Against All Odds: Broadening and Building Resilience Across the Life Span

~by Sherri W. Fisher, MAPP, M.Ed.                      

We often categorize students by what they will have to overcome in order to be successful,  instead of appreciating what they already have.  What is success made of? It may not be what you think, and you may be measuring it without really knowing how today’s 6th grader might look as an adult.

In my work with children and families, people often tell me their secrets. This is the story of someone who knew nothing about Positive Psychology,  but who transformed a life of risk-factors into a life of success by using what we know to be empirically sound approaches to living a flourishing life.

The message of his life is summarized through research later in this post.

Timothy was born into a family of ten children, at the beginning of the Great Depression. His mother had been married three times; his parents were both alcoholics. Their family occupied a series of apartments in the poorest neighborhoods of Newark, NJ. From vacant lots the children collected milkweed stems that their mother boiled into a broth for their dinner. They regularly heard that they would never amount to anything.

 Beatings and other abuse were part of Timothy’s everyday life, and while he attended school, he was not considered a good student by any means. He learned to keep secrets about his life, and developed great skill at listening to and observing people. When he was 15, Timothy left home and never returned. He connected with a charity organization where a kindly man became a caring adult in his life. Timothy eventually graduated high school in a distant city. When his family did come looking for him, it was much, much later, and they were not coming to invite him home; they wanted money.

While still in high school, Timothy went to work in a leather-tanning factory where he found the long hours a great diversion from angry thoughts about the family he had left behind, the nine siblings he expected—and hoped—he would never see again.  When still underaged, he enlisted in the Navy where he was guaranteed a berth, consistent rules and expectations, and three square meals a day. 

Timothy met his future wife hitchhiking while on leave, and they eloped their way to beginning a 52-year marriage. The Navy was Timothy’s permanent address for years. His work there, during nearly 30 years and in several countries, remains classified, as he kept secret the work he did behind the closed doors of highest level security clearance. Timothy, his wife and their four children all graduated from college, and two of them even earned master’s degrees.

In his fifties, Timothy was diagnosed with incurable cancer and underwent an extreme operation and experimental treatments in hopes of prolonging his life for up to two years. He lived on for 19 years, despite each follow-up test being positive for spreading cancer, to see his eight grandchildren join the family, and to see the eldest one graduate from high school. For more than 15 years, he was also a Sunday school superintendent and youth group leader, and he mentored future military officers. These things he did even when living out of the country. When he retired from the military, Timothy even had two more successful careers ahead of him.

Timothy died a few days before his 77^th birthday, having beaten the odds that he would be a failure in numerous quarters of his life, and that he would die in his prime. (This is him on the slide below, with one of his grandkids.) Instead, he passed away quietly with his family close by, in his multimillion-dollar home, with no mortgage. He had paid for this himself.  Hundreds of mourners at his funeral—many of them who had been children and young adults he mentored—recalled  Timothy’s quiet strength, steadfast faith, and steady moral compass. He kept the secret of his childhood from nearly all of them, and they would never have guessed.

Timothy (not his real name) was a real person. Early on he had the presence of mind to leave his family and turn his life in a different way. Two longitudinal resilience studies indicate important reasons why Timothy may have been successful in his bid for a flourishing life. The first, by Emily Werner and Ruth Smith, looked at a cohort of nearly 700 male and female individuals across their age-span from perinatal to age 40. It was conducted on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. The second, conducted by George Vaillant, followed more than 450 men from poor, high crime neighborhoods in Boston, MA and more than 260 Harvard men, for more than 50 years. 

Here are some of the important findings of both these studies that predict resilience and recovery from high-risk childhood, and success as adults:

1)      Resilient siblings of dysfunctional families withdraw from family members meshed in problems. In this case, only Timothy escaped the patterns which led seven other siblings (two others died in childhood) to repeat the sins of the parents.

2)      Resilient people have a caring adult in their lives. This person does not have to be related to the young person. Timothy accepted charity and met a trustworthy, caring adult.

3)      Resilient people develop and value personal competence and determination. In fact, this is considered one of their most effective resources by resilient adults looking back to their at-risk childhood. Timothy made a plan to leave and did not look back.

