Four of us emerged from the Residential Master Plan meeting. There was Jim, the Director; Bethany, the Associate Director; me, the Assistant Director, and the Vice President. I remember that was the day the Vice President said "you are so creative." She held the "o" for a long time to emphasize that the creativity was not on the level of the ordinary, but in her opinion, was unusually high.
My own lack of self-awareness pushed back, "oh, I'm not creative. Bethany is! Bethany has a degree in Art."
The Vice President laughed and said, "Oh you are creative, it might be be with art, but your ideas, strategy, and the way you think are highly creative."
Never before in my life had I considered myself creative. I had lived over 35 years thinking I was NOT creative and for someone as important as the Vice President to say to me that I was, in deed, creative, sent my spirits (and confidence) soaring.
Within a year I learned what the VP had done was "call out" a strength. After beginning to explore a strengths-based philosophy, I learned that my top strengths were: ideation, strategy, maximizer, input, and activator. I learned that I did things just assuming everyone did them: come up with ideas in my sleep and awaken to write them down, see relationships between unrelated books or classes, have a tendency towards wanting excellence and action, and I was a sponge for absorbing.
Once I knew about these "strengths" I wanted to use them more, I wanted them to shine and become even better. It seemed that others in the division wanted the same (for the most part-the nurses in the health center seemed a bit unimpressed and uncooperative) and were excited to discuss their strengths.
The VP began creating work groups or committees based upon the strengths of the members. She was careful not to put all discipline and harmony strengths on a committee, rather carefully adding an ideation, activator, and strategy. Committees began being exciting to work with and on.
One particular committee I served on was created to redesign the Chapel Friday (six-week program) curriculum. Each individual received these instructions: work in your strengths. So, I was able to go into the meetings, be creative, offer ideas, make a plan, and get things started. Once these things were done, others took over and the final product was simply amazing. I loved this experience. I loved not having to worry about the project to the very last point because the activator in me simply doesn't enjoy the "stock-to-it" aspect. I could do what I do best and allow the others to do the same. The group had a synergy I've never had in any other work environment.
I want to explore-did others have this same experience? How did they feel? Do they still look back and think of that time as the mountaintop of "best practice?" Do they long to recreate the experience as I do and see that a strengths-based philosophy can change lives, transform others from a mentality of "oh I'm not good like that" to a "you'll see excellence if you allow me to use my strengths."
I'm in a different world now. I'm not having the mountaintop experience. Committees accomplish little and are frustrating experiences. Often individuals are placed on committees for reasons other than their gifts. My current environment doesn't have a mechanism to discover or discuss giftedness. A deficit-based perspective is prevalent and progress is slow, if at all.
I wondered if I should gather input from individuals in my current environment and contrast it with the perspectives of the individuals in my former setting? I have given a lot of thought to this idea this week. I have finally decided not to do this because I really do not think it matters at this point. What I am trying to do in this work is capture the "magic" I had in the previous setting and right now capturing the opposite would not help in seeing the magic any more clearly. In a way I think it might be similar to the old strengths example of one shouldn't examine divorced people to figure out the success of marriages. It might be that later a contrasting perspective is useful, but right now I think my time is probably better spent in going deep into the strengths-based philosophy and how it lived out in the mountaintop environment.
