Alicia Wojciuch
We really take a holistic approach. We view supervisors as whole people. We know that leading can sometimes be a very lonely experience, and so we really wanted to help people understand that it impacts them as a whole human. We really focus again on that training. We use a Strengths lens, because it’s a really great tool to help people know what they’re good at and also what gets in their way really easily. And we’ll talk about it as we go through some more today, I’m sure as well.

Heather Shea
Welcome to Student Affairs now. The online learning community for Student Affairs educators, I’m your host, Heather Shea in today’s episode, I am joined by Anne Brackett and Alicia Wojciuch, two leaders who have helped hundreds of student affairs professionals transform their supervision style by leveraging strength based approaches, whether you’re new to Clifton Strengths or have your top five memorized and laminated, this episode will offer practical strategies, meaningful insights and a fresh lens on how to lead teams with intention and humanity. We’re going to explore how to integrate strength into your day to day leadership and how this approach intersects with equity and inclusion. And of course, we’ll wrap up with a lightning round full of fun and surprising reflections. So if you haven’t watched us before, Student Affairs now is the premier podcast and learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education. Student Affairs, we hope you’ll find these conversations make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release our regular episodes every week on Wednesdays, and you can find us at studentaffairsnow.com

Heather Shea
on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode is sponsored by Strengths University. Strengths University is the professional development team for supervisors in higher ed who want to become empowered leaders. Strengths. University provides strengths based training, coaching and consulting for supervisors and their teams. As I mentioned at the top, I am your host for today’s episode, Heather, Shea. My pronouns are she her and hers, and I am broadcasting from the ancestral, traditional and contemporary lands of the Anishnawbe three fires confederacy of Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi peoples, otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State University where I work. So let’s get to the today’s conversation and Whoa, boy, oh my gosh.

Heather Shea
It is all good. Thank you so much for joining. We’re excited to to dive in. I am one of those people who have my top five laminated and memorized, and I am been a long a huge fan of strengths for quite a long time. So why don’t you? Let’s start with just a brief introduction, who you are, what you do, and then we’ll we’ll jump into some other questions.

Anne Brackett
Sure, I’ll just introduce both of us. So I’m Anne Brackett, and upcoming is Alicia Wojciuch. But don’t feel bad, because that is a mouthful. Both she her, hers, pronouns and we co founded strengths University in 2017, just a year after we both became Gallup certified strengths coaches, and before that, we had worked on a campus together for about eight years. So Alicia is still working full time at Maryville University as the director of academic success coaching, and works on strengths university on the side, and I work full time on strengths University, and I’m also an adjunct faculty faculty member at Maryville in The communications part departments, and we reside in the metro St Louis area, and acknowledge that we do reside on the ancestral homeland of the Osage Nation, the Oto missouria tribe, Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma.

Heather Shea
Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about what inspired you to launch this, this project, I guess it’s, it’s been eight years. That’s a pretty that’s a pretty long run.

Alicia Wojciuch
Yeah, sure has so we, really, we, like Anne mentioned, we became Gallup strengths coaches, and that really was something that was life changing for us in a number of ways, and also really led to us looking at what are the gaps in what supervisors are getting? So many supervisors, as I’m sure will continue to talk about, oftentimes, are really great individual contributors, and then get promoted into a new space and don’t get a lot of training or support on okay, what do I do now to help the people that I’m leading? And so we really did want to step into that gap and really help folks. We really take a holistic approach. We view supervisors as whole people. We know that leading can sometimes be a very lonely experience, and so we really wanted to help people understand that it impacts them as a whole human. We really focus again on that training. We use a Strengths lens, because it’s a really great tool to help people know what they’re good at and also what gets in their way really easily. And we’ll talk about it as we go through some more today, I’m sure as well.

Alicia Wojciuch
But the CUPA HR employee retention tool, the survey that they do, again, it just really continues to show that supervisors are not getting the support that they need, that they are feeling overwhelmed and stressed, and there’s a large number of just challenges that come that there’s not a lot of support for. And so again, we’re really excited, and we love getting to walk with people as they really transform that experience for themselves and work to become more empowered, more confident, less stressed. And so they can also do that for their teams, and their teams can continue to do that for students, too. That’s great. I think I heard, and I think we’re going to get into this in a minute here, but that people don’t leave jobs. They leave bad supervisors.

Heather Shea
I’d love to hear your thoughts on that, but and tell me a little bit about what you think the most important thing a supervisor can do for their team.

