Gonzaga University
Fostering employee communication, development, and teamwork to improve students' residential experiences.
Gonzaga University Housing and Residence Life (HRL) creates safe, inclusive, and dynamic communities that empower students’ holistic development through social engagement and experiential learning. With a significant turnover of staff members in the last two years, the leadership team saw an opening to establish expectations and processes. They seized the opportunity to foster new hires’ development in ways that supported developing their team as a whole. Their leadership team sought out Five to Flow because of our comprehensive approach and higher education and student affairs expertise.
During a five-week engagement, Five to Flow evaluated HRL’s people, culture, processes, technology, and analytics for prospective enhancements grounded in a theory-based, user-centered design, including Prosci’s® ADKAR model.
In a series of two-hour workshops, we provided a common language to discuss communication styles with the DiSC® model to deepen their understanding of themselves and each other to promote more effective communication. We trained the team about Managing by Appreciation (MBA Inventory) to foster an empowering culture that encourages people in meaningful ways. The workshop that focused on cascading goals exposed opportunities for clear processes to achieve their mission with responsible, accountable, and connected employees. Streamlined technology use with agreed-upon standards for response time furthered the team’s development and understanding of how to best work together. Finally, the analytics workshop highlighted the importance of managing change and measuring success.
In response to the workshops and their exciting progress so far, the HRL leadership team shared the following reflections:
“Five to Flow was instrumental in raising our awareness to a more holistic perspective of our team dynamics. Five to Flow’s services have truly helped reenergize and focus our team on how we function relationally and operationally. Each person likely took away their own particular lesson from the time with Five to Flow. Immediate gains include a deeper understanding of the others on the team. Systemic changes include a better process for synthesizing complex information to make the operationalization of the information possible. Using Five to Flow was a wonderful investment in the future of the team.” -Jon Wheeler, Director for Residence Life
“Five To Flow had a distinct ability to make the team feel valued and known as they gently and with precision pulled out the team's thought processes around a variety of topics ranging in difficulty or comfort to discuss. The time spent with Five to Flow was highly valuable. The training sessions, follow up material, and challenge to integrate practice and changes we have already implemented were well worth the cost.” -Jared Payton, Assistant Director, Housing & Residence Life
“The five core elements shaped our conversations around what we expect of our department, team, each other, and ourselves. Kate, Adam, and the Five to Flow team expertly guided our instruction and engagement and ensured that our flow-related back to Residence Life and Higher Education, an incredible advantage and unique asset to an organizational wellness team. We are especially appreciative of how their holistic approach to active learning not only benefits our immediate team but cascades to support our 80+ student staff members and more than 2,500 residents as well. Not a day has gone by since we started working with Five to Flow that a team member hasn’t applied what we’ve learned or posed the questions, ‘Is our team in flow? How can we continue to operationalize our flow?’” -Dorey Veron, Assistant Director, Housing & Residence Life
We encourage you to contact us for more information regarding developing your team members holistically through our organizational wellness coaching and instruction.