4)      Resilient people show a strong capacity to work, even in childhood. This is a strong predictor of career success and out-predicts the negatives of poverty or a multi-problem family. Capacity to work also predicts satisfying interpersonal relationships and good mental health in adulthood. Timothy was never without work from the time he was 15 years old.

5)      Resilient people set goals for their adult life, even when they are children. They focus on career or job success, self-development and self-fulfillment. They strive for a happy marriage to a spouse who is a source of support and with whom they will have children, and aspire to owning a home. Timothy and his wife were married for 52 years, and owned several homes of increasing value during this time.

6)      Resilient people set high expectations for their children. These include school achievement, higher education attainment, happy families of their own, and the clear expectation that they will do things the right way, not the easy way. All of Timothy’s children were expected to perform well in school, acquire a post-secondary education, and marry and have families, which they did, happily.

7)      Resilient people believe that failures will happen, but that you can always try again. Note that in the language of explanatory style, resilient people are not optimists—they don’t expect good things—but they do have high self-efficacy and take a long view when bad things do occur. That long view may have resulted in Timothy’s 52-year marriage and 19-year cancer survival.

8)      Resilient people are active in community service. Timothy gave back for years and years to support youth and young adults in areas that mattered deeply to him—the military and the church.

In George Vaillant’s model of adult development, Timothy successfully negotiated the “six sequential tasks”. These are

ü  Identity—separate from parents

ü  Intimacy—psychologically healthy involvement with a partner

ü  Career Consolidation—find work valuable to society, and both valuable and enjoyable to self

ü  Generativity—broadening social circle, providing care for the next generation

ü  Become Keeper of the Meaning—pass on traditions that link the past to the future

ü  Integrity—achieving peace and unity with one’s self and the world

Each of these broad categories is likely supported by applications we know and love in the Positive Psychology toolbox, such as good decision-making, building of habits, goal-setting, grit, deliberate practice, active constructive responding, learning your ABC’s, a strong social circle, a connection to something larger than oneself, and the like.

Perhaps the most important lesson from Timothy’s life is that we are not doomed from birth to live out lives of failure. Quality longitudinal research shows us that by middle age, most people, regardless of their beginnings in life, have turned out.

 **Portions originally published at www.pos-psych.com

REFERENCES

 

Vaillant, G.E., Aging Well. New York, NY: Little Brown; 2002

 

Werner E.E., Smith RS. Journeys From Childhood to Midlife: Risk, Resilience

and Recovery. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; 2001

 

Werner E.E., Looking for trouble in paradise: some lessons learned from

the Kauai Longitudinal Study. In Phelps E, Furstenberg FF, Colby A.

Looking at Lives: American Longitudinal Studies in the Twentieth Century.

New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation; 2002:297–314

From Ho Hum Holidays to a Whole Lot of Fun

                                                                             ~By Louis Alloro, MAPP, M.Ed.

Communitas is a ritual-building process that inspires and revitalizes while reaffirming relationships within a community, state University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues. According to Anthropologist Victor Turner, building communitas is an essential step to activating a community to healthy family functioning, healthy child development, and other dimensions of well-being. It also creates positive emotion, which according to psychologist Barbara Fredrickson and mathematician Marcial Losada, builds upward spirals for individuals and groups.

Here is an example of some of the work I’ve done with my own family as an action researcher to build communitas and expand positive emotion. As we approach Passover and Easter, perhaps you will consider the power you have at building new positive traditions within the culture of your own networks. I call this Social-Emotional Leadership, which begins with your decision to stand up for the well-being of those you love.

Ho Hum Holiday

I have had the good fortune of being born into a large, Italian family, for which I am utterly and completely grateful. With aunts, uncles, and cousins, we are thirty members strong. Traditionally, we see each other at holidays, which are always about feasting and merriment; the events are orchestrated around the plethora of food and the drink. The men of the family typically flock to the television to watch the sporting events du jour; others of us less interested in sports stay in the living room to eat and imbibe or to kibitz about the food and drink. My siblings and cousins agreed: this tradition was feeling old.

