Pathways to Well-Being and School Leadership -Searching Out Strengths

After exploring emotional management, both challenging and positive emotions, it's time to revisit the starting point of the SEARCH framework for well-being - S for strengths.

I only found one small-scale study, consisting of five participants, that explored strengths and school leadership (Cooper and Woods, 2017). There are different ways of viewing strengths but the researchers used this definition:

“a pre-existing capacity for a particular way of behaving, thinking or feeling that is authentic and energising to the user, and enables optimal functioning, development and performance.” (Linley, 2009 cited in Cooper and Woods, 2017)

The headteachers undertook a strengths-based development assessment which was followed up with a debrief session with a psychologist and possible follow-up coaching. The study found that the intervention led to increases in personal well-being and that the school leaders also thought that it had positively impacted the well-being of members of their organisation (albeit to a slightly lesser extent). They also self-reported increases in performance for both themselves and their schools.

The themes the headteachers spoke about were increased authenticity and commitment with some saying that they felt a greater sense of control and calm.

It was also interesting to hear that some weren't used to talking about their strengths. This resonates as I find school systems are often so keenly focused on growth and next steps that strengths are sometimes overlooked or at the very least under-explored.

Although there is only one study concerning school leaders, strengths use is one of the most popular areas of positive psychology with research finding that strength use interventions in the workplace can increase job satisfaction, work engagement, well-being, and work performance (Miglianico et al., 2020).

For each of the SEARCH themes, I pose a question and an invitation.

Question: What are your top 2-3 strengths?

There are many ways to identify strengths.  One way is to think about times you were in flow, feeling energised and authentic - what strengths were you using?

Ask a few people - what do they say your strengths are?

Or you can also use online tools like the one below:

https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register

Invitation: Once you have identified your strengths then set your watch or a timer to stop at a few random times throughout the week. When you have stopped take note of the strengths that you are using in the moment.

There is much more to explore with character strengths, if you are interested in investigating your strengths either for yourself or for your staff members then send me a message.

Cooper, L., & Woods, K. (2017). Evaluating the Use of a Strengths-Based Development Tool with Head Teachers. Educational Psychology in Practice, 33(1), 31–49. ERIC.