 |
Jerald
Forster, Professor Emeritus, College of Education, University
of Washington, collaborated with Bernard Haldane in 1987
to establish the Dependable Strengths Project at the University
of Washington. He, along with Bernard Haldane, Jean Haldane,
and Allen Boivin-Brown, later developed and implemented
5-day DSP Workshops designed to prepare professionals
to help others articulate and use their Dependable Strengths.
Jerald was one of the founding members of the Board of
Directors for the Center for Dependable Strengths. |
I have recently had two opportunities to develop my ideas
about using Dependable Strengths to increase the functioning
of organizations. The first took place October 3, 2006 at
a conference titled Leadership: the Experience, organized
by the Center for Learning Connections. For that conference,
Susan Terry and I designed a 90-minute session that enabled
participants to articulate their possible Dependable Strengths
and then identify how they would use those in a project requiring
teamwork. The design called for the use of trios when describing
their Good Experiences and identifying possible strengths.
The participants in those same trios later planned a way to
implement the project as a team where each member used his
or her best strengths. Susan and I facilitated four of these
90-minute sessions during that day and subsequent evaluations
indicated that the participants got a lot out of the sessions.
The second opportunity to use DS methods to help people work
more effectively in teams occurred December 6, 2006. On that
day, Sheri Adams and I facilitated a seven-hour workshop wherein
40 people from non-profit organizations articulated their
Dependable Strengths and then completed the Project of Excellence
to plan how each would use their Dependable Strengths in a
project put on by a team of 6 or 7 participants. Again, evaluations
indicated that the workshop was valued and appreciated by
the participants.
My next opportunity to implement a workshop designed for
people who are working in organizations will take place February
8, 2007, when Vic Synder and I will facilitate a one-day workshop
at the UW Club on the University of Washington campus. The
workshop will be titled, Creating
a Strengths-Focused Organization. I am excited about designing
this workshop because it will go beyond any DS workshop we
have previously offered. By "going beyond," I am
talking about a workshop that will attempt to build a stronger
rationale for focusing on strengths than we usually do in
our DS workshops. In this workshop I hope to present a summary
of the research and practice that shows the importance of
focusing on strengths. I also plan to offer a proposed mission
statement for any organization that commits to being a strengths-focused
organization. The proposed mission statement will include
a commitment to establish informal contracts between all participants
of the organization, agreeing to pay attention to the strengths
of the other person when interacting with that person in a
relationship. These contracts for strengths-focused relationships
can also apply to families, if one considers a family to be
a small organization.
In all three of the workshops I have just described, the
importance of articulating strengths is crucial. The basic
approach that starts with Good Experiences, and continues
to the articulation of dependable or signature strengths,
provides the foundation to everything else that happens in
a strengths-focused organization. Everyone participating in
a strengths-focused organization will have to know how to
articulate his or her own strengths. Everyone will also have
to be interested in knowing the strengths of other people
in the organization and in paying attention to those strengths
when interacting with each of those other people.
It is exciting to imagine what it would be like to be a member
of a strengths-focused organization. The good feelings that
would flavor the atmosphere of the organization would lift
the spirits of everyone, resulting in creativity, good problem-solving
and effective teamwork.
For details about the workshop
"Creating a Strengths-Focused Organization"
Coming February 8, 2007: Click
Here
|
