49 to #1 on the workplace performance measure: “At work I get to use my strengths to do what I do best.”

Bouyed by its impact to date, LRI will continue to scale up its initiative to achieve even greater social impact for long-term statewide sustainability. Ritz and Kevin Cooper, LRI’s Strengths Expeditor, will announce Phase II, Strengths-based Tours of RI” from the mainstage to a 1200-person international audience at Gallup’s global CliftonStrengths Summit in Omaha on July 18.