Anne Brackett
Yeah, sure. And I think we will go ahead and talk about what you just said. Yes. I mean, I think we’ve all, unfortunately, many of us have had bad supervisors. And some of those experiences, they’re just toxic. Maybe they’re clearly more into it, for the power that that sort of thing. And you have kind of a toxicity there. But even well meaning supervisors who don’t know what the bleep they’re doing are hugely problematic. And you know kind of what Alicia was talking about before. I mean, we know how it goes. You know, in higher ed like, Oh, you’ve been doing blank for so many years, and you’re great at it, you should be in charge of other people who do blank. And those are two separate skills. And the problem is, again, like Alicia was saying, generally, there is not actual training for people who are becoming supervisors, or who have even been supervisors forever. I mean, I’ve been in this field. I don’t really want to say how long I’ve been in this field, but since the mid 90s, and I got zero specific supervisor training. And these days, luckily, a few people like, Oh no, we had some supervisor training on campus. But typically, when I press a little bit more, it’s not enough, yeah, and so the most important thing a supervisor can do is actually figure out, well, it’s to focus on supervising, but before you can really do that, get the training that you need to know what effective supervisors do and the Coupa HR survey that Alicia mentioned they the last survey was 2023 and they actually are just wrapping up the survey process right now for the 2025 version, but one of their biggest findings is that supervisors need better training, and a recent Gallup poll shows that what effective supervisors do is set clear expectations, coach their team, particularly with a strengths based approach, and focus on ongoing development. And so again, if you don’t know how to do those effectively, you’re going to, no matter how well intentioned you are, you’re going to negatively impact your team. And you know, I think. But before we started recording, you know, Heather, you mentioned how stressful all of this is becoming, especially for supervisors. It’s just stress, stress, stress everywhere. And so I think going along with this, and it’s certainly part of our supervisor training curriculum, is stress management, because as soon as you get into a chronic stress cycle. You’re just not making good decisions anymore for anyone. And we’re not like I don’t know that today, we’re going to focus a ton on stress other than its prevalence, but that’s one thing we talk about quite a bit, is that if you do nothing else but learn how to better manage your stress, you will automatically be a better supervisor. So I think that, in combination with actual quality supervisor training can be huge for you and your team.

Heather Shea
Yeah, I think that’s that is a really great and insightful point. I mean, I also think of like the urgency that stress causes in our day to day work, and sometimes other people impose that urgency other sometimes we are the ones who are imposing that urgency on other people. And so, yeah, decreasing stress all around so Alicia Tell me a little bit about how supervisors can integrate strengths based.

Heather Shea
Philosophy into their day to day interactions. We’re going to assume people know already what strengths is, but how do they do this with day to day interactions?

Alicia Wojciuch
Yeah, that’s a great question, and just in case there happens to be somebody that doesn’t know what strengths are, it’s really simply a talent assessment to give you language about the things that are really powerful and strong within you. And then that’s what strengths is. It’s a tool to help you do that. And then it’s the practice of putting that into action and knowing where it’s helping you and knowing where it’s getting in your way. That’s where it becomes powerful. That’s where it becomes useful. And so when we think about how strengths or how supervisors can integrate strengths into their day to day, I think one of the biggest things we run into with folks is they feel like, oh my gosh, I have to know everything about strengths. I have to know all the 34 themes. I have to know all the things about them. But really taking a step back that a good supervisor like Anne mentioned one of the things that an excellent supervisor does is take a coach approach. And a coach approach is about asking really great questions. It’s not about telling people what or how to do something, but giving them questions so that they can define that and figure that out. Of course, a supervisor is there to give guidance on the outcomes, and then to help people figure out, how do you use your strengths to get there? And so again, with that, really thinking about the fact that you don’t have to know all 34 inside and out, you need to be someone who listens and ask good questions of your team of how, how are their strengths showing up? And just as important, doing the same thing for yourself, asking yourself, how are your strengths showing up? How are they helping you? How are they getting in your way?

Alicia Wojciuch
When we think about strengths, it’s again, understanding what you’re incredibly powerful at and how that creates a challenge for you. Right? Again, we were talking about that urgency, that sometimes others put that on us, and your strengths will make an impact on what feels urgent, who it’s coming from, if that feels urgent or not. And so again, really just taking that step and really thinking about your strengths, that it’s holistic, that folks often also try to compartmentalize that strengths or I’m sorry that supervising is this one little thing, and it’s this piece of my job. And if I could just get better at telling people what to do or holding people accountable, that it would be fine. But we really have to understand what is preventing us from doing that and taking that step back and being reflective in that. And so again, really thinking about how our strengths help us, how they get in our way to, you know, to give folks a really easy and tangible takeaway to the most powerful questions, how did your strengths help you? How did your strengths get in your way? And letting folks process that and asking yourself the same question as well?

Heather Shea
Yeah, I’ve heard this interjecting here for a second. I’ve heard that when people know all 34 I have never gotten the entire strengths map done on myself, but partially because I feel like I would fixate on number 34 and like, Oh my gosh. Why? You know? And then it becomes about weakness fixing, right, which is like the exact opposite of what we’re supposed to be doing with streaks. Have you seen people over emphasize the things that they’re like, Well, I really want to be a communicator. I really want to be somebody who is a Maximizer, right? So I don’t know if you have thoughts on that.

Alicia Wojciuch
Oh, I’m sure we Anne, and I could probably talk about that all day. And yes, that is a challenge for folks. I think it’s also why the 34 report is more expensive, and used to be even more expensive, because I really wanted people to use it alongside coaching. And that’s, you know, the traditional self help, right? Focus on the things you’re not good at to be a little bit better. But again, the strengths philosophy is all about, what are you excellent at, and how do we make that better? It’s not to ignore weakness. And again, I think we’ll talk about that. It’ll keep coming up as we chat, because that is a big misconception about strengths, that it’s not about ignoring weakness and also reframing, that oftentimes our strengths, that are in the top, that are most powerful, are actually probably the thing that get in our way. Way more than the 34 strength is going to and so when we focus on again, how do I use this incredibly well? How do I be intentional about these talents that I have? It just changes everything. And I’ll just, I’ll just add that. I’ve started telling people that even if you do that, there’s still going to be something that’s your 34

Anne Brackett
Are, like they’re just going to shift and then you’re going to have another one at the bottom. So it’s like a never ending cascade of, I’m going to say nonsense, which is why it’s so important to, like Alicia said, like the things that are getting in your way on a day to day basis are those top five. Are those top 10 when you’re not using them as strengths?

