Lea offers her audience a unique blend of science and practice. As a leading positive psychology researcher and board member and past president of the International Positive Psychology Association, Lea is deeply active in the science. Her warm, personal style, practical way of thinking combined with her extensive work with schools and parents worldwide means her audiences find her science real and practices actionable. Lea's teachings have resonated with audiences in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Amsterdam, China, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, South Africa, Uganda and Belgium. 

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Webinar/Keynote/Workshop topics:

• Boosting Mental Health through a Strength-Based Approach: Identify and build the strengths of yourself and those around you.

• How to Build a Positive Culture at Work: Reap the benefits of employee engagement and business success.

• Building Employee Resilience Post COVID-19: Through struggle we often emerge stronger. Find out how you can help employees move forwards and grow in this uncharted territory. (60 min)

• Gratitude at Work: Hearts, Minds & the Bottom Line

• Strengths at Work: Unlocking Energy & Engagement

Webinar/Keynote/Workshop topics:

• Growing through Adversity: Supporting the growing numbers of students facing adversity.

• Strength-Based Teaching: Bringing Out the Best in Students & Teachers (60 min or 3 hour).

• Making Wellbeing Visible at School: Introduction to identifying and managing wellbeing in the classroom.

• Understanding and Managing Student Trauma: A Strengths-based approach to managing distress in students.

• Compassion and Self-Compassion in Schools: Helping teachers to foster compassion and increase moments of compassion at school (3 hour).

• Positive Emotions in the Classroom: Learn to generate positivity in yourself and your students (3 hour).

• Transition: Supporting students as they transition from Grade 6 to secondary school.

• Strength-Based Parenting: Small Shifts Can Make a Positive Difference in Your Kids (60 min).

• Fostering Gratitude in Families: Building positivity and a sense of thankfulness build positive emotions in the home (60 min)

Strength-Based Parenting

Small Shifts Can Make a Positive Difference in Your Kids

Lea ’s research shows that parents can build inner resilience in their kids by using the science of Strength-Based Parenting (SBP) to help their children to see and use their own strengths to navigate life’s challenges. In this presentation, based her on book, The Strength Switch: How the New Science of Strength-Based Parenting Can Help Your Child and Your Teen To Flourish, Lea helps parents steer themselves away from negativity and criticism by offering a scientifically proven strength-based approach to parenting. She shares positive psychology tips parents can use to cultivate their child’s inherent strengths. Parents leave motivated to make changes immediately after Lea shares that this small shift in approach can help their children build resilience, optimism and achievement.

After attending parents will be able to:

• Recognize three elements that make up a true strength to more easily and consistently discover talents in children;

• Use specific techniques to deal with problem-behaviors in more constructive ways; and

• Interact with kids using positive emotions to deal with difficult situations and emotions.

Strength-Based Teaching

Bringing Out the Best in Students & Teachers

Three decades of research clearly shows the advantages of taking a strength-based approach for students, including greater levels of happiness at school, higher student engagement, smoother transitions from kindergarten to elementary school, more successful adjustment from elementary to middle school, and higher levels of academic achievement.  Research also shows benefits for teachers who learn how to identify and utilize their own strengths. Lea Waters PhD weaves together her science with concrete examples and best practices to provide the audience with the compelling case for adopting a strengths approach in schools.

Audience take aways:

• Key research findings that clearly links strengths to wellbeing and academic achievement;

• Best practices for introducing strengths into the classroom

• Practical methods for how to embed strengths into the staffroom.

Making Wellbeing Visible in Schools

Schools across the world are aiming to turn wellbeing policy into practice. To address this problem Lea Waters PhD, a trained psychologist and positive psychology expert, designed Visible Wellbeing™ which combines the science of wellbeing with the science of learning to make wellbeing visible in all classes and across co-curricular. In this presentation, Lea shares the Visible Wellbeing tool kit of flexible wellbeing practices that go beyond traditional wellbeing programs. She provides techniques that help teachers to use the learning process itself as a delivery mechanism to build student wellbeing. Visible Wellbeing aims to help everyone thrive at school and the training and techniques shared are equally relevant to staff, teaching, non-teaching, and parents as they are to students as a way to build a culture of wellbeing across the entire school. Lea weaves together her science with concrete school best practices to provide the audience with the compelling case for adopting a Visible Wellbeing approach in schools.

Audience take aways:

• Knowledge of techniques that help teachers to use the learning process itself as a delivery mechanism to build student wellbeing;

• Able to help students and staff to more clearly see their own and other’s wellbeing using Visible Wellbeing practices;

• Understand how to use the SEARCH framework to help students and staff more systematically build wellbeing; and

• Facilitate learning through the visible wellbeing classroom process.

Gratitude at Work

Hearts, Minds & the Bottom Line

Does your workplace suffer from Gratitude Deficit Disorder?

In my own research on the application of positive psychology to business cultures I have found that gratitude is a core, but often overlooked, aspect of creating a healthy workplace culture. This presentation weaves together science from organizational psychology, business and positive psychology together with workplace examples to provide the audience with an understanding of gratitude at work. Why it is important. How they can foster more gratitude and what benefits they can expect when they do.

Audience members will learn:

• The benefits of gratitude at work;

• Why gratitude is suppressed at work;

• How to foster more gratitude at work.

Strengths at Work

Unlocking Energy & Engagement

We’ve all heard the saying “play to your strengths”. But what does this really mean when it comes to work? As leaders, how can we help our staff play to their strengths?

Research by the Gallup Institute found clear bottom-line benefits to being a strength-based workplace including lower turnover, increased productivity and happier customers. This presentation weaves together science from organizational psychology, business and positive psychology together with workplace examples to provide the audience with an understanding of strengths at work.

Audience members will learn:

• The benefits of strengths at work.

• What blocks us from seeing strengths.

• How to identify and amplify strengths.