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.

The 84% Solution: Part 1

What is the most important research from positive psychology for those interested in school leadership? 

There are lots of candidates.  Martin Seligman’s explanatory style construct is powerful.  He’s written The Optimistic Child, and Karen Reivich, Jane Gilham, et al., have built off that construct to develop a resilience program for middle schoolers that helps avoid the onset of depression. Carol Dweck’s work on self-theories of intelligence was also inspired by Dr. Seligman’s insights, and that work is extraordinarily applicable to the K-12 environment.  And the late Rick Snyder’s work on hope has also been successfully taught in a school setting with measurable positive results. 

However, positive psychology’s main message to school leaders, especially superintendents, is in what I call “The 84% Solution.”  The 84% Solution recognizes that school systems require more leadership than one leader can provide.  So, how does the superintendent, at the system level, and the principal at the school level, create a highly effective team of engaged leaders?  Answer:  the 84% Solution. 

One prong of The 84% Solution is to invest time and attention on the ingredients of the solution: the formal and informal members of the leadership team.  This is what Jim Collins in Good to Great called “getting the right people on the bus” and in the right seats.  Larry Bossidy, former CEO, has written that he routinely spent 20% of his time on people processes, going up to 30-40% when he was re-building.  Positive psychology can help with this part of the process by providing a strengths-based way of looking at individuals and their capacities.  Both the Values in Action Signature Strengths Survey and Gallup’s Strengthsfinder 2.0 are valuable tools in this area, but the key is developing a strengths vision.  That is, superintendents and principals can improve their leadership qualities by learning to see and think about those on their teams, or candidates, in terms of strengths.  Some leaders have strengths that make this transition easy.  Others may need to rely on members of their teams who have clear strengths vision or get the assistance of tools like the VIA or Strengthsfinder 2.0.  But the clear message of positive psychology is that getting team members in positions where they can act and relate every day based on their strengths will significantly improve the performance of the team. 

The second prong of The 84% Solution is the ratio of positive to negative interactions in the team.  Marcial Losada’s work has established the applicability of non-linear systems to leadership teams.  After studying highly successful, moderately successful, and unsuccessful business leadership teams, he has identified the ratios of positive to negative interactions that open up the necessary emotional space for creativity and high performance. 

Success requires a minimum 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions.  That’s five statements or actions of support, interest, and encouragement for every one of criticism, hostility, or sarcasm.  Mediocrity can be achieved with about a 3:1 ratio.  Below 3:1 and failure becomes the “point attractor” toward which the actions of the team will spiral.  So, 5 out of 6 interactions need to be positive, or 5/6, or, rounding up because you do not want to be on the wrong side of this ratio, “The 84% Solution.”  (Some may want to know if you can get too positive.  Yes, but it seems to be at a ratio greater than 11:1.  If the interactions of your team are more than 92% positive, you may want to do a reality check – but given our societal bias that thinking negatively proves you are smart, it is unlikely this will be a problem for most teams!) 

So, how is your team?  How are the teams in your schools?  Are you injecting daily doses of positive interactions into your leadership environment?  Remember that for every dose of negativity you or your initiatives generate, someone has to come up with five doses of positivity to keep the team functioning at a successful level.

Sherri Fisher Presents Parents Workshop

Sherri Fisher will be presenting a Positive Psychology for Parents workshop, Flourishing Kids, Happy Families, for NNT/Medfield MA.

Admission is free, but you must register in advance.  Date: May 8 Time: Doors open at 7 pm EDT. Workshop begins promptly at 7:30. For more information contact us.

Dave Shearon to Present at UPenn

  Dave Shearon will co-present a one-day seminar at the University of
Pennsylvania with Bill Robertson, Leadership Instructor in the MAPP program.  

This is for Superintendents of Schools and will address leadership paradigms through the lens of positive psychology. 

Date: April 24, 2007  For more information contact us. 

John Yeager Featured Speaker at CAPP Conference

John Yeager is a presenter at 

The Center for Applied Positive Psychology:

April 18-20, 2007
 

University of Warwick, UK 

Topic: Building Strengths and Positive Emotions in the Schools: A Systems Approach to Positive Psychology in Education 

Registration Information:

http://www.cappeu.org/admin/res/File/CAPP%20Programme%20Flyer%20FINAL.pdf

Bookshop

Books by John Yeager

Character and Coaching – Building Virtue in Athletic Programs

http://www.nprinc.com/char_ed/chco.htm

This book is written for coaches by coaches. It will help you to: Examine the underlying purposes of sport and establish common ground with other coaches, program directors, parents, and athletes; Identify and assess the core ethical values of your athletic programs; Apply practical, hands-on strategies that will make a difference for your athletes – now and for the rest of their lives. The authors’ collective experience – as athletes, coaches, and program directors from all levels, youth programs to professional athletics – creates a resource with a depth and practicality that sets it apart from other works in the field. If you believe that sport matters -that athletic programs contribute to a healthy lifestyle-and if you also believe that character matters -that the positive values and virtues developed on the playing field last a lifetime-then this book is for you. It shows you how to shape an athletic program that will make young athletes winners-not just in the games they play, but in the way they live their lives. Organized sports have a powerful impact on the character of both spectators and participants. Coaches and athletic directors have a tremendous responsibility to make that impact a positive character-building experience. This book is a primer that allows coaches to put questions about character into a usable context, which, in turn, serves as a foundation on which they can put lessons of character coaching to use.

The book embraces the philosophical, psychological, and educational foundations of the relationship between character and sport. It gives the coach and athletic director theoretical and practical instruction on how to create, implement, and maintain a character-based athletic program. The book concludes with references, suggested readings, a list of character and sports organizations and resources.

 Our Game – The Character and Culture of Lacrosse

http://www.lacrosse.org/cgi-bin/uslstore/BOGCCL.html

If you believe that lacrosse matters – that the game can be a vehicle for enjoyment and satisfaction – then this books is for you. It shows how pledging to honor the game by embracing tradition, connection, leadership, respect, spirit, trust and a commitment to youth will yield a more fulfilling experience for players, coaches, administrators, officials, parents and spectators. This ensures that people across the country are playing the same game, with the same rules and the same purpose.

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.