Heather Shea
Yeah, that I 100% agree with you on that, and I’ll give a quick example. One of my top five is includer. And as a supervisor, I want to be transparent, and I want to include everyone in every decision, but I, like, literally cannot do that, right? I mean, that would be the most inefficient thing. And I think it’s sometimes people don’t people like you get paid the money to go make that decision. I don’t want to, you know, take me out of the weeds a little bit. So that’s just an example of of one of the ways that that particular strength has shown up negatively for me, and I’ve learned how to like both do the thing that satisfies my need to include people, but not over emphasize that so and I know that one of the biggest stressors for folks who are in supervisory roles is around retention, right? So both retaining students who work in your offices, or retaining students on campus as well as the staff, right? So maybe you could talk a little bit more about how strengths based approaches and increase retention on campus?

Anne Brackett
Sure, absolutely. So we’re Gallup certified strengths coaches. Gallup also has an engagement survey. And not to brag, but I am a, what is it? An engagement champion? That’s the, that’s the official training that I went through with Gallup. But what’s the great name, by the way, engagement champion. Woohoo. I did it. Let’s go. Yes. So what’s really nice because, you know, in the CUPA HR survey that we talked about, they speak about morale, but morale is, I don’t want to say it’s wishy washy, but it’s kind of a wishy washy term. Like, is that satisfaction? Like, Ooh, how do you feel today? Is Heather? Are you gonna how’s your morale? You know, but engagement, it’s measurable. And their engagement tool only has 12 like it’s called the Q 12. They’ve they’ve since added four more bonus points. But the Q 12 are the core, and those are the points that the elements that they have found make the biggest impact on engagement, and it’s specifically designed for employees, but I spoke with Gallup, and they said it’s equally true for students. They just don’t speak about it in those terms. And so when we’re again, we have stress coming in. We’re freaking out about retention, right? What are those retention numbers, and then we go into fight or flight, and now we’re and just, I guess I will talk about this, because I’m obsessed with stress, like I’m obsessed about educating people about stress, because people think, oh my gosh, it’s just so stressful. I just have to push through, and then things will get better and go back to normal. But when you are caught in fight or flight, your brain’s number one job is to just get you out of that situation, like to make sure you are safe. So that means, even again, if you’re well intentioned, you’re just trying to get the bleep out of there. So that means we’re not making good, long term decisions. And so when we put that with the you know, because, right? Like, oh no, retention has gone down 1/10 of a point, and that means we’re all going to lose our jobs. We’re going to have to live in a van down by the river, right? That’s what happens. And so we start thinking about, what are all the 12 every anybody, anybody anybody got any ideas on how to increase retention? And we come up with 20 random ideas, and since we again, can’t regulate Well, well, we better just do all of them. Yeah, and I don’t know about you, but most people in higher ed already have too much on their plate, and so it’s just this vicious, vicious cycle. So if instead, we step back and start thinking about engagement, yes, for students, but to me, even more importantly, the engagement of our team, of our staff, of ourselves, because if we are not engaged, if we are not okay, then We are not going to be able to help students stay where they are, and I’ve seen on many campuses, again, this focusing on student retention at the cost of everything else, which means we’re either burning out or running off our best employees, which means now we’re. All of those relationships that they have taken the time to build, go bye bye with them. So I really think that flipping the script, and instead of focusing so much on student we focus on employee engagement, we’re going to get way bigger and better outcomes for our students. But it seems counterintuitive, but, but it worked like, if you look at the data, yeah, that’s that’s where we need to focus and so, and going back to the strength space, the number three, like Q 12, so q1, q2, q3, q3 is, do I have opportunities to do what I do best every day? So it’s built right in there. So, and if you think about it, if you’re doing thing like you happen to know Heather, your top five, so you can kind of identify, Okay, these, these things are my jam. And I get energy from them, they bring me joy. If suddenly you had a bunch of other stuff and you couldn’t do those things anymore, how likely are you to stay in that job? Yeah,

Heather Shea
yeah, yeah, yeah. So it goes down to, you know, how you actually construct the the work. And I’ve also thought about this, and like, not everybody on the team needs to have the exact same job descriptions, right? I mean, I think we definitely do that sometimes, like everybody is a coordinator, everybody is an advisor. But there’s aspects of those roles that can be customized according to, you know, one person’s

Heather Shea
one person’s strengths versus versus others. So um, Alicia, maybe I’m saying something that’s just a false falsity. So tell me, tell me if that is, if that is true. But also, what are some of the misconceptions that you when you engage with people who are using the cliftonstrengths and strengths based approaches, like, what do they think is going to happen? And then what typically happens?

