By Mary Fenwick  BC09

I heart teenagers. Really.

But I was a bit worried about standing up in front of 200 of them, with no visible means of support.

So, a big shout out – as we dudes say – to everyone who got in touch after my last blog asking for help with my secondary school workshop on strengths.

These are the main points, which others might want to use:

Alex Linley, founder of the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology (capp.eu) gave me the following, which is my nomination for top ten-second briefing:

“The essential thing is to understand what we mean by strengths.  A strength is something that is energising for you and that you are good at. Another way of saying energising is that it is something that you enjoy.

 The key thing to get across is that in the Capp definition of strengths, it is the combination of energy and performance that defines a strength, rather than just performance alone.

 We also take this further by adding the dimension of use, which helps us to distinguish realised strengths (which are used frequently) and unrealised strengths (which are used less frequently).  In turn, learned behaviours are things that we are good at but don’t enjoy, and weaknesses are things that we are neither good at nor do we enjoy!”

 And I was also put in touch with the first issue of the Celebrating Strengths newsletter, which specializes in positive psychology adapted for schools.

So I’m now going on the first ever UK training workshop on this specific subject in October. Another way of putting this is to say – you know how I said I was getting paid to do the workshop in July? – I’ve spent that fee three times already.

For information about the Celebrating Strengths newsletter or workshop contact Belinda Catt, bj.c@btinternet.com

By Mary Fenwick (BC09)

Any ideas about getting teenagers to think about their strengths – other than sleeping, inventing new invective and occasionally surprising their mothers so much that they forgive them everything?

I mean this in a caring and coaching way, possums, as I own three teenagers myself and will have another one along in a minute (or 17 months to be precise).

I’m doing some voluntary work with my local Education and Business Partnership, to fill in time between massively highly paid executive assignments as a jet-setting international coach, you understand.

There’s a political context here that you may not be aware of, if you don’t have teenagers. The government has axed its “Connexions” service so two million young people will have no access to careers advice until September next year, when something or other takes its place.

My agenda is to introduce young people to thinking about what they love and already know they are good at, at the stage when they are considering their future career paths. It might mean fewer coaching clients looking for mid-life meaning in 20 years time, but hey that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Somewhat surprisingly this has evolved into the offer of a paid workshop (although in Meyler Campbell terms there might be a zero missing from the figure). The challenge is to devise something for:

• 14 and 15 year olds as they go into Year 11, the main GCSE year
• delivery in 20 minutes to a group of around 30 students
• repetition eight times over the morning

Oh, and it’s to be inter-active if possible. For delivery on the 20^th of July. Does anyone have a template I might adopt and adapt? Please. Pretty please, with sugar and cream and raspberries on top.