I realized the need for Social-Emotional Leadership within my own network two years ago when I saw one of the youngest members of our clan exhibiting some troubling behaviors on Easter. This young boy joined the men in the family room in a friendly betting pool that my Uncle Charlie, a patriarch of our family, organized in good fun for the baseball game. But as this young boy joined in, I noticed his physical and emotional responses to first thinking he was winning and then, through a sudden turn of events in the game, thinking he was losing these seemingly “friendly” bets. His emotional and physical reactions were quite bothersome to me; I saw him embody real excitement and then real rage almost within the same moment.

Most bothersome was that we allowed his emotional roller coaster to continue without intervention. In fact, none of the other adults seemed at all fazed by his reactions as if a pink elephant were right there in the family room and we were all navigating around it, or worse, not even noticing it at all.

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

But when I stood back to observe, I realized that the behaviors the boy was exhibiting were very much in line with what has been modeled for him by me and other members of our network. Compulsive behaviors (those that bring us to extremes—away from what Aristotle marks as virtue), including but not limited to gambling, are a recurring, multi-generational issue that affects our network; why would we expect a child’s reality to be any different unless we wanted it to be so?

The apple not falling far from the tree is no problem, so long as the tree is strong and deeply rooted in a nourishing bed of soil, tended to and cared for, by the hopeful gardeners who live off of it. Social-Emotional Leaders are hopeful gardeners.

A Whole Lot of Fun

So last year on Easter, I decided to act as a Social-Emotional Leader – to introduce a new custom that could be built into our tradition in addition to our traditional celebration. I invited my family’s participation in a Nintendo Wii tennis tournament. Everyone participated in the bracket—three generations–even those who were most reluctant. As teams were up to play, they got a practice round to get the feel of the Wii and then it was on to the tournament. In no time, teams were devising strategies and having real fun.

My nephew, Michael, and cousin, Tracy emerged as victors and during the final round of the tournament, the energy and excitement that came from the family room was a palpable sign that my objective was reached. As a result, interest in other indoor and outdoor games was generated that day and groups naturally formed to participate. This shows the contagious effect of positive emotion and that as social capital is built, it starts to grow exponentially.

What’s In This For YOU?

As we approach religious holidays this season, I urge you to consider what you bring to the table as a Social-Emotional Leader, should you choose to be. Put on your action researcher hat and consider what happens when you elicit positive emotion, intentionally, and how this space could help you create a new tradition for the culture of your network. My advice to you is to be creative, use your strengths, and leverage another Social-Emotional Leader or two to help you along the way.

As one of my coaches Mike Litman is fond of saying, “You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.” I’d love to hear your stories – so please email me the results of your efforts. Have fun and good luck.

Images: All images used with permission of Louis Alloro.

References:

Alloro, L.J. (2008). Shift happens: Using Social-Emotional Leadership to create positive, sustainable cultural change. University of Pennsylvania Scholarly Commons.

Fredrickson, B. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 300-319.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Losada, M. F. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American Psychologist, 60, 678-686.

Gergen, K. (1999). An Invitation to Social Construction. London: Sage.

Haidt, J., Sederka, J. P., & Kesebir, S. (2007). Hive psychology, happiness and public policy. In Posner, E., and Sunstein, C. (Eds.), The Journal of Legal Studies.

Turner, V. (1995). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures). New York: Aldine DeGruyter.

Portions of this originally published by Louis Alloro on Positive Psychology News Daily.

What is the top thing we can do to improve schools?

What are the ways in?

In 2007, McKinsey published a report titled How The World’s Best Performing School Systems Come Out on Top. In the report, McKinsey looks at the top performing schools in the world, and concludes that three things differentiate the best:

1. Teacher quality

2. Teacher development

3. Ensuring that the system can deliver the best possible instruction to every child 

So, what is the #1 Top Action We Can Take?

Knowing these McKinsey results, what is the strongest lever?  What is the biggest bang for the buck?  There may be evidence that teacher development can change schools with the most impact for the most ease.  For example, Geelong Grammar School in Australia has focused on Positive Education, including as part of that the Positive Education Training Conference for teachers.

What if schools running professional development workshops – for teachers and administrators and a learning series for  students and parents – could make those strides to grow the beauty of schools and prevent possible pain to individuals?  What if these seminars were based on the research findings of positive psychology – and to include the whole system?

What if the alien form Mars could report this:

Children are enjoying some type of information.  They are smiling.  The adults are smiling.  There is a bidirectional construction of knowledge.  Everyone is learning.  Everyone is eager to return each day.

