Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Hello and welcome to the Growth Coaching International Podcast. I'm Leigh Hatcher. I'm in a Skype conversation with Professor Lea Waters, on using a strength-based approach in education and at home. Lea holds the Jerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology at the Centre for Positive Psychology at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. She's also the author of the recently released book "The Strength Switch: How the New Science of Strength-Based Parenting Can Help Your Child and Teen to Flourish."

Lea Waters:
There is a lot of research now that's exploring this idea of taking a strength-based approach in both of the contexts you talk about Leigh, so, in teaching and parenting. What the research is showing us that when we choose to focus first on developing a young person by bringing forward and amplifying their strengths, their talents, their skills, their positive qualities of their personality before we focus on fixing their weaknesses, kind of ironing out their rough spots, compensating for what's lacking in them that we get a whole host of benefits, broadly in three buckets.

Firstly, this is the way that we really help a young person to reach their full potential by amplifying what they're good at rather than focusing on correcting what they're not so good at.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yes.

Lea Waters:
Second key benefit relates to well-being. Lots of research showing that when parents and teachers take a strength-based approach and seek to look for the good in a young person, not surprisingly, the research is showing that this leads to higher self-confidence, higher optimism, higher life satisfaction, higher self-esteem, lower anxiety, lower depression.

Then the third sort of bucket of benefits are the relational benefits, the fact that it kind of strengthens and bonds the relationship between the parent and the child or the teacher and the child, because the young person knows that first and foremost, you're kind of seeing the good in them. It's not that they're ignoring the weakness, but it's that first thing, the good.

Secondly, what happens in that relationship is that once you connect to your son or your daughter, or if you're a teacher, your student, with the idea that they have strengths, you see this lovely flow and effect where a young person starts to understand and internalise they have strengths, which means other people must have strengths as well, so they've got to look at their friends through a strength-based lens, but beautifully, they start to look at the adults in their life through a strength-based lens. You get this really nice feedback loop, where, as a parent, you're looking for the strengths in your son and your daughter, they start to see they have strengths. Then they start to figure out, "Well, if I have strengths, mom and dad must have strengths too," so they start to look at you from a strength-based perspective, and so it really bonds the relationship.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
What are we going to be seeing in schools? It's all very positive and utterly understandable, but in practical terms, what's a strength-based approach going to be looking like in a school? .

Lea Waters:
Okay, so there's a couple of ways that you can take a strength-based approach in schools. What a lot of people in positive psychology are doing, myself included, is developing strength-based curriculums, strength-based program. That's lessons that explicitly teach the young person how do they identify what their strengths are, so strengths are things that we perform well, get energy from, and are self-motivated to do. Bringing that in as a kind of formal thing that we're teaching young kids in school and teenagers to help identify their strengths, and once they know what their strengths are, find ways to sort of play to their strengths in school, so that things like subject choices, but also in the areas where maybe you're not so motivated, how can you draw on a strength to help you perform better in that situation.

There's this sort of explicit curriculums. I also have a parenting program that's an online thing for parents to come in and more formally learn about strengths and bring those into their family. Then what we're seeing is the more ... what I would call the more implicit approaches. It's not a set of formal lessons about strengths but it just teaches more organically taking a strength-based approach. It's in the way they design the lessons, to the types of conversations they have with kids.

One of the interesting areas where I'm seeing strengths being used really effectively is in behaviour management in schools and discipline situations. Rather than kind of disciplining from, "You're a bad person, you've done the wrong thing, you need to be punished," it's really coming at that bad behaviour and coming at it from a strength-based perspective. “What strengths do you think we're missing in this situation that caused the conflict or caused to be disrespectful for your teacher? What strengths do you think with would need to do this differently next time?” That’s a much more empowering approach to creating behaviour change.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Does that work in practise, though?

Lea Waters:
It really does. It's quite transformative. We weren't kind of raised that way, in our generation. I've seen it happen in schools, and it stops a young person in their tracks because they're getting ready to kind of be defensive, justify bad behaviour, and then all of a sudden, it's like, "I'm not come at this from a ‘you’re bad’ perspective, I'm going to come at this from you're a good person, I know you have strengths in you. You kind of let yourself down in this situation because you didn't use your strengths, so how can we do this differently next time?"

