Using Strengths with Students - University of Minnesota

Using Strengths with Students: What’s
Happening Here At The University of
Minnesota, Twin Cities
Panel Facilitator: Robin Stubblefield
Relator ◘ Communication ◘ Connectedness ◘ Ideation ◘ Restorative
Panelists: Linnette Werner (Lead-Up), Grant Anderson (Housing and
Residential Life), Katy Hinz (Career Center for Science and Engineering),
Anna Mraz (College of Education and Human Development), Chad
Ellsworth (Office for Fraternity and Sorority Life)

Goals for Today
• Basic overview of StrengthsQuest
• Discussion of strengths in a few key areas on
campus

General Overview of Strengths-Based
Approach and StrengthsQuest
• Developmental tool for helping people discover their talents
• No theme is better than another
• No theme is more appropriate for a role than another
• 34 Themes (theme is a cluster of talents)
• Individual signature themes very unique to a person
• 33.39 million different permutations (unique order)

Strength-Based Development basics…
--Clifton Strengths School
• Strengths-Based Development = focus on what is right/
natural not on wrong/unnatural (i.e. “weakness fixing”)
• You cannot be anything you want to be—but you can be a
lot more of who you already are.
• Some behaviors can be learned. Many are impossible to
learn. There is a difference between talents, skills, and
knowledge
• The best in a role deliver the same outcomes but use
different behaviors
• Weakness fixing prevents failure
• Strength building leads to success

• “Despite the American myth, I cannot be or
do whatever I desire—a truism, to be sure,
but a truism we often defy. Our created
natures make us like organisms in an
ecosystem: There are some roles and
relationships in which we thrive and others in
which we wither and die.”
--Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

General Overview of Strengths-Based
Approach and StrengthsQuest
• Key Definitions
• Talent = A naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior
• Skills = The capacity to perform the fundamental steps of an activity
+
• Knowledge = What you know, either factually or through awareness gained by
experience
• Strength = The capacity for consistent, near-perfect performance in a specific
activity
=
Theme is a group of similar talents

Strengths Development Framework
Discover
Understands and can define
and verbalize their themes.
Integrate
Sees a clear connection
between their themes and past and
present behavior.
Sees links between strengths and
successes.
Apply
Uses the knowledge of their five
themes to plan, strategize,
analyze, and direct their
behavior.
Copyright © 2009 SRI Institute.
All rights reserved.
Relationship
Sees strengths in others.
Has a relationship(s) that
encourages their strengths
development.