Author’s Note: If you’re reading this and thinking, “Yes! That’s what we need,” consider contacting me and my colleagues at Flourishing Schools to come and deliver workshops for your local school (or learning organization of any kind). You never know how just one phone call on your part could positively influence an entire system or community . . .

Portions of this originally published by Louis Alloro on Positive Psychology News Daily.

Building a Foundation For Well-Being: A Systematic Strengths-Based Approach

The Culver Academies –-rigorous co-educational, college-preparatory boarding schools in Indiana – are committed to integrating a systemic strengths-based approach to broadening and building character strengths and positive emotions in its academic, athletic, wellness, leadership, arts, and spiritual life programs. Providing the best “whole person” education available to its 780 high school students is accomplished through the tireless efforts of a dedicated instructional faculty and support staff that help guide students as they chart their course through adolescence to adulthood. 

With a strong commitment from Culver’s administration and its Board of Trustees, the school has ventured into a multi-year process that gradually instructs and informs students, faculty, staff, administration and parents with sustainable positive psychology strategies. To borrow the title of Robert Quinn’s book on leadership, Building the Bridge As You Walk On It; our “soft-sell” approach helps neutralize the traditional tension between process and performance by building high quality connections that bring out the best in students, faculty, staff and administrators. 

Faculty Training 

Over the past two summers, over one-half of the school’s 110 faculty members have participated in a three-day intensive seminar entitled “Building Strengths and Positive Emotions.” This program has been co-facilitated by John Yeager, Culver’s Director of the Center for Character Excellence, with Sherri Fisher and Dave Shearon.  

Faculty participants have learned

q      ways to broaden and build position emotion in themselves and their students;

q      strategies they can use with their strengths to become more optimistic and resilient; and

q      relationship-building approaches for building high quality connections at school.  

Faculty participants have identified

q      their own and student “signature” strengths, such as hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage, responsibility and perseverance and

q      developed strategies to foster a strengths-based approach in the classroom, living unit, visual and performing arts and athletic arenas in the areas of motivation, optimism, resilience and savoring.  

By learning about character strengths and ways to build and apply them, teachers can be guided to acknowledge, own, and apply their own strengths, to value their authentic selves, and to increase both their collective and self-efficacy. This information is very valuable to faculty members who can then also have a better snapshot of individual, peer and student strengths. This is very helpful in working with groups of students in all phases of school life. As one faculty participant so aptly put it, “I now think differently about how I teach.” 

Faculty Performance Review 

Currently, the Culver Academies are developing a strengths-based annual performance review (APR) for faculty. Traditionally, faculty performance evaluation has been akin to “chewing tin foil.” By instead capitalizing on faculty members’ sense of meaning and purpose in what they do at Culver, and explicitly addressing the “engagement” component of their work, faculty and administration can have a more productive discussion about areas of strengths and challenges.  

The process is approached from a “malleable” or “growth” mindset where department chairs (the middle manager evaluators)

q      capitalize on faculty areas of proficiency – through process and product praise; and

q      identify and healthfully respond to patterns of faculty adversity. 

Student Strengths and Academic, Leadership and Wellness/Athletic Programs 

Embedded in Culver’s formal leadership program, student leaders are starting to frame discussions and behavior from a strengths-based perspective by participating in an “appreciative inquiry” process. Also, they are now discussing the power of positive emotions and explanatory styles to better know themselves and others in the quest of building high-quality connections. 

Culver’s progressive and sequential four-year wellness education program provides students with an opportunity to cultivate their optimism and resilience in the areas of 

q      nutrition

q      sleep

q      physical activity and

q      stress management.  

Through the mentorship of some of their coaches, student-athletes compare and contrast their strengths as part of the team-building process.

After being habitually exposed to a strengths-based approach, Culver’s rising seniors are better prepared to  

q      declare their strengths in their college essays and

q      carry those strengths to college and beyond. 

Integrating the principles of positive psychology is helping Culver flourish by focusing on identifying, broadening, and building the unique strengths of the faculty, staff, students, and administrators. We want all Culver stakeholders to be meaning makers and culture keepers by making positive psychology sustainable in all aspects of school life.

