So how does it feel to be using your signature strengths in new ways? Ways that are healthy and balanced? I hope you've enjoyed trying out some new activities and at the same time gotten some deeper insights into the strengths themselves into the influence they have had in your life to this point, and into the powerful effects they can have going forward. In this section we want to explore several themes connected to the continued use of your signature strengths at work, at home and at play. Now you all come from a great variety of professions, you have very different family lives and like to spend your leisure time in diverse ways. But there's one thing you all have in common, you interact with others at work, home and play. Even if you work by yourself, live alone and like to vacation in solitary places, you still interact with others. As John Donne wrote, no man is an island. Christopher Peterson said that the core finding of positive psychology is quote, other people matter. The next step in our consideration of strengths is knowing not just our own but also the strengths of those around us. And not just knowing these strengths but understanding how our strengths interact with and enhance each other’s. It can be very energizing and insightful to connect with others who share one of our signature strengths. We noted last time how much fun the school kids had sharing stories about how they put their signature strength of gratitude into practice. When I asked another group of kids what it was like to share the signature strength of humor, I was shocked when one of them reached up and pulled the fire alarm - all of a sudden the alarm started sounding and I wasn't quite sure what to do. Until I realized that the loud sound was actually coming from one of the kids and that his classmate had only pretended to pull the fire alarm. They had pulled a trick on all of us in the room and the fun we all had, mixed with relief, did a better job than words would have done of showing us what it was like to have the strength of humor. So it can be really energizing to connect with others who are just as curious as we are or who have found fascinating ways to nurture their strength of spirituality. Many of us prefer working with people whose strengths are similar to ours, since we tend to feel comfortable with people who are like us and since we can understand each other so easily. Invariably though we will also encounter plenty of people whose strengths differ from ours. When this happens it can be quite a challenge sometimes. In a team context, however, it's actually crucial to have a range of complementary strengths represented. Imagine a baseball team composed only of pitchers or a soccer team composed only of goalies. Although they might easily outperform their competition in their areas of strengths, they would be missing crucial components of what it takes to succeed in these sports. And so they wouldn't be able to be competitive at all when playing against balanced teams. So in your interactions with other people, at work, home and play, it's great to celebrate similarities, and it's crucial to embrace differences. The place to start with both of these endeavors, of course, is to have strengths conversations. Share with others what your strengths are. Learn what their strengths are. And spend quality time discussing ways in which the similarities and differences allow you to collaborate together more effectively. In work contexts, we may be used to having meetings that focus on what's going wrong and what the team has to do to put out the fires that have broken out since our last meeting. Red cape approaches can certainly be valuable especially in times of impending catastrophes. But it's important to balance red cape approaches with green cape efforts to clarify the available opportunities and take steps towards them. Similarly, it can be useful to have someone point out the ways in which we need to improve to do our job better. But just as important for long term success is having strengths conversations. What are the strengths of each person on the team? What overlaps are there? What differences are there? And it's important for these conversations to be deep and ongoing. It's not sufficient simply to treat strengths as labels or titles that we associate with different colleagues. Rather, the goal is to try to understand deeply how each person uses their strengths in their work, what we might do to support that person in the further use of their strengths, and how we might leverage the strengths of the team, in our work together. One great way to start out a team meeting, is to ask what's going well and what we can all learn from that. It's a lot more fun to have this kind of conversation than it is to ask what's going wrong. And it can be just as informative. In our Master of Applied Positive Psychology Administrative team, we have shared our strengths with each other. And we like to have strengths conversations. Where we ask each person to share a way they have recently been able to put one of their signature strengths to work successfully. These conversations are fun and informative, and help keep us reminded of the importance of focusing on the strengths of our entire team. It can be just as fun to have strengths conversations with our families. By learning each other’s strengths, we can explore new found similarities and appreciate and more deeply understand our differences. When I used this approach with my own family a few years ago, it led to a powerful experience of group bonding. I invited them all to help me create a family tree of strengths. Each family member took the VIA survey and sent me their top five strengths, which I then put into a single document and sent around to everyone. Since we live far from each other, we all called in to a telephone conference line and had a strengths conversation together. It was really interesting to note the strengths that connected several family members and to see the range of strengths we had as a family. We even talked about my great grandfather, a beloved family patriarch who would live to be almost 100 years old. We remembered him fondly by discussing what we thought his signature strengths were. Many of us also interact with groups of people in our leisure time, and knowing the strengths of the group can make that shared time all the more meaningful. To what degree do you already have strengths conversations with your friends? How might those conversations and relationships be strengthened by introducing the language of strengths, developed in the VIA Classification of Strengths and Virtues. We'll pause now for an exercise. And then we'll turn to the final segment for this week, when we'll welcome a very special guest to join us.
