Celebrate strengths and create well-being in young people

When you want to make positive social change happen in a community, as a leader you build a team with different strengths. It is like building a prism. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole; an abundance of creativity coming from different perspectives to generate solutions to problems.

As leader, you will hold the space for each person, believing in them until they trust and believe in themselves; guiding them to step into their strengths so that they know how to contribute their best voice to the problem-solving. This is how resilient individuals, teams and social change organisations are created.

This is you as an agent of change for your young people.

Connecting them to their strengths, will give them a platform from which to feel a sense of value in the world and a way to start navigating challenges.

This is a way for each one of them to start finding their voice.

Wayne Gretsky said, “You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take.”

We need to take action to anchor our young people in the core belief that their solutions, generated from their strengths, have a place in changing things for the better: that it is worth taking the risk on having a go, rather than believing that you don’t count.

Here are two ways to hold the space for your young people and increase their wellbeing by connecting them to their individual character strengths.

1.       Do the Character Strengths FREE survey
Go to www.viacharacter.org and get your students (age 12+) to complete the youth survey. Each child will discover their signature strengths. 

​2.       Strengths Cards for all ages
Use At My Best Strengths cards. I use these with adults and young people to connect people to their strengths and problem-solve from a strengths perspective.

​Flow In Action is a local supplier in Switzerland for the cards, so get in touch via elaine@flowinaction.org to talk about your order. Each pack is 32 CHF plus P&P.