The Power of Character Strengths and Emotions in American Literature and Culture

“The American character did not spring full-blown from the Mayflower,” but “it came out of the forests and gained new strength each time it touched a frontier.”

~Frederick Jackson Turner – “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”

               

 What defines the American identity and the American character?  Is it life, liberty and happiness?  Authentic happiness refers to an individual or a group’s acquisition of positive emotions, positive traits, and positive institutions – such as democracy, family.  An approach to character and American Literature and Culture includes an examination of the experiences of well-being, contentment and satisfaction (in the past), hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness in the present.  Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden and build” theory suggests that positive emotions, such as joy, interest, contentment, pride and love, broaden an individual’s attention, creativity, cognition, and scope of possible action.  They also build physical, intellectual and social resources over the long run.

        Nansook Park and Chris Peterson claim that “being able to put a name to what one does well is intriguing and even empowering.”  By identifying their own “signature” strengths, such as hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage, responsibility and perseverance, students will not only better understand themselves; they will have a keener insight into the strengths of the various characters in American Literature.  Students may realize why they resonate or are conflicted with certain characters based on their own character and emotional framework.                        

       The well-being of the characters within the plots of American literature taught in high school and college can best be understood through its deconstruction into more distinct pathways to happiness: the pleasurable life, which encompasses positive emotion and pleasure; the engaged life; and the meaningful life. The pursuit of pleasure or the hedonic life involves laughing, smiling and thinking good thoughts.  It is the subjective part of positive affect and is a nutrient for overall flourishing.  Engagement or flow may be categorized as being highly engaged and totally absorbed in an activity.  The meaningful life is defined by having a sense of purpose and connecting with something larger than oneself. By examining books such as the The Crucible, The Great Gatsby, The Lone Ranger and Tonto, and Jasmine,  a student can see through a different lens, the elations, frustration, allusions, illusions, nuances and residues that emerge from each character and his/her corresponding emotions.          

        This raises some important questions in American Literature.  How have and do American’s carry and exhibit their beliefs and emotions? Why do they do what they do? What are the characteristics that determine the subjective well-being of the array of characters in the various plots and themes?

          There are many themes of hope, optimism and resilience in American literature.  Notice how the positive emotions repertoire plays with the nuances of the authors and their respective characters.  Barbara Fredrickson’s work on “broadening and building” positive emotions is a natural connection to studying literature.  For example: The action tendency of joy brings play; interest brings exploration; contentment yields savoring and integration; pride allows for dreaming big; gratitude is creative giving; elevation supports becoming better; and love yields all of the above action tendencies.        

       However, there are many counter themes of helplessness, hopelessness and despair that supports a negativity bias to a degree in American literature and culture. Although you will read how many characters face fear head on, the negative emotion of fear begets the desire to escape a situation. The tendency of expressing anger is to attack.   When one is disgusted, they tend to want to expel.  The emotion of guilt suggests a character make amends, and sadness promotes thoughts of withdrawal.

For example, here are some leading questions for some commonly used texts in high school level American Literature classes that focus on character, but through a more balanced lens:  

The Gift Outright – Frost

• Character Question:  How does Frost entertain the character strength of Hope?   (Hope includes optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation). Expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about.  (VIA – Petersen and Seligman)

The Crucible – Miller

• Develop a strengths and shadow side circumplex of the main characters in The Crucible.
• How do the negative emotions of fear, anger, disgust, guilt, shade and sadness influence the power of the “hysteria” that thrives within the culture of Salem?
• Note the juxtaposition of character strengths in Proctor and Hale from the beginning to the end of the book.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Twain  

• Identify and cite actions that represent the character strengths of Huck and Tom Sawyer.  Also, identify the consonance of stregnths among Huck and Jim.
• How does Huck find these “sources of enablement” in his journey?
• Examine Huck’s coming of age through his optimism and resilience:

          ”It was a close place.  I took . . . . up [the letter I’d written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand.  I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.  I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right then, I’ll go to hell” – and tore it up.  It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said.  And I let them stay said; and never thought not more about reforming.”  (Chapter 31)

The Lone Ranger and Tonto – Alexie

• What are the character strengths and shadow sides of Victor and Thomas-Builds-the-Fire?
• How do they resonate and conflict with each other?
• Identify optimism and resilience in Victor.
• Victor lives the tension between the old and the new.  Examine his experienced, remembered and anticipated memory in light of the following quote:

            “Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you and your future is a skeleton walking one step in front of you . . . Now these skeletons are made of memories, dreams, and voices.  And they can trap you in the in-between, between touching and becoming. But they are not necessarily evil, unless you let them be. . . But no matter what  . . . keep walking.”