Alicia Wojciuch
Yeah, I think, like a really big again, misconception that folks have is around strengths is that, if I and this might sound counterintuitive, but stick with me that if I focus on strengths, everything will magically get better, and all I have to do is talk and use these strengths words and all of a sudden we’re going to be great again. Strengths language is the place where you start. But just like going to the gym, knowing what the gym equipment is called and knowing what its function is, that’s great, but it’s not going to get you fit right. And it’s the same thing with strengths, that, of course, we have to learn the basics, we have to come at it through this philosophy. But it’s not just a one and done, and it’s not a magic bullet. It is the training regimen that we are going to use to get there. And so again, it might feel counterintuitive that strengths isn’t the magic there is like supervising is hard. People are complicated. You have a lot of priorities coming from all sorts of places. Using strengths can help you navigate through that. And it takes some work, right? It takes some work to understand how your strengths are showing up, what’s helping you, what’s getting in the way, being able to name that so you can move through it, being able again, we’ve talked about stress, being able to understand where am I in this stress cycle, right? What is going on? Where am I in my engagement? We had briefly touched on it, but the actual statistic is that 70% of a team’s engagement, like the manager or the supervisors engagement, creates 70% of that variance. And so if you have managers who are not engaged, their teams are much less likely to be engaged another and referenced the report that came out from Gallup last week that overall engagement worldwide has fallen in the last year and a huge reason for that is because manager engagement has fallen, and it’s because leaders, managers, supervisors, whatever kind of terminology you want to put in there, they’re not getting the support that they need. They’re not getting the training to know how to navigate this. And so again, the actual question was, what are the misconceptions about strengths and so again, it’s it’s not a magic bullet. It is a process that you have to keep coming back to. But when you do it really, it really can change everything. It really can help people understand. Understand what everybody on the team is good at. It can help you as a supervisor, understand why, when you know maybe you have responsibility high and when your supervisor reaches out to you and says that they need something, your responsibility goes into overdrive, and you hyper focus on that thing, and they were just asking for it. It wasn’t a high priority, but that took you right down a rabbit hole or stress cycle, whatever it might be. Or maybe you’re a leader that leads with empathy, and one of your the people on your team, is having a really hard time, and you can’t figure out why you are in a funk, right? And so having strength language can help you identify that and move through it and that. Again, all of the pieces are tied together. You are a whole human, and you have to be able to recognize and take care of yourself, or you’re not going to lead your teams well. And if we’re not leading our teams well, they’re not doing the best work that they can do. You know, like Anne said, employee engagement leads to customer for us, customer is students, right? It leads to student engagement. It leads to more positive, innovative moments between peers, between folks and customers and so again, it just it’s all encompassing. Sometimes that can feel overwhelming. That’s not the intent that it’s intended to be overwhelming, but to understand. It’s about asking good questions. It’s about leaning into what are people good at? People being good at different things, just like you said with the job descriptions, people being good at different things makes us better, but we have to be intentional about using that and using it well, otherwise we know the name of the gym equipment and we’re not really engaging with it,

Heather Shea
yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so you queued up my next question, and I think really well, and that’s about intentionality. And I’d love to hear if you have a story and about someone who has directly transformed their leadership by using strengths like you all have interacted with hundreds of people. I know you have probably one who’s like, you know, this is, this is a perfect example of the way that a supervisor can be really intentional.

Anne Brackett
Yeah, absolutely. So Karen smolereck, she’s the director of TRiO Student Support Services at the University of Wisconsin River Falls, and she’s also the current president of the educational opportunity Association, eoA. And she actually went through our signature program, which is the supervisor strengths Institute, and we actually partner with ACPA to do that once a semester. But she did that. She also did some group coaching, which is just a series of sessions we do with with her and her team, and then some individual coaching. And she talked about well, and I’ll just add that I have my own podcast that I do to help spread the word about strengths and strengths. University called my circus, my monkeys, and I actually interviewed her. And so I’ll give you a quick synopsis of what she said, but then I have a clip that we can drop in so you can hear it from her own mouth. But when she first started thinking about things in terms of strengths, she really found it helpful to get what she needed from her own supervisor and the leadership around her, like being able to talk about what she does well, what they do well, and what she needs so she could better advocate for her team and her program. She she really learned to honor the talents of her team members. Because prior to this, it was kind of, you know, because these are the things that you do best, right? And so you think that’s the best way to do things. And so when you see these other people running around doing things different ways or maybe the wrong way, you know, that’s just your perception of it. And you know, so she also really integrated the idea of using energy and stress management to make sure that she and her team were good at one quote from the from her particular episode was you need to be okay first, and that you know that is true for her. That’s true for her team. And then she also really found it powerful to coach her team through a Strengths lens. So really focusing on what they do well, helping use that to choose their priorities. And then, just like you were talking about Heather, reassigning some of those draining tasks for one. Person to someone else who actually doesn’t find it draining and might actually enjoy it.

Heather Shea
wow, that was great. I’m excited to listen to the full episode, and we’re going to link that in our show notes. So thanks for letting us know about that. And so Alicia, I think one of the things I’ve learned as a supervisor and is around the way that power shows up in those relationships, the way that supervision might look different if it’s a white woman supervising a group of people, particularly if there’s a folks of color and the staff. And so tell tell me a little bit about how we might utilize strengths, or think about a strengths based approach when we’re also thinking about equity and identity and inclusion in the workplace, because that that can play out in all kinds of of of ways?