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
I'd love to see their face.

Lea Waters:
It just provides a pathway forward for them.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yeah. You spoke about curriculum. Have you changed curriculum? If so, in what way?

Lea Waters:
Like I said, there's sort of a new curriculums, which are formal curriculums teaching about strengths. Then what I've seen in more traditional curriculums, you know, like the math teacher in that moment where the student is kind of feeling a little bit overwhelmed, feeling unsure of themselves, wanting to give up, is that the teacher, it kind of moves away from that academic conversation and says, "Okay, what strengths do you have that you can bring to this situation? I see that you're very persistent, I see that you're really curious, I see that you're very social. Is there a way that we can kind of create, turn this into a team work assignment so that you can use your social skills to help you kind of be motivated to keep maths going.”?

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
You're listening to the Growth Coaching International Podcast. I'm in conversation with Professor Lea Waters. But here's a question: What's the difference between a strength and a talent, if any? How do we identify strengths in the children we work and live with?

Lea Waters:
Both really good questions. There are sort of two broad categories of strengths that have been looked at in the literature. They are strengths of talent and character strengths. That first broad category, strengths of talent, are talents that are skill-based, they're performance-based, they're observable. We can see that in a young person, we can see someone who is particularly talented at music or talented at sport or talented with creativity, for example.

Then you've got the second broad bucket, and these are strengths of character. These are the positive aspects of our personality. They're not performance-based, they're less observable because they come out more through kind of thought and actions and feelings. But they're still very important, so they're things like kindness, courage, leadership, a sense of fairness, a sense of justice. These are positive aspects of our personality that are in that sort of second category, which is the character strengths.

We've separated them out into talents, which are skill-based and performance-based and observable, and then character strengths which are personality-based. In terms of seeing those strengths, as I mentioned earlier, as a psychologist what you're looking for are three key elements that help you to define a strength, and that is a strength is something that you do well in. If it's a talent, you can say that that child is higher on the Bell curve than someone else. If it's a personality quality, what you're looking for is ... and you just know this, some kids are just really, really kind. Some kids have a kind of emotional intelligence that's way and above their years. Some kids are ... kind of think in a really tangential way, above what you would expect. They're performing higher on those personality aspects than someone else.

Then you've got a second element, which is energy. If it's a true strength ... so you can have a child who performs well and is really good at sport or talented at maths, that's only the first element. A lot of us think that strengths are things that we're good at, and to some degree that's right, but it's only part of the equation because what the psychology research suggest is a strength is something that you're good at, you get energy from, and you're self-motivated to do. When you see that second element, what you're looking for as a parent or as a teacher is good performance, but also that the child is just very obviously get the energy from doing that. They're really energised at the end of the task or whenever you see them using kindness or fairness, you can see their energy levels rise as a result of doing that.

Then the third element is self-motivation. Because strengths are partly innate, partly inborn in us, when it is a true strength, you're just self-motivated to do it. No one ... if you've got a son or daughter who is kind, for example, you would never have to tell that son or that daughter, "Now it's time to be kind." They just always know to bring that and they're self-motivated to do that. If you've got a son or daughter who is say, particularly musically gifted and plays the piano, you can have that scenario of the two kids who are both technically good, so they both got that first element of performance, but you've got one child who performs well but you can say they're not really getting much energy from it, you have to nag them at home to keep practising and keep practising. Then you've got the other child who performs well just gets so much energy from performing and is self-motivated, you don't have to nag them to practise, they almost ... they can't walk past the piano without being compelled to kind of sit down and quickly ...Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Have a go…

Lea Waters:
Play a little song before they move on. What you're looking for as a parent or as a teacher, those three signs. High performance, high energy, and high self-motivation.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Okay, so we identify the strengths. Where to next? How do you grow strengths? I mean I'm sure that's possible. Is it?

