LRI adds customized services to Strengths initiative repertoire

Since its launch ten years ago, Leadership Rhode Island’s strengths initiative, a social enterprise, has served more than 27,000 Rhode Islanders from 250-plus companies, agencies and organizations.

Gallup’s CliftonStrengths assessment, an online test that produces an individual’s Top Five natural talents, has been at the heart of the initiative from the start.

So has its basic strengths service: Helping individuals understand and develop their strengths, and training supervisors and managers to take their employees’ strengths into account when assigning tasks, creating work teams and filling other workplace roles.

The underlying premise: People are more engaged, more productive, more satisfied when they get to use their strengths.

As the value of strengths training continues to ripple through Rhode Island, clients are turning to LRI’s social enterprise for more  customized applications of strengths theory.

Work is underway at the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), where a curriculum is being developed to assist the agency in creating a deep strengths-based culture of engaged employees focused on improving the quality of its services.

Another client, the Care New England Health System, which includes Women and Infants, Butler, and Kent Hospitals, asked for personalized strengths coaching for participants in a pilot program for Emerging Executive Leaders.

LRI’s strengths initiative staff, led by Abby Burnep, director of organizational learning and strategy, includes Renzo Arteta, 2019 CLRI, senior training manager, and Jackie Carroll, CLRI 2023, training coordinator.  A roster of 30 LRI-trained strengths coaches is key to the initiative’s efforts.

The EOHHS project is spearheaded by Director of Strategy and Innovation, James Rajotte, 2022 Sigma II, with the support of Assistant Secretary Ana Novais, 2004 Omega.

With a focus on improving workforce retention, employee engagement and overall community engagement, they turned to LRI in 2023 for intensive strengths-based training, customized for the EOHHS staff.

Recognizing that transformation of a large bureaucracy doesn’t happen overnight, a four-year plan emerged, utilizing philanthropic support.

“This initiative aims to help our organization and staff have a sense of belonging, learn new skills as facilitators, and embrace the uniqueness of our workforce in an opportunity that hasn’t previously been available to our workforce,” explains Novais.

The EOHHS is, by law, the principal agency of the executive branch of state government. It is responsible for managing four departments: Health (DOH), Human Services (HHS), Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), and Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), and also the Offices of Healthy Aging and Veterans Services. These agencies provide direct services to more than 300,000 Rhode Islanders.

The agency also administers the state’s entire Medicaid program, which maintains a strong focus on consumer engagement.

Rajotte says he wants to instill a positive new mindset of “appreciative inquiry” within EOHHS, where the instinct becomes asking what is going right and seeking the reasons for success and how to replicate it.

For the first phase of the multi-year program, two, comprehensive eight-week courses were developed by Burnep and Sulina Mohanty, 2006 CLRI, one of the initiative’s most experienced strengths coaches, with the input of Rajotte and an EOHHS advisory team.

Those who enroll in the introductory course must first take the CliftonStrengths assessment.

The introductory course, Your Talent DNA: Introducing Strengths-Based Development, is intended to give participants a thorough understanding of strengths theory and explores the subtlety of developing one’s top natural talents into strengths.

The second course, The Best of Us: Building Strengths-Based Teams, covers team dynamics, the importance of knowing the strengths of other team members, conflict resolution using strengths, and ways to foster an inclusive team environment.

In a first for the strengths initiative, both courses met the professional development standards of the state Office of Training and Development. Approval means that eligible state employees, who enroll voluntarily, earn credit toward learning and development incentives under Department of Administration policy.

Burnep says the initiative will design and deliver two more courses, one focused on building strengths-based organizations and a final course emphasizing application at the broader community level.

The 19 people who took the “Talent DNA” course last fall – a mix of leadership, middle management, direct line staff and contract staff – created a qualitative word cloud to describe how learning about their strengths made them feel. “Empowered, Motivated, Valued, Ready for Anything, Transformed and Bright” were among the themes.

“We had a contract staff member who literally thanked me and said, ‘This changed my life and it altered my view of the world,’ ” Rajotte said. “That is awesome.”

Eight of the 19 employees in the first cohort moved on to the second course which concluded this month.

Also, a second group of 15 employees recently completed the popular introductory “Talent DNA” course.

Burnep says she has found those who took the introductory courses   to be among “the most engaged and thoughtful groups I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.”

“I think it’s largely due to the breadth and depth of the training initiative,” she adds. “Participants are together for eight weeks, sharing insights about their talents and really getting to know one another on a deeper level. It’s been remarkable to witness the close connections that have formed between participants, many of whom hadn’t worked together closely prior to the course.”

One participant put it this way: “I feel like people were really open to listening to others.” Another called the course an “opportunity to get to know everyone in a really authentic and candid way.”

Moving forward, EOHHS hopes many more of its staff, contractors and interns will engage in these courses – as well as the two additional professional development courses currently in the design phase – to enhance the way they work together, improve their service delivery, and ultimately work with their clients, consumers and partners, Rajotte said.

In the Care New England project, the strengths initiative is working with individuals accepted to participate in the health system’s Emerging Executives Leadership Program.

Supported with a grant from the Rhode Island Foundation to help diversify the healthcare workforce at all levels, the training program is for mid-level staff members interested in moving up the ladder.

Designed by Sandra Victorino, 2022 Sigma II, director of workforce development, diversity, inclusion and community relations, the multi-month program features the assignment of an executive-level mentor for each participant, strengths training and participation by the Racial Equity Institute.

The inaugural cohort of 11 completed the program in September and a second group will complete the program this month. There are plans for a third group in 2025.

One of the goals of the strengths training is helping participants feel more confident and prepared to take on executive leadership positions, explains LRI’s Burnep.  Strengths can be used as a tool for understanding and communicating one’s talents, she says.

In one training session, participants discussed a Gallup survey finding that leaders who are perceived to be trustworthy and compassionate and offer stability and hope have a significant, positive impact. Their employees are more engaged at work.

Participants were asked to think of themselves as senior-level leaders. “How will you provide these four emotional supports to influence those who follow you? Which of your strengths will you leverage?”

In addition to group training sessions, participants were offered one-to-one coaching sessions to further explore leveraging strengths should their work futures require it.