Alicia Wojciuch
Absolutely. I mean, we could do an entire podcast series about this question, right? Yeah, but to address it in not six hours. One of the things that is incredibly powerful, important, a must with strengths, really is embracing the idea that differences are an advantage. So there are five guiding principles of strengths that Gallup has out, and one of those is that differences are an advantage. And so when we are using a strengths approach, we have to come from that place. And so as we’re thinking about this idea of identity, diversity, diversity of thought, when we have that forefront in our mind all the time, okay, differences are an advantage, this person is approaching this completely different than I would, okay. What strength is that instead of oh my gosh, what’s wrong with them, right? It completely shifts the way that we show up in that space. So another guiding principle is that we need one another, and so really being able to again, keep that for front in our minds, especially as leaders, that you need your team, you need that difference of opinion. You need people to ask different questions than you’re going to come up with. And so when we think about trying to account for power and how that shows up for folks again, one, we have to be intentional. It has to be a continual learning opportunity for us. None of us have it figured out. None of us will ever have it figured out. I love the quote from Brene Brown that I’m here to get it right. I’m not here to be right, and so our strengths can help us do that right, and we’re here to get it right. My strengths aren’t the only way to get here, but if we bring ours together, we get to a better outcome. So again, we could talk about this forever, for such a long time, but when we’re being very intentional about what does your team bring to the table? What is it that they are doing differently, that, again, maybe feels I can’t understand that I can’t understand, you know, maybe it’s something cultural, maybe it’s, you know, whole host of things. But when we come to that strengths place, okay, what are they bringing to the table? What do they do? Well, what is it that’s rubbing up against my strengths that I’m not aware of, and using that as a again, just as a tool and a lens to be able to confront those biases? It’s just again, another tool to have in the toolkit to recognize that the way you are brought up, your identity, the power that you have it, it doesn’t make it the best, and we need one another. Differences are an advantage, and we always go forward with positive intent, so we always work to take that pause. People are doing the best they can. Again, we’ll talk about accountability, I think, in just a second. But, you know, it will come up, I’m sure. But when we’re thinking about having the best product team experience, it’s just a non negotiable that we have to take the time to take that pause, understand that people have a different set of strengths, and that you’re not right all the time. And that’s hard.

Heather Shea
That’s really hard times. Yeah, that’s really hard. I mean, I think especially when people are new right, and then you start realizing because, because these, these dynamics take time. Time to develop, and sometimes the dysfunctional dynamics taking time to develop. So I’m curious if you could talk and a little bit about what to do when the supervisor is managing a team with very different or conflicting strengths profiles. I mean, one of my top five, in addition to includer, is Woo, and so I’m imagining the people who are developers or relators are like, Okay, enough of the like, you know, Winning Others Over, like, eating into the relationship piece. So tell me a little bit about what you would do or what you would share with folks about that. Yeah.

Anne Brackett
So I feel like this is a good continuation of Alicia’s answer. So they seem like different things, but really, when we’re thinking about the strengths approach, it is appreciating what we do well, but honoring what other people well, and understanding that we’re just seeing part of the picture, and I’m going to somewhat butcher this parable, but I believe it’s called the elephant and the blind monks. And essentially, there’s a herd of blind monks out in the jungle, and they come across this creature, and they’re like, What is this? And they’re like, We got to figure it out. So everybody kind of grabs a slab, and you got somebody on the back end going, Oh, well, this creature is, you know, it’s like a rope type thing with a tassel at the end. And then somebody else is like, no, that’s what are you talking about. It’s giant. It’s like a tree trunk. I can’t move it. It’s got little hairs coming out of it. And somebody else is like, are you serious? Right now, it’s like a giant hose thing, and the bottom, it’s got, like, like a hand. It’s trying to get me. Now, everybody’s partially right, yeah, but it takes all of those perspectives to actually get an accurate picture of the elephant. So same thing here. We need to make sure that people have a good understanding of what their strengths are, what their teammates strengths are. As a supervisor, you need to be actively coaching your team. So Alicia mentioned earlier in our interview that the two most powerful questions you can you can use when you’re taking this coaching approach is, you know, say somebody’s not really meeting expectations, something like that, and so you need to coach them. So, like, what do I do? Like, I don’t know. Just tell them to do things better. Ah, no. We ask them questions. And so we say, hey, Dwayne, I you know the last two reports you did, blank was missing or whatever’s going wrong. Let’s talk about that. How do you think your talents may be getting in your way here? And how do you think you can use other talents? You know, some of those talents to to help do better. Because if you as a supervisor, are not actively coaching your team, then what’s happening is, again, people are stressed. So elements of stress, we’ll talk about that in a hot second. But people are stressed and they’re defaulting to how they think things should be done, even if those things are actually getting in their way, and that can be getting in the way internally, like I always tell people, if you feel stuck with yourself a project or another person, step back, see how your Your talents are showing up in that space, because nine times out of 10 you’re overusing something, you’re under utilizing something, and that’s what the problem is. So when you have people who have these very different or conflicting strengths, typically they’re stressed and they’re just doubling down on the way they think they should get things done. Because, again, that’s natural to them. It’s easy for them. And when we’re in that situation, it’s like, oh my gosh, this is so like, Duh. This is obviously the way to do it. What are you talking about? But it’s obvious for you, not the other person. So when you’re actively coaching your team along the way. You’re helping them understand how sometimes their talent themes, that can absolutely be great in certain situations, are really messing things up in other situations. Because then it’s not like continuous improvement in like an exhausting fashion, but you become aware of these things. And I think again, the last piece to that if everybody in your team is so stressed that they never have time to think and reflect, then you’re going to have a lot of conflict, because everybody is just stuck in their own way of doing things and unable to deconstruct what’s. Actually going on.

Heather Shea
Yeah, I, I, I feel like, if I could do my year over again, there are a couple things that I would do differently, just based on this conversation today. And I think, I think the value of considering the way that everybody is showing up in those spaces and how we’re reacting to stress, are we using our strengths in a way that is getting in our way? Yeah, that this is this is fantastic. So Alicia, we are at Michigan State University about ready to enter into the annual performance evaluation period, which for a lot of folks, I did an episode about this before, like a lot of folks, is there’s nothing more stressful than performance evaluations and and yet, like, there is also an important component to them, which is accountability and re maybe repositioning the person. And in like, we have these like perform like opportunities to kind of rewrite parts of your job description, which I think is a really asset based right like this is not working, or this is what you are ending up doing more so how, how can you thinking about accountability and performance evaluations? How do we make sure that folks strengths align what’s with what’s needed in the role and address it when it’s not actually aligned.

