Taking Strengths, Engagement to a U.S. State: Rhode Island

On a recent Called to Coach, we spoke with Gallup-Certified Strengths Coaches, Mike Ritz and Kevin Cooper.

Mike Ritz and Kevin Cooper work for Leadership Rhode Island, a community leadership development organization founded in 1981. The mission of Leadership Rhode Island is to provide leaders and emerging leaders with knowledge and access to resources which will enable them to positively affect their communities. Mike and Kevin currently work on the "Make RI Strong" initiative, which is about making Rhode Island (RI) a strengths-based state. Leadership Rhode Island has known for decades that the state of RI suffers from a negative psyche and they are starting to see that strengths are the answer to that.

Since starting this initiative a few years ago, over 10,000 Rhode Island residents have taken their CliftonStrengths assessment and the state has seen huge improvements in their employee engagement. Before starting their initiative, they had among the highest number of actively disengaged employees out of all the states. Last year, they moved up from 50th to 39th. Then, this year they moved up to 15th. Another surprising jump was on Gallup's Q12 employee engagement question "I get the opportunity to do what I do best." They were ranked 49th and now they are at number 1.

Learn more about the work Leadership Rhode Island is doing with strengths and engagement by watching the video or listening to the audio above.

Kevin Cooper's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Achiever, Arranger, Competition, Focus and Learner.

Mike Ritz's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Communication, Activator, Futuristic, Strategic and Maximizer.