Research Supports The Strength-Based Student

Life is about drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient information.  How are we supposed to know the best way to invest our educational years? How is someone supposed to select a major and career and, potentially, assume thousands of dollars of educational debt in the process when a person doesn’t even know what they want to be when they grow up?

This is what college advisors help with day after day. Research conducted on focus groups of 21 advisors provide useful insight.

Identify your strengths and then build your life around them. Researchers at the University of Minnesota (Krista M. Soria, et all, NACADA Journal: 2017, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 55-65.) studied over 5,000 students and made the following observations:  

• Students who employ a strengths-based approach experience increased engagement, confidence and sense of belonging
• Post-college, these same students find great benefits in work-life beyond college such as higher job satisfaction, commitment to their employer and greater quality of life when compared to their peers who did not use a strengths based approach
• The benefits aren’t just for the students, but for the advisors as well

Furthermore, they make the following research-based recommendations:

• Colleges and universities invest in their students—and advisors—by providing them with tools to help them gain awareness of their strengths.
• Administrators seek to institutionalize strengths-based practices by offering educational training opportunities to staff and faculty members seeking to implement strengths in their daily practices with students
• keep an institutional repository of strengths so that advisors can look up students’ strengths and revisit them during advising appointments;
• use interactive conversations as a means to elicit students’ critical thinking about their strengths;
• allow students flexibility to claim their own strengths; and
• help students envision, using their strengths, to make decisions or tackle obstacles in academic-, personal-, or career-related contexts.

While this research and set of recommendations apply squarely to a university setting, it’s easy to see that the same principles hold true for success in the workplace as well. Employers should similarly be investing in strengths of their employees and those responsible for development the them. It’s only reasonable to see that the same benefits of increased engagement, confidence and belonging would translate in the workplace as well.

At Talent2Strength, our purpose is to make sure everyone has the opportunity to succeed and become the best version of themselves. We especially want to aid in the development of a brighter tomorrow by providing tools and framework for advisors to focus on their students and create a path for success. If you are interested in improving your current curriculum or creating a new one specifically for you and your students, we can help. Contact us if you would like to learn more about the upcoming certification The Strength-Based Student.