The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald

• What are the shadow strengths that contribute to the decline of the American Dream
• What positive and negative emotions are portrayed in the narrative tone and the Weather?
• How does Nick’s see the “optimism” in his immediate analysis of Gatsby’s character? (Chapter III).

         ”He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may  come across four of five times in life.  It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant an then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your   favor.  It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.” 

Self-Reliance – Emerson

• Comment how Emerson’s notion of Self-reliance has a shadow side. For example:Is there a shadow side to the “hopefulness” and  “zest and vitality” of youth?
• Comment on “their virtues are penances.  I do not wish to expiate, but to live.”

Jasmine – Mukherjee

• “There are no harmless, compassionate ways to remake oneself.” Is this a case of learned optimism or learned?
• There are different names accorded to Jasmine by different characters – how do these names reflect her different emotions?
• Deconstruct the following quote and identify Jasmine’s emotions and her compensatory character strengths. 

      “Taylor the Rescuer is on his way here.  He taught me to yank down that window shade.”

• Compare and contrast Emerson and Mukherjee’s conception of Self-Reliance.

      “Adventure, risk, transformation: the frontier is pushing indoors through uncaulked windows.  Watch me re-position the stars. I whisper to the astrologer who floats cross-legged above my kitchen stove.”

• What is the relationship between duty and desire?
• Does “Manhattan” represent authentic happiness?

Measuring, Appreciating, and Building Character

Positive psychology offers schools values assessment without the negatives of value judgments. All people have strengths and, like intelligences and talents, they are present in different degrees in all individuals across social groups.  Identified strengths can be defined as those qualities which contribute to the fulfillment of an individual and help that individual operate positively and effectively in society.  

According to Martin E.P. Seligman and Christopher Peterson in Character Strengths and Virtues, strengths can be seen in examples of best behaviors, and they are valued by society and nurtured in individuals who display them. This cross-cultural consensus is an important aspect of positive psychology and offers a broad application for individuals without regard for the specific social setting in which they operate.  

How can learning communities agree on what constitutes the good of a person? Is it their academic skills? Community service projects? Athletic performance? And how do we identify the good of a teacher? Is it by teacher effectiveness scores? High-stakes testing outcomes? Availability to students before and after school?  Positive psychology has set out to identify the traits that are generally accepted across all literate cultures as the elements of values in action, to assess those elements in individuals, and to assist individuals in developing their strengths and virtues.  What’s more, learning to use these strengths in new ways in everyday life has been found to increase happiness.  Happiness likely causes success, and that is what we want in school—Success!

The VIA Signature Strengths Survey (VIA-IS) is a 240-item psychometrically validated test which identifies one’s strengths of character: values in action.  It is based on research of human strengths and virtues covering over 3000 years of the shared values of literate cultures world-wide. From this research 24 ubiquitous strengths of character have been identified which fit into one of six virtue categories. A person who takes the VIA is ranked on all 24 character strengths, for example appreciation of beauty and excellence, bravery, citizenship, gratitude, leadership self-regulation, and fairness.   

As a means of evaluating personal strengths as they add up to the traits of character, the VIA assesses what we value culturally, translated into what we value about ourselves. While all of the character strengths are present in everyone, the top five are the strengths that the person endorses as their main means of positively interacting with society.  

Teachers, taking the VIA-IS, as well as students, taking the VIA-Youth, can find this to be particularly useful as they define themselves.  This provides an avenue for positive goal setting, is inherently strengths-based and focuses on both teachers and students being themselves, at their best, in ways they might otherwise not have otherwise considered.  Using one’s strengths increases engagement, and provides a strengths vocabulary common to all, too.  

It is almost inevitable that without empirically-informed ethics, such as those assessed by the VIA, definitions of the good of a person will be informed by personal opinion.  Because the VIA uses a consensual classification of strengths and virtues, present in each individual, it avoids introducing a deficit model that defines some individuals as having good character and others as being without the elements of good character.   

