Character strengths

Why focus on character strengths?

Absolutely everyone, including you, your friends, colleagues and each child or young person you live or work with has their own set of character strengths to be discovered, valued and used. When young people use their strengths, they develop into adults who are not only respectful, but are respected for who they truly are.

The magic of character strengths is that all of us can grow in all of the character strengths, although we have a tendency to be stronger in some aspects than others.

Focusing on weaknesses is fairly common. Many of us spend time and energy striving to do what we’re not so good at, as we think this will help us become better people. It may do, but it may exhaust us in the process! 

When we work or live with children or young people, we may focus on what they are not good at and try to help them fix it. For example, a child may find it difficult to work with others in a team. We might focus on this supposed weakness, worry about it and try to fix it by getting them to work more often with others. But this may be frustrating for the child and for you. Instead, it may be more helpful to think about and focus on the strengths that the child shows when working on their own, for example curiosity and perseverance. If you nurture these strengths, the child may feel better about themselves and in time, may feel better about working with others.

Research has shown that finding and using our strengths is really important for improving health, happiness and our sense of self-worth. As adults working or living with children and young people, you have a powerful tool to help them lead happier, healthier, more fulfilling lives. You can help them notice and value their strengths and you can help them use their strengths more in their daily lives. Talking to children and young people about their strengths will help to build their confidence and help them to flourish.

At school, encouraging pupils to share the activities and interests they have out of school can help with this. Hearing about children and young people’s wider experiences and achievements gives teachers an awareness of the strengths pupils have outwith the school curriculum.

24 Character strengths

So what kind of things are we talking about? Researchers have spent a lot of time finding out which strengths of character are valued across cultures. They came up with a list of 24 character strengths:

Activities

Here are some activities you could try to help children and young people recognise and develop their strengths:

Top Three Strengths

There is a youth version of the strengths survey for children and young people aged 8-17 years. To access the youth survey, an adult has to register at www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register (there’s no cost for this). Then the young person can complete the youth version of the survey within the adult’s account.

It will take 15-20 minutes to answer all the questions. They will find out their top three strengths, then all the other strengths in order. Discuss their top strengths with them. Ask them to think about whether they agree that these are their top three. Ensure their understanding of these strengths by asking for examples of when they use each one in their lives.

Don’t be surprised if appreciation, forgiveness, modesty and open-mindedness are low on their list. In general, children and young people will find these difficult - they will develop as they get older.

You can do a number of different activities after a group of young people have completed the strengths questionnaire:

• If you are working with a group you could compare everyone’s top three strengths and see how many strengths there are in common. This helps them to see that everyone has different strengths. It also helps highlight that absolutely everyone has strengths that should be celebrated and valued.
• You could make one long list of all the top three strengths from everyone in the group or classroom and put them up on the wall. This helps remind everyone that as a group we are stronger than as an individual. This activity can help to clarify the importance of team work and cooperation with others.
• You could ask everyone in a group or class or family to write up their top three strengths on a piece of paper and play a guessing game - which profile belongs to which person? This helps us to notice strengths in others.

Deliberate Acts of Kindness

This activity is about the character strength of kindness. It involves doing things for others with no motive other than being kind for its own sake. Doing something kind for others does not only help others, it helps us too by making us feel better about ourselves. 

Ask children and young people to think of things they can do for others. Tell them that it doesn’t matter whether it’s a big thing or a little thing - little things are just as important as big things. Talk to them later about what they did and how they felt about it.

Here are some ideas to start you off:

• Pack up some old clothes and take them to a charity shop
• Open the door for someone
• Visit someone in hospital
• Visit an elderly relative
• Offer to carry shopping for someone
• Write a thank you card to someone for a gift
• Phone up someone on their birthday and sing ‘happy birthday’ to them.
• Tell someone they look great
• Smile at everyone you see for a day
• Do a chore for someone that you know they don’t like doing
• Thank your teacher for a good lesson
• Write a friend a note to say how much they mean to you.

You at your best

Ask young people in a group setting to introduce themselves in a different way than they would normally. Instead of asking them to say where they live or who is in their family or what they are studying, ask them to describe themselves at their best. Say, for example:

"Think of a time when you did something or acted in a way that made you feel you were a good person - I don't mean an academic or athletic achievement, but something like being really brave when facing a difficult situation, or being really kind to someone in distress. Tell us the story of what happened and how you felt about it." 

This encourages young people to think about who they are as a person in terms of their strengths. It also helps them get to know others on a deeper level.

The Incredibles

This fun activity helps you to discover the superheroes in your family, class or group! Some of the television science fiction and fantasy series have several superheroes with different skills. In order to solve a problem, or to save the world, they need to use all their different skills and work together as a team. 

What you need:

• Paper
• Colouring pens
• Pencils
• Badges that you can decorate yourself.

What you do:

• Think about each of the people in your family, class or group. What are their special skills? What kind of superhero are they? How do they use their hero-skills to help your family, class or group sort out its everyday challenges and reach its goals?
• Make a list of the superheroes your family, class or group needs to help meet its challenges or reach its goals.
• Then decide who has the special skills to be the different superheroes. For example, who is the super-comforter, super-fixer, super-tidier, super-cheerer-upper, super-brave-person, super-nurse, super-peacemaker, etc? 
• When you’ve decided which super-skill each person has, work in twos or threes to make superhero badges for each other.

Some things to talk about together:

• What are some of the goals and challenges your family or group has?
• What superheroes have you already discovered?
• What new superheroes might you need?
• How can all the superheroes work together to help your group or family reach your goals or deal with your challenges?
• How can we let each other know when a superhero is needed?

Other ideas:

• Design some superhero t-shirt logos, like ‘Superman’. Create the design on your computer and use special t-shirt printing paper. Iron your super-logos onto plain white t-shirts.
• When you need one of your special superheroes, you could say, ‘I think we need our Super-Peacemaker!’ Or think of other fun ways of inviting your superheroes to come to the rescue, like humming your group’s superhero theme tune!