President's Message

I can still remember my very first job interview… I was an awkward high school student, with a newly minted workers permit, who showed up early to respond to the newspaper add seeking employees for our local McDonalds.  This was a coveted job opportunity where I grew up, and I had all kinds of melodramatic hopes and dreams of independence that hinged on this moment.  I sat waiting quietly, creasing and un-creasing my wrinkled khakis, reviewing carefully prepared interview answers in my head.  When it was my turn, I sat across the table from a harassed looking woman who fired questions at me without glancing up.  “Why do want to be a McDonald’s employee?”  “How would you handle a difficult customer?” “What are your weaknesses?”  As I answered question after question in rapid succession I started to relax, telling myself that I had this in the bag… Then things took a turn for the worse, “What are your three greatest strengths?”  Blank, my mind was completely blank.  Having been taught the evils of self-love from an early age my confidence wavered and I wondered, “Do these people really want me to brag about myself?”  Needless to say, my self-deprecating responses didn’t go over well and each strength sounded more like a weakness. 

Fast forward six years, countless jobs (none at McDonalds mind you), experiences and a bachelor’s degree later, I again found myself waiting quietly for a job interview.  This time, more than just hopes and dreams hinged on my getting hired, I had student loans to pay and a travel habit to fund.  I had learned my lesson all those years ago and I was ready for “the question.”  My response was beautifully crafted and I delivered it with full confidence.  Not only were the strengths I shared genuinely things I was good at, my weaknesses were too.  “I’m very social, which can be difficult if you are an introvert, but would make me a wonderful communicator with your customers” or another favorite “Be prepared for my need to organize everything, I’ll be careful not to step on anyone’s toes, I just need things to be orderly.”  That job was mine on the spot and so were many more in the years following.  In fact, I got so good at “the question” that I started successfully coaching my friends and family on how to answer it too.

The thing is, after a while, “the question” started to drive me crazy, especially when the tables turned and I was on the receiving end.  I would sit across from an interview candidate and try to dream up imaginative new ways to ask “the question.”  “What sorts of things are you really good at doing?” “What things would your friends say you are best at?” Always, the answers were the same… and I wondered if  maybe I was asking the question wrong.  What was it that I was really trying to find out?    

Enter Cecil Reynolds, Ph.D.  (intelligence guru and author of such assessments as the TOMAL and BASC) and Marcus Buckingham (business guru and attractive British author who teaches people like Oprah about employee engagement).  Let’s just say these two famous guys probably don’t run in the same circle…

One night, a few years ago, I was at CSSP’s annual conference sitting with friends and invited speaker, Cecil Reynolds, discussing the mountains, the Broncos and school psychology, of course.  I don’t recall who postulated the idea first, but the group consensus became that we school psychologists and special educators must be completely crazy (I should probably note here that several of the group’s participants had imbibed quite a bit that evening so their recollection is foggy but I, pregnant with my first child, was stone cold sober).   The idea was that, at our most basic level, we professionals were continuing to prescribe the same treatments while expecting different results: the definition of insanity.  Despite its proven negligible effects, we kept believing that our increased efforts to assess and treat student weaknesses would not negatively impact them but would actually improve their overall future success. 

I really chewed on that one.  Over the years, work became increasingly challenging and I started to live for the summer time and hate Sunday evenings.   I began to wonder whether I had it in me to keep working as a school psychologist.  I struggled to uncover what being a competent school psychologist really meant.  I lacked meaningful evaluation and I didn’t know where to focus my professional efforts.  So, I did what all of us do naturally, what we do for our students on IEP’s, I concentrated on my self-identified weaknesses, I set goals… and I felt more and more terrible.

As I approached one of the greatest challenges of my professional career, becoming president of CSSP, having just endured a season of great personal difficulty, my motivation was waning at best and my anxiety was sky-high.  I saw the exhaustion and apathy in the eyes of my fellow board members when I suggested focusing on improving our challenges as an organization.  I knew I didn’t have the energy to lead the effort alone.   I remembered that conversation with Cecil and I wondered, what if we worked on building up the things we were already good at instead?  What would happen to our energy then?  What would we be able to accomplish?

Of course, being a school psychologist, I had to start by operationally defining “strengths.”  And that is where Marcus comes in (Seriously, you have got to you tube him).   I realized that all along, it was “the question” that was wrong.  The real question is “What makes you feel strong?” as in ”What gives you energy during your day or week?”  “What activities do you engage in that are self-propelled?”  Can you see how different the answer is?  Can you imagine working on improving those things?  Sure, I could say I’m passionate.  But, what I really love, what really makes me feel “strong,” is inspiring passion in others.   Being passionate eventually tires me out, but getting others on board with my passion is something I can do all day long.  And guess what, I can even improve on inspiring passion in others, I can find new and better ways to do it.  Focusing on improving my abilities in this area makes me feel energized and excited. 

And so, this year’s conference theme was born, each word carefully chosen to communicate meaning and support our organizational mission, “Engaging Our Strengths.”  Working together to build on the things that make us feel strong as professionals so that we have more energy to better support our students and staff members across the state.  How about it?  Let’s see what engaging our strengths can really do… and let’s have some fun.  This is your informed consent, come to fall conference this year and be a part of this grand experiment!