Lea Waters:
Yes, it's absolutely possible to grow strengths. What we know about strengths, as I said before, is they're partly innate. You're partly kind of born with particular capacities, but a big part of really reaching your full potential is putting in the practise and the effort to develop that strength. For me, in the book, what I talk about with parents and also to teachers is sort of two processes. The first is seeing strengths, the second is building strengths. That gets to your question, how do we go about buildings strengths. There's a whole range of different exercises and activities that we can do around that. I've actually got a lot of free resources particularly around that, on the strengths which we've said about. There's surveys, there's games, there's quizzes, there's kind of conversations you can have.

In the book, I talk about some of the techniques, like strengths spotting, starting to build strengths into the questions that you ask kids, so rather than asking your children how was school today, ask them, "What strengths did you use at school today?" They're starting to identify that they do have strengths, that they're using those strengths. You get a much better answer, by the way. I have two children, one teenage son and a daughter who's in Grade 4. I get a much better answer when I ask them "What strengths did you use at school today?" compared to "How was school today?"

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
“Okay." That's all we get. Yeah.

Lea Waters:
You know, and then it's also just about building up some of those basic psychological building blocks — capacity for attention, capacity for mindfulness, self-control, and being mindful of yourself, of your communication styles at home, what you're identifying, what you're praising. But it's kind of like any skill, you build it up through practise and effort.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Yes. I mean there's such wisdom in this. Can you also give us perhaps a couple of practical communication tips in the education context teachers and principals can apply when using this strength-based approach with their students?

Lea Waters:
Yeah. One of the things I work with in schools is the idea of calling forward a strength. Most teachers and most parents are pretty good at knowing that when they see their strength, that's when you praise it. But in addition to that, a great communication skill is to call forward a strength, a strength that you see is needed in that situation. For example, in a classroom context, if the students are a little bit rowdy and not being able to concentrate, you would call forward, "Okay guys, we really need to focus for the next 10 minutes." You're actually kind of giving them a pathway of what it is that you need.

In a parent situation, if you've got two kids in the backseat fighting, which you know is a situation I'm fairly familiar with, then instead of kind of going, "Stop fighting, stop yelling," is to say, you know, "Hey guys, how about a bit of cooperation here? Can we keep the voices to a moderate level?" Why that's important is that in the first scenario, "Stop fighting, stop yelling," you're telling your kids what not to do.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
What's bad.

Lea Waters:
They might be cooperative and they might stop, but then it's kind of just like, "Well what do we do now?" In the second scenario, when you're calling forward a strength, "Hey guys, how about some cooperation," you're not only stopping the bad behaviour, you're showing them what you would like to see instead.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
In your experience, does it stop it though? That's the critical question.

Lea Waters:
Yes, I know it's a great question, and I'm not going to pretend that taking a strength-based approach is a cure-all to everything, because it's not. Parenting and teaching, they're complex roles and you're dealing with lots of different personalities and ...

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Kids are kids.

Lea Waters:
You're dealing with fatigue and all those kinds of things that come out in the day with kids. The reason why I called the book The Strength Switch is because of this little kind of mental tool that I developed as a psychologist, that I use with my own kids, and that I used in the parenting seminars I run. This gets exactly to your question. What happens if you try that, kids are fighting, you've called forward a strength, and you don't want to lose it yourself. This is where you flick on this little strengths switch, so just imagine a light switch in your brain that is turned off, and when it's turned off, that's when everything is dark, that's when we do our natural tendency to focus on what's wrong with our kids and why they're always doing this and how can we fix it. Just mentally picturing flicking this light switch on, the strength switch, I call it, and when you flick that on, what you're doing is you're reminding yourself to re-pattern. So instead of going straight for what's wrong, is to start first with the strength.

In that situation where my kids are fighting, I've called forward cooperation, it hasn't worked, it's when I start to use my own strength switch. That's when I'm like, "Okay, what strengths do I have as the adult in this situation that can help me to approach this in a better manner than just yelling?" Ultimately yelling doesn't work. It damages the relationship. You might get short-term compliance because the kids are scared of you, but you're not showing them a better pathway forward, and you're also not modelling to them what it is that you want. Flicking on the strength switch in that moment to say, "Okay, what are my own strengths? How can I use my own self-regulation? How can I use my own communication skills? How can I use my own perspective? This is annoying that it's happening, but it will pass, and underneath all of these, I know that my kids are good people who've got good qualities and they're going to turn out okay even if right now, they're fighting in the back seat."

