We're not often comfortable with questions like this but Katherine Jennick of What's your strength?® showed us how we can comfortably access our own strengths as well as those of children and young people in her fun and interactive session. To get us into the sprit of strength spotting, Katherine asked us to send the following questions to at least three people in our phone book:
What positive word or phrase describes me best?
What do you think is my greatest achievement?
What do you think is my top strength?
Try it now, see what comes back.
It was lovely to see how the responses made people feel about themselves, but more so how that positivity was then reciprocated. Positivity breeds positivity, and Katherine has loads of it!
"Katherine reminded us all about the importance of positivity and self belief. I have had my replies from the 3 questions we sent and I was so touched by what people said about me that I replied by answering the same 3 questions for them. Hopefully they feel as valued as they made me feel."
Beyond thinking about our strengths and those around us, her work is really powerful with children and young people. Stemming from a careers advice background, Katherine's strengths cards are a brilliant way to work with young people to find their own skills and strengths.
She shared a lovely story of a young man who believed he wasn't good at anything other than PE. By choosing the PE subject card, he was able to see all the strengths associated with sport and physical activity such as the discipline of getting out of bed early on a Saturday to go to training, and the leaderships skills he displayed as the team captain. From this he was able to see how these skills are really valuable in the workplace and that he had a lot to offer. Such a simple approach had a profound effect on his confidence and self worth.
For more information on Katherine's strengths work and her award winning strengths cards, visit her website here.
And for more positive psychology, talk to your EP about how this sort of work can be used in your school, we love it and it can be incredibly powerful for individual children but more so at systems level.
If you have any questions please let us know on info@appliedpsychologies.com
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