Playing the `Strengths Bank` game

This is the third article I’ve done about the Strengths Bank, and as they say, “talk is cheap.” It’s easy to carry on about a new idea, but not so easy to talk about how to do it. So in this article we are going to move on from just talking about it and focus on how you can actually do it. Yes, you too can open a bank!

Before we rush into this, let’s revisit the virtues of opening our own Strengths Bank. You can find the previous discussions on this topic in the articles, “Community interdependence: the path to sustained recovery” and “Using the ‘Strengths Bank’ to build authentic community inclusion.” Briefly, we see the Strengths Bank as an entertaining way to develop personal skill in building and exchanging strengths with others and, in so doing, to invest in others and in the community.

Because it is designed as a game, the Strengths Bank takes the fear of rejection out of giving and taking, freeing participants to share their strengths and learn new skills in a playful yet very effective way. In time, participants can expect their investments to yield a return — measured in social capital — and demonstrate evidence that each person involved has a lot to contribute.

So how do we go about setting up a Strengths Bank?  Good question. I needed some advice. I began by asking Penny Chelucci, MPA, a person with not only a strong background in banking but also with lived experience. Penny, who is Director of the Office of Consumer Affairs in Delaware, proved to have the perfect background for helping us match up the strengths building exercises with banking processes.

With Penny’s input, we translated the commercial banking process into a fun and creative way of investing in each other’s strengths. Here’s the protocol we came up with for practicing strength-building and having fun at the same time.

·        Step One: Appoint an advisor for the Strengths Bank. Look for someone who enjoys stepping into unexplored territory – someone with a spirit of adventure — and, perhaps, not your typical banker.

·        Step Two: Recruit customers who are interested in taking their recovery to the next level by developing expertise in giving and receiving. Their interest in doing these things might vary, so intriguing advertising is important. Here are the selling points that can capture the interest of potential customers:

o   The main selling point is that good customers will learn how to develop more meaningful relationships, how to contribute to healthy community living, and how to build social capital. So perhaps the appeal you use to recruit customers would go something like this: “Want to become a valued member of your community? Join us and learn fun ways to enhance relationships in your community by investing in yourself and in others.”

o   For others, including those who want to learn more about how financial systems work and become better managers of their own finances, perhaps the following appeal would work:  “What your mother didn’t tell you about banking.”

o   And then, there are the folks interested in doing something new and having some fun. To appeal to the interests of these, you might suggest, “Have fun learning new ways to discover your strengths and bring out the best in your friends.”

·        Step Three: Once you’ve collected a group of participants, you can get the game underway by asking each “customer” to assess his or her strengths and challenges. To do this, each can meet individually with the bank advisor to identify strengths (or assets, in banking terms), as well as challenges (or liabilities, best understood as areas where a person wants or needs to develop a strength but hasn’t done so yet).

Each participant then works with the advisor to build a balance sheet. A balance sheet is a document that lists assets on one side (assets must include skills or talents that could become assets if they were used differently) and liabilities on the other. Assets are things that help with recovery and things that help us connect with others and the community, while liabilities include challenges, problems, or concerns that get in the way of both social relationships and recovery. Liabilities are what drain away the assets that we’re trying to build in the Strengths Bank.

Each person’s balance sheet will be unique. Those with many assets will start out feeling that they have a little bit more “wealth” to invest in the journey toward recovery. Others will have assets that they will find that they haven’t invested very well — assets that are just “sitting there” in low-interest accounts that haven’t produced much of a return so far. Others who have few strengths and many challenges will feel the need to build up their balance sheets by working to build some new assets as part of their recovery plan. And, some participants will feel that they are bankrupt — without any assets at all — due to their illness or the way that the treatment system has related to them in the past. These people will need to make a new start — and take the first step toward recovery — by filing for “Chapter 11.”

In real life, Chapter 11 is a form of bankruptcy protection that gives an individual or business without assets a chance to “reorganize” and rebuild without having to face all of the problems and debts of the past. In the Strengths Bank game, filing for Chapter 11 means that a person’s plan to build up social capital will include seeking absolution for past indiscretions and making arrangements to resolve concerns that have prevented them from moving ahead with better relationships and with recovery.

·        Step Four:  With the help of the Strengths Bank advisor — in behavioral health terms, a “recovery coach” — each customer develops a plan for making solid investments (in self, in others, and in the community) that will grow their existing strengths and help them to develop new ones.

·        Step Five:  When each individual’s strengths and talents begin to show, it is time for the group to create a resource directory. Think of this directory as an advertisement that is shared by the group, a listing of each customer’s strengths. The directory should list not only the strengths that customers are already good at, but also the strengths that each is working hard to get better at.

·        Step Six: With the help of the directory, the customers who need certain strengths can now ask for help and advice in building them from other customers who already have them. This step is one that requires plenty of practice for every participant, who should:

o   Practice telling people what you have to offer

o   Practice asking someone for their strengths

o   Practice contributing

o   Practice being comfortable with receiving help and advice from others

As customers continually practice investing and requesting individual strengths in and from each other, they learn more about their own strengths; they learn how to ask others to invest their strengths in them; and they learn how to participate in give and take relationships. In other words, they learn how to invest their own social capital in ways that produce a positive return. The goal is to reframe the skills-building process so that customers are motivated to play by having a good time while learning give and take skills that will give them access to real community living.

By now you probably have a pretty good idea of how the Strengths Bank differs from traditional approaches that are aimed at developing interpersonal skills. It had to be different, because what we’ve been doing up to now is worn-out and boring. When things become worn out and boring, it’s time for us to rise to the challenge of creating new and interesting ways to reach out toward our recovery goals. So I invite you to give the Strengths Bank a try. Bev McGuffin, the Director of RISE at the University of Arizona has agreed to field test this concept for me and to let me know how it goes. Any other takers?