Alicia Wojciuch
Yeah, and I love to hear that that’s how a Michigan State y’all are using performance reviews is an opportunity to recognize, hey, your job description says this one thing, but your talents have led you that you keep taking on this thing. So, so let’s be intentional about that, right? That’s strengths based. And again, that is a really great use of performance reviews, annual reviews, those kinds of things. I’m going to say something that might feel a little harsh for but it’s fine. It’ll be okay. We’ll work through it together. If you are only talking about accountability during performance reviews, you are doing it

Heather Shea
wrong, correct, Oh, you are. Say that again for the people in the back.

Alicia Wojciuch
If you are not talking about accountability every time you have a one on one with your folks, if you are not bringing it up in conversations again, you are not You’re not serving yourself. You’re not serving your team, you’re creating unneeded stress and energy drains for everyone. And when Anne and I talk about accountability, and when we have a whole module on it in our institute, accountability isn’t just telling people what they did wrong, accountability is celebrating when people do things well. Accountability is both right and to be able to have productive, meaningful, intentional conversations about accountability, you have to start with expectations and folks. Sometimes that’s a really, really hard thing for a supervisor to do, is to set clear expectations. But again, Gallup studies this all the time. You know, you can go search the Harvard Business Review, and there will be articles and articles and articles about expectations. Expectations. Sometimes folks get so stuck on I don’t want to micromanage my team, and that’s not what expectations are. It’s a clear understanding of what is the outcome that we’re trying to get to. And then again, taking that coach approach, how are you going to use your strengths to get there? Sometimes folks might be in a role that their strengths aren’t super aligned with that. I think again, that was a kind of specific question. So again, when we think about strengths, there is no one set of strengths that is right for any role. Now, when like, we’ll use your Woo, and Anne and I both have relator so

Heather Shea
we could both perfect example.

Alicia Wojciuch
Yes. So again, just in case there’s folks that don’t know, Woo is about Winning Others Over, getting people excited on board creating fast, meaningful, but fast relationships folks with relator, we can build relationships. We can engage with people, but that that relationship is a slow burn. It is it takes time investment. It is deep and, you know, it’s a well, right? And again, they’re both important and valuable. So if we were going to say that the three of us are now admissions counselors and our job is to go out and talk to folks and get them invested in coming to our university, your Woo is going to serve you in making those fast conversations, you probably would thrive at a cost. College Fair, it would be exciting. It’d be energizing. And Anne and I, because we have relator we could do that, but it’s not going to be exciting. It’s going to be draining, right? And so it’s not to say we can’t do that. We probably would be admissions counselors who build deep relationships with high school guidance counselors, the folks who are around for a long time, that they’re doing that, pulling in right, that we are building relationships with the families, or, again, doing it differently. And so thinking about accountability, expectations, what’s the outcome like? If the outcome is that we have, you know, X amount of students, and I’m not getting there, then that’s the conversation we have. How do we use your strengths to get you there? Or if that is too draining, we have tried it and it’s not what is a good fit for you, because it’s not giving you ease, excellence, enjoyment. We’re not getting there. What do we use that for instead? Right? Sometimes that’s the truth. Like, a role is not helpful. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but there are sometimes we take a role and it’s not the right fit, and that’s okay, but also just really want to be careful for folks that there is no one set of strengths that makes anybody good at anything. It’s about intentionally applying them. And so again, this again, kind of a big, really, big question, but when we think about the balance of strengths and accountability, strengths isn’t a jet about just bright and shiny and we ignore the places that are challenging. But instead, how do we use what is your superpower? How do we use that and harness it? And how do we be aware of when it’s your kryptonite and work to avoid it? Because our strengths are both. They’re our superpower and our kryptonite, especially when we’re in that stress response, like Anne had mentioned earlier, we’re in that stress response. We double down on the things that come really naturally to us. And again, sometimes that’s the right fit for the thing we need to do, and sometimes it’s just getting in our way. And so again, accountability, big picture, it’s not just about telling people what they’ve done wrong. You can’t do it without setting expectations. And our strengths absolutely play into how we show up, and we have to be having those conversations consistently. One of the most important things, and this is from Gallup’s culture shock book, but one of the most important things a supervisor has to be doing is meeting with their people. We have to because if you’re not having one on ones, with your folks, you’re not having these conversations, and then these little things that are not going well blow up into a really big thing. And so again, the the culture shock, the research that they did post pandemic, just to give people some because I think a lot of times the immediate is, Oh, my I don’t have time to meet with my people. I can’t even fathom that that 15 minutes a week is enough, as long as it’s intentional. So scheduling 15 minutes a week, you you can find that right? And maybe it might be work to do that, but if you want to see a return on your investment of of investing in your people, investing in your strengths, being a better supervisor, you also you it’s a must.

Anne Brackett
Yeah, yeah,

Heather Shea
I think that’s that is definitely some. One of the lessons that I’ve learned from supervisors who I’ve really appreciated was a you’re important enough to me that I am willing to dedicate time to you. And you know, when somebody has too many direct reports, if there’s not enough time for them to do both, right, and then that might be a structural challenge of the of the institution or of the unit, but I agree with you. I think meeting with folks is is vital. And it can’t just be about the tasks, right, that those that the person is engaging in. It also has to be about this relationship building.