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
I love this. Can we conclude, as we often do with great stories in our podcast series, with a story beyond say at home, in the school where this is we have seen this really work. A child or a teacher and a child really flourish, Lea?

Lea Waters:
One of the best things about writing your book, apart from kind of pulling all the science together and putting in all the kind of tricks and exercises and activities, was I interviewed a lot of people for the book, lots of parents and lots of teachers. The book has heaps of stories, every chapter has stories. There's so many I could tell you right now, but one of my favourites is just a beautiful story of a young boy, teenage boy, 15 years old, in the foster care system, grew up in a very abusive, traumatic home environment, now he's in the foster care system, has not been able to stay in mainstream education so has been put into an alternative education schooling situation.

His teacher was telling me that when the boy first came into the school, they do a lot of kind of educational testing, because they want to get a sense of where they're students are at, at an educational level now. Often, because these are students who very sadly have been affected by trauma and abuse, they may be 16 years of age chronologically, but when you're talking about literacy and numeracy, you're more like a kind of Grade 3, Grade 4 level.

What the school started to do was in addition to the standard educational testing for these kids who are entering into this alternative program, they also introduced strengths-based testing. This young boy, with the help of a teacher, completed a character strengths online survey, and then the survey comes back and kind of says these are your strengths of character. The teacher was telling me that throughout doing the survey, the boy, he's very quiet, kind of keeps his cards close to his chest, he doesn't show much emotion. He completes the survey and his top two strengths that come out as a result of completing the survey are a sense of humour and curiosity.

The teacher said, she thought this must be wrong because he didn't strike her as a particularly humorous or curious boy because he was so flat in his demeanour, he's so kind of closed in. She took him through the results and she said, "You know, maybe we should do the test again." He said, "You know what, no. These actually are my strengths. I'm really, really funny, but I just don't share it with people. I think lots of funny, quirky things inside of my own head but I don't tell people about it. I am curious, I've got lots of questions about the world, I've just never had anyone to ask these questions to."

She said, you know, she really saw him owning these qualities in himself, and for her, that was a really powerful moment in getting to know him, most particularly because then in the classroom, when he's transitioning and he is having behavioural management issues, she was able to call forward both of those strengths. She was able to get him to calm down by seeing the kind of funny side of what he was doing, and she was able to get him to participate in classroom discussions by kind of saying, "You know, John, I know you're curious because that's your second top strength that came out in the survey.”

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
Oh classic case, yes.

Lea Waters:
"What questions do you have in your head that you're not asking out loud? Tell us, we want to know." Just a really powerful way of bringing this young boy into the classroom.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
For him to identify perhaps for the first time in his life, that's a lifelong flourishing opportunity for that kid.

Lea Waters:
That's exactly what happened, is that he said to her, "This is the first time." He's a 16-year-old boy, "This is the first time anyone has ever said I'm good at something."

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
What a wonderful thing, Lea, there's such wisdom in this. If people want to find out more about your work, where can they go, where can they get this book The Strength Switch?

Lea Waters:
Great question, thank you very much for asking. I've really enjoyed your questions today. If they go to the strengths ... www.strengthswitch.com, you can order my book online there, but more importantly, like I said earlier, I've got a whole lot of free resources for parents and teachers to just start to play with and get a sense of what it's like to take a strength-based approach. We've got surveys, we've got a strengths library which you can download which gives you definitions and descriptions of all sorts of strengths. We've got strengths games, we've got other websites that we can point you to. Like I said, really help you to get a sense of confidence of how it is that you can work with young people to help them see their strengths first before they work on their weaknesses.

Leigh Hatcher (presenter):
I have loved this conversation, I'm sure it's inspired many who are listening, everyone who is listening. Lea Waters, thank you so much indeed for joining us.

Lea Waters:
It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.


Leigh Hatcher:
You've been listening to the Growth Coaching International Podcast. For more resources, podcasts, articles, videos, case studies, head to our website and the resources section…www.growthcoaching.com.au.