Positive psychology can provide clarity in defining the good of a person.  The VIA can assess the signature strengths of individuals’ character, and positive psychology training can help to strengthen and further develop the strengths and virtues.  Thus begins a wonderfully positive cycle of well-being and success.

Character: Leveraging Performance and Relational Strengths in Zero and Non-Zero Sum Climates

Cortland State’s Tom Lickona and Matt Davidson claim that character strengths fall into two categories:  performance and relational.   Performance and relational character are not mutually exclusive.  Lickona and Davidson suggest that performance character focuses on the diligence, perseverance, and self-discipline necessary to a commitment to professional, academic, athletic, and other areas of excellence.   Moral or relational character embodies the traits of “integrity, justice, caring, and respect needed for successful interpersonal relationships and ethical behavior” within a specific enterprise.  

Performance and relational character is alive and well in the competitive enterprises of business, education, sports, and the legal system.  Many of these ventures are considered to be zero sum games – characterized by situations where one’s gain always results in an opposing loss for someone else.  Alfie Kohn, the author of No Contest, calls this phenomena “mutually exclusive goal attainment.”  MEGA is commonly observed in sports as well as in business, education, and many other domains.  Chasing the brass ring in zero-sum mode is often what motivates many people to succeed. 

Robert Wright, the author of Non-Zero, has claimed that as societies become more complex, specialized, and interdependent, there is a movement towards finding non-zero sum solutions in enterprises.  A non-zero sum climate is characterized by win-win situations within business, education, etc.  As interdependence in an enterprise increases, we find that we do better when our fellow employees, students, and teammates also do better.  The non-zero sum environment enhances the attention and readiness to compete in zero-sum climates.   

The essential strategies that cultivate non zero-sum climates are provided within the emerging field of positive psychology, the study of positive and subjective well-being, positive character traits, and positive institutions.  It is about focusing on and leveraging what we do well – one’s strengths – as opposed to solely concentrating on deficiencies and weaknesses.    

Positive Psychology also strives to create the positive institutions within enterprises that allow all involved to grow and to experience the flourishing of personal virtues and strengths.  Focusing on strengths and positive emotions promotes individual and collective flourishing which results in the development of strong, supportive relationships and healthy traditions.  Martin Seligman (2002), a pioneer in the field, says it best: “We need a psychology of rising to the occasion because that is the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of predicting human behavior.”  

Positive professional and educational cultures can foster productivity, collegiality, support for hard work, high expectations for achievement, and the ethical high road.  Today, the field of positive psychology encompasses the work of a wide array of notable researchers in not only psychology, but also in sociology, health, medicine, organizational studies, business management, and other disciplines.  The field has economic consequences significant enough to have already garnered one Nobel Prize in economics.  Organizations as diverse as Best Buy, Whirlpool, and David’s Bridal, are implementing positive psychology-based programs that focus on leveraging employee strengths.   The field has become the subject of numerous articles in widely read publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Time, Scientific American, and Psychology Today and New York Times Magazine. 

By promoting a strengths-based approach in academic, leadership, fine arts, wellness and athletic programs, your school can make the mission-based connection between the mind, body and spirit come alive.  An awareness and understanding of character strengths and their relationship to well-being is a valuable tool for young people as they navigate their journeys through adolescence to adulthood.  Knowing what particular traits look like when they come alive may be instructive and informative for both educators and students.   

The cultivation of character strengths typically doesn’t happen in isolation, and the empirical research advocates addressing character from a multidimensional perspective. Each student has a unique set of combinations of signature (higher) strengths,  that in concert are uniquely valuable to his or her thoughts, feelings, and behavior.  These may include strengths such as creativity, persistence, integrity, vitality, fairness, humility, and gratitude. 

Ask yourself the following “strengths” questions: 

1. What are your strengths?  How do you know?
2. How often and under what circumstances do you get to do these things?
3. How can you increase opportunities to use and develop these strengths in everyday life and work?
4. What are your most powerful strengths combinations? How can you tell?
5. How can you use these strengths “teams” more often? 

 

Flourishing Schools can help you identify, develop and leverage your strengths.