Alicia Wojciuch
And okay, strengths is, yeah, sorry, strengths is the tool to do that, right? Yeah. It’s just such a great shortcut. Like, let’s get in. Let me, let me know what feeds you, what gives you energy excellence. So, yes, yes, let’s

Heather Shea
Yes. Let’s do lightning round. Yay. Lightning round. As I said, I haven’t done one of these in a little while, so we’re going to alternate. So Anne, what is your top strength and how does it show up in your day to day work?

Anne Brackett
Sure, ideation is my number one, which is fantastic at times. How it helps me is that I come up with all these great ideas and how we can put this, this content together for the pod. Podcast or the institute, whatever it is, how it gets in my way is that I come up with all these ideas for all the different ways to do all the things, and there’s only so much time in the day and the week, in the month, etc.

Heather Shea
I love that. Yeah. I resonate for me too. Alicia, which strength do you admire most in other people?

Alicia Wojciuch
Yeah, this is a hard question, because all of the strengths, right, have just such value, and there’s something to be pulled out of each of them. But I think, like, maybe, because I talked about it a second ago, but one of the one that is just so intriguing to me, because it is not how I work, is Woo, um, again, being able to go and have those fast conversations and that are relationships and very fast again, I’m a slow burn, and not that I can’t chat with people, but It is, it’s just so foreign to me that that’s natural and easy. I really appreciate that and other folks and having friends with woo like, Okay, you’re going to the thing. I’m going to walk with you, because I don’t want to start the conversations with these people.

Heather Shea
When my partner and I go to different things, he’s always like, I take, I bring you along, because you can talk to people, or, you know, you can get the conversation going. So that’s funny, and biggest aha moment you have had using strength, either supervision, or in other cases,

Anne Brackett
sure. So one of the earliest ones, which I think really helped me, help cement for me how powerful this tool was is I started to use. I was in Res Life Forever, when I was on campus. And one of my RAs we, you know, I’m not a woo, but when I have staff meetings, it’s, you know, I have ideations, pew pew idea. Talk, talk, talk. What do you think? Go, go, go. And there was this new ra that I hired. Oh my gosh. Everybody else says Pew, pew. And just nothing from her. And I just started, like, doubting, like, Why did I hire this person? They clearly have no interest whatsoever. And then shortly thereafter, we took the assessment, and she has deliberative, which is one of those slow I have to think about things. I have to internalize it. What are the pros and the cons? And I noticed once I realized that, oh, she gets she does care, but she gets back to me a few days later to let me know what she thinks. So that was really eye opening, that just because I can’t hang on, what do you think about this? Well, let me tell you, not everybody can do that. So I thought that was, you know, and so I bring that in when I’m dealing with anybody, like, well, maybe they just are thinking differently than I do, and my my expectation of them is not based on the truth, it’s just my perception.

Heather Shea
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s illuminating, right? All of these things you’re like, Oh, I understand. Alicia, what strength do you think every student affairs pro should learn to flex more

Alicia Wojciuch
whatever is in there till five or 10, there is no again. There is no strength that makes you good at being a student affairs professional, and so it’s really so much more about truly understanding what is showing up for you and being able to flex that at the right time or again, going back to those guiding principles we need one another, recognizing When it’s not a strength that is powerful for you, and getting support and leaning on someone else, we call that complimentary partnerships and strengths talk. So if it’s a strength that you need, you know maybe it’s command and you need to make a decision and you’re weighing through it, okay, who is somebody in your team that has that, who is someone that you that you trust, that can help you get to what you need faster, more definitive and feel comfortable in that. And so the strength is the strength of self reflection, so that you know which of your strengths again to flex at the right time, or to get support if you need it.

Heather Shea
Yeah? Nice, yeah. And that’s the investment, right the time investment. It’s not just like, here you go, you are strong at all of these things. Like you have to, you have to know what show up for me, how does it get in my way

Anne Brackett
not to interrupt our lightning round? But that reminds me, I was coaching somebody, and I was like, asking these questions, well, what about this? What about that? And she’s like, Well, I was hoping that you would have a book I could read about it. I’m like, No, you’re the book. You are the book. You know, the attention to what you do and how you show up.

Heather Shea
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Um, most. Surprising or unusual strength combo you have seen in a T man,

Anne Brackett
I’m not typically surprised very much because of the things that Alicia just said, like it’s, how do we understand the value that everybody brings and focus on how we’re showing up individually. But there was one fella, because if you we didn’t really dive into the four domains, but if you’re familiar with strengths, you know you have executing domain, influencing, relationship building and strategic thinking. And four of his top five were in influencing, which is just statistically very low, because in general the population, those are the least frequent. So I was like, wait, what? So that was pretty, I don’t know if impressive is the right word, because, again, it doesn’t really matter. But that was very unique for for me to see.

Heather Shea
Yeah, I love using those four domains as a as a way to describe like, Okay, we have no one in this area over here. Like that doesn’t mean that we, you know, aren’t going to be able to influence anything on campus. It just means we need to pay attention to the fact that, you know, we may have to use our other strengths to get that across. Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s definitely unique, okay? Alicia, final lightning round question, if strengths University had a mascot, you could come up with whatever mascot that might be. What would its top five strengths be?

