Professor Lea Waters, PhD is an Australian academic, researcher, psychologist, author and speaker contributing to the field of Positive Psychology. Most people see improvements as eliminating what’s wrong with us, but Lea’s work in Positive Psychology expands what we mean by improvement and growth. Her latest book, The Strength Switch, offers parents resources to better build the strengths of young people.
In our conversation, we talk about how Lea has used her strengths in research and storytelling to help parents recognize what biases might be influencing how they parent, and offer techniques for making the switch to a strengths-based approach.
We also dive deeper into the benefits of a strengths-approach by exploring such questions as:
This episode is for the parents that listen to the podcast. We hope that this is a thought provoking episode, and that you walk away with both the desire to shift your attention towards building your child’s strengths and the desire to use the tools to get there.
There’s a ton of strategies here and we had a lot of fun recording the episode.
Relevant Links:
[Free Resource] Glossary of Strengths
[Free resource] Strength-Based Quiz
Link to episode on communication with Alan Alda (mentioned)
About the guest
Podcast Guest
Lea Waters is an Australian psychologist, researcher, and author specializing in positive psychology and strength-based approaches to parenting and education. She is a professor at the University of Melbourne and the founding director of its Centre for Positive Psychology, and was president of the International Positive Psychology Association from 2017 to 2019.
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