John Spence, September 2024
After several months on the job, the new state superintendent at the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) sensed an opportunity to improve organizational culture by engaging R9CC to help his newly formed leadership team build a foundation of trust based on an understanding of their strengths. A number of officers—including a chief of staff—were new to ISBE, and as is often the case with the arrival of a new organizational leader, staff were uncertain in their relationships with each other. For R9CC, this presented an exciting opportunity to strengthen understanding and connection among executive cabinet members, who are the primary influencers for building the capacity of state education agencies with support from the comprehensive center. Our team proposed to design and facilitate a leadership team retreat for the cabinet, which both the state superintendent and the chief of staff fully supported. This in-person retreat proved the starting point for an ongoing engagement focused on strengths-based development and coaching—key modalities for supporting ISBE leaders to engage their staff in creating a culture of learning, shared decision making, and accountability.
ACTION
YEAR 1: ESTABLISHING A FOUNDATION
ISBE leaders have a distinct challenge in developing and maintaining organizational culture, as they have two offices—one in the state capital of Springfield and the other in downtown Chicago. Officers are based in both locations, each of which has its own microculture and both of which have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which upended traditional office-based relationships. These factors contributed, in turn, to siloed work, which impeded open communication and effective collaboration across and even within departments.
As the former superintendent of the second-largest school district in the state, the new state superintendent had previously used the CliftonStrengths assessment (formerly StrengthsFinder) to help him better understand the talents of his leaders and strengthen their appreciation for each other’s contributions. He approached R9CC with a request to use this tool with his leadership team as part of their first in-person retreat, and he agreed to prioritize this time together and engage actively as a participant.
R9CC tapped one of their staff, a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, to design and lead this retreat with the goals of highlighting the unique talents and strengths of leadership team members, increasing understanding and appreciation of team members’ strengths, and leveraging strengths to maximize team performance and impact. Over the course of two days in July 2023, a small R9CC team led the state superintendent and 8 executive cabinet members through activities and exercises where they learned about each other’s themes of talent, clarified how they work best individually and together, identified ways to overcome barriers that impede their best work, and examined their team’s strengths across the 34 themes and four domains (Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking). One team member commented during the retreat that this was the first time he had been so open with his peers, and several others echoed that sentiment, which was a promising sign for this team’s development. When asked about key takeaways from the retreat, another officer summed up a perspective that seemed common across the team: “We created expectations with our team regarding collaboration and communication that will assist us in developing a stronger team.”
YEAR 2: EXPANDING OUR REACH
Following the success of the July 2023 leadership team retreat, the state superintendent asked R9CC to propose a full project plan for the 2023–24 program year. In consultation with the chief of staff and the chief education officer for instruction, the R9CC team developed a plan to administer the CliftonStrengths assessment for 7 executive directors and 35 directors; provide individual coaching sessions to cabinet members; offer CliftonStrengths debriefing sessions for executive directors; conduct a pre- and a post-assessment of attributes of effective leadership teams for the executive cabinet based on research from Gallup, Inc.; and facilitate virtual and in-person workshops to provide leadership team members with a shared understanding of talents and strengths as well as strategies for applying their knowledge to improve engagement of leaders and staff across the organization.
The project commenced with the executive cabinet pre-assessment, which measured team members’ scaled responses to 15 items, three each for the team’s perceived ability to focus on results, prioritize and move work forward, address team members’ well-being, embrace diversity, and attract and retain talent. R9CC shared the results of this assessment during the first of three virtual sessions, which also introduced the cabinet to the workplan for the year. R9CC’s leadership coach simultaneously began coaching sessions with cabinet members to help them develop a deeper understanding of their strengths and explore how best to manage their direct reports, each of whom had also taken the assessment. A second virtual session extended the discussion of leadership team attributes, focusing in particular on what was working well with team member interactions, what they wanted to improve, and what they needed to watch out for based on their strengths profile.
R9CC widened the conversation on strengths with an in-person workshop in Springfield, Illinois, for 48 staff from the full leadership team of cabinet members, executive directors, and directors. This session provided staff with a shared understanding of the strengths philosophy and the CliftonStrengths assessment. It also reinforced the state superintendent’s priority of establishing a strengths-based culture at ISBE where staff are positioned and supported to do what they naturally do best. Participant feedback on the workshop was extremely positive. One staff described their takeaway as “New appreciation for team members, and I know them better now.” Another staff member noted that “Understanding the strengths/talents of my team is more valuable than focusing on their deficits” and highlighted the importance of “A more strategic focus on how my top 5 strengths work together to help me excel in my work.”
Several ISBE cabinet members also took advantage of CliftonStrengths coaching sessions with their direct reports. In these discussions, the R9CC leadership coach helped team members unpack the themes of talent on their team, highlight ways they were using these talents as strengths (“helps”), and identify situations where themes of talents could be overused or misused (“hinders”). These sessions also helped build the capacity of cabinet members to use CliftonStrengths team grids to more deeply understand and appreciate their colleagues’ talents and strengths, thereby enabling them to more effectively manage and inspire their teams.
In August 2023 R9CC facilitated a second in-person executive retreat to build on progress throughout the year, highlight team strengths and increase awareness of team blind spots, and clarify officers’ commitments as a high-performing leadership team. One “ah-ha” for the team was the awareness that when they get busy, they can overemphasize their Executing strengths (Responsibility®, Arranger®, Achiever®, and Belief®), which can have negative consequences for their working relationships. This understanding, and the discussion of the assessment results, helped them recognize the importance of continuing to refine their norms for communicating with each other, especially in busy periods such as legislative sessions or year-end closeout.
IMPACT
Thanks to the coaching and training provided by R9CC, the members of ISBE’s executive cabinet are developing a better understanding of each other’s talents and strengths and a shared commitment to creating a state education agency where staff are engaged in their work and inspired by ISBE’s vision, mission, and equity statement. The ISBE team decided to meet regularly in person so they can prioritize their time with each other and nurture their commitment to open and honest communication. They also agreed to establish protocols for emails, texts, and calls to maximize responsiveness and minimize burdens on their busy schedules. This work has benefited individual centers within ISBE as well, as Matt Seaton, Ed.D., Chief Financial Officer, noted: “Use of the CliftonStrengths has allowed the Finance Center to have critical conversations about our individual leadership perspectives. These conversations have opened the doors to recognizing that others in the Center may have valuable and meaningful perspectives on topics or decisions, thus creating a more collaborative environment overall.”
These changes in organizational culture under the leadership of the state superintendent and his cabinet are helping staff lean into their strengths as they support and engage with the new strategic plan. As one leadership team member put it, “Humility, openness and trust are critical to operationalizing this.” A focus on strengths is creating the conditions for these behaviors to grow and flourish within ISBE and sustain many of the key initiatives that characterize the partnership between R9CC and ISBE and exemplify the promise of comprehensive center work.