Alicia Wojciuch
Yeah, so we’re going to come up with a mascot, the slightly morbid, but it’ll be okay. Again, the first thing that comes to my mind are our two dogs who have since passed my dog helper and Anne’s dog sweetie. They were with us when we started the company. And so, again, I think dogs they are, yes, I know, right. A great, you know, just kind of combination. Mine was a big yellow lab, and Sweetie was this little pug who bossed around my lab and, you know, all of those things. And so, yes, I would pick them. I don’t know if that, you know, actually represents strengths university, but that’s where I would go. And then if I were going to pick the top five strengths, we’ll just give them five strengths altogether, because they’re dog. Because they’re dogs. I think I would go with connectedness and relator, because that’s and high for both Ann and I. Ideation, like Anne mentioned, is her number one. Maximizer is also really high for me. And then input and so really just thinking about what we want to do with strengths University is take research information strengths. We want to have it and hold it, but not just for ourselves. Input is a strength that’s about collecting for it to be useful, and we know that this information, we know that giving support to folks, specifically leaders in higher ed, can change so much it can change the individual lives of the folks that we get to work with, which impacts their teams, which impacts their students, which impacts higher ed right, which impacts the World, and that’s the reason we all work in higher ed, right to affect change in some sort of way. And we also know that higher ed, the world that we’re living in right now, is a lot. And we again, just really going back to why did we start and why do we do all of this? We want people to have better lives. We want supervisors to be empowered. We want them to know what’s incredible and powerful with them them, and we want them to do that for their teams and their students and the world as well. And so I think our strengths drive us to that for a bigger purpose. Help us form relationships with folks. And again. How do we take all of that, use it and again, hopefully impact the people that we get to work with?

Heather Shea
Yeah, really, well, really well. Said, I kind of don’t want to, I kind of want to end there, but I always like hearing a little bit about your final thoughts. What are you thinking about? Troubling, pondering now and then also, where can folks find you? How can they get in touch with you? If they would like to connect with you. Anne, do you want to kick off final thoughts?

Anne Brackett
Sure. So what is troubling for me? Well, I’ll just say this. I think what we need is to step up as leaders. We need to get out of this learned helplessness, this stress cycle, the stress response that so many, well, not so many of us, the entire field, is stuck in because we’re constantly just. Just putting out fires, and they’re often fires of our own creation. Yeah, we need to actually step up and lead the field. Like, what are the meaningful changes that we need to make so that we’re not so focused on Oh, no. Susie didn’t go to class for two days. What are you doing? Alicia, did you go to their house and, like, knock on the door and make them go to like that is so small picture, and it’s not going to it’s not going to save the institution. It’s not going to save higher ed. So, and that’s part of what we wanted, like, we want to empower leaders in higher ed, and that starts with quality supervision. Because if you know not what’s right or wrong, you know that’s certainly part of it. But how do I become more effective as a leader? Then your team can show up better, and you don’t have to worry about this minutia anymore because you’re focusing on the right things at the right time. So I think part of that, how do we step up as leaders? And to do that, we also need to work on better stress management, because if we’re just constantly working ourselves to exhaustion and staying in that stress response, we are going to continue exactly what’s happening and has been happening for at least the last decade, and that’s we’re losing quality people, and we’re losing opportunities to really make a difference. Yeah, is that’s what’s troubling me. Yeah.

Heather Shea
Where can people find you?

Alicia Wojciuch
Yeah. So folks can find us@strengthsuniversity.org folks can find us on LinkedIn and bracket, or Alicia way to or strengths University. You can follow my circus, my monkeys, the podcast that drops about every other week, and Instagram, you know, at strengths University,

Heather Shea
awesome. Well, thank you both so much. Absolutely fascinating topic, and I’m really excited that we got a chance to talk about it today, in particular, because I loved a talking strength. I think when we saw each other at ACPA, it was like, yeah, oh, I can’t wait to talk about this is so great. So thank you both so much. Thank you. Before we wrap up today’s episode, I just want to thank Alicia and Anne for joining me today. I also want to take a moment to express my gratitude to Nat Ambrosey, our incredible producer, Nat, we so much appreciate all the things that you do to make us look and sound great. Thanks also to our sponsor of today’s episode Strengths University. Are you ready to have the freedom to create an environment where you and your team can truly thrive? Work strategically toward the things that matter most. Have more energy for family, friends and yourself, then it’s time to step in to your power as a leader. Strengths University provides strengths based training, coaching and consulting for supervisors and their teams in higher education. Strengths, University partners with ACPA to offer their signature program, the supervisor strengths Institute, every semester, check out the links in the show notes to register for the upcoming supervisor strengths Institute. Schedule A team training, or chat with Anne about how strengths university can help you and your team become more productive and less stressed. Those of you who are listening today and already subscribing to our newsletter, thank you. If you’re tuning in and haven’t yet subscribed, please take a moment to enter your email on our website at www.studentaffairsnow.com Stay in the loop with the latest episodes delivered to your inbox on Wednesdays, and while you’re there, visit our archives. Once again, I’m Heather. Shea. Thanks to everyone who’s watching or listening. Let’s make it a great week.

Strengths University – https://www.strengthsuniversity.org/

Supervisor Strengths Institute – https://learn.strengthsuniversity.org/Institute

My Circus, My Monkeys Podcast – https://www.strengthsuniversity.org/mycircus

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The CUPA-HR 2023 Higher Ed Employee Retention Survey

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