Your Strengths\’ calendar for August (8/12)

Hello and welcome (back) to my blog, dear friends!

And Happy August!I can not believe autumn is just around the corner. I really hope your 2024 continues as smoothly as it can be (ours has been the bumpiest year ever).

I am here with another calendar filled with activities meant to promote leadership, teamwork and fairness. And, as usually, these activities are ways to use our character strengths intentionally.

In case you are new on my blog and don\’t really know what character strengths are, I will just say this: they are the backbone of Positive Psychology – the science that studies human flourishing, or what leads humans to peak performance. These character strengths have been researched intensely in the last 20+ years and the studies say that they are:

1. Universal – we all have them, no matter where we live
2. Cross-cultural – they exist in all cultures of the world
3. Easily recognized – we apply them without thinking
4. Elevating to self and others – they put us in a state of flow and lead to peak performance

The Strengths Calendar for August shares simple ways to promote leadership, teamwork and fairness in our lives. Some of the activities have a link that you can access if you click on the image – each of them will lead you to an article or a video about that specific strength:

But for now, let\’s just see what each of them means:

Leadership is a strength within the virtue category of Justice. Actually all 3 strengths are part of this virtue.

According to VIACharacter.org, as a character strength, leadership refers to the tendency to organize and encourage a group to get things done, while maintaining good relations within the group. Leadership involves setting goals and accomplishing them, enlisting effective help, building coalitions, and smoothing ruffled feathers.

In regards to leaders, VIACharacter.org tells us that there are two types of leaders:

Transactional leaders – this type of leader clarifies responsibilities, expectations, and the tasks to be accomplished

Transformational leaders – this leader motivates their followers to perform at an extremely high level, fostering a climate of trust and commitment to the organization and its goals

Fairness is treating everyone equally and fairly, giving everyone the same chance, applying the same rules to everyone, though you also realize that what is fair for one person might not be fair for another.

According to VIACharacter.org, fairness involves 2 types of reasoning:

Care reasoning – includes empathy and compassion; the ability to put yourself in somebody else\’s shoes.

Justice reasoning – emphasizes logic and weighing principles to determine moral rights and responsibilities.

Teamwork means that you are a dedicated, reliable, and contributing member to your small group or team. The team could be big – a work group or a sports team – or as small as your marriage. Teamwork is closely related to 3 other concepts:

Patriotism: loyalty toward one\’s homeland/nation without hostility toward other nations.

Citizenship: responsibility toward one\’s community

Loyalty: unwavering trust for a group

As a certified positive psychology coach, I am here to see if I can be of service to you in your quest to discover yourself, your values and super-powers (= character strengths). I will be delighted to be your guide on the path of putting your character strengths to work, so that you can live a life filled with enthusiasm.

Looking forward to meeting you, so we can discover together how you can live the life YOU want.

Stay close for the next blogpost, where we will see what is the \”golden mean\” for each of the character strengths we talked about today – we will learn how each of them can be used optimally (not too little or too much).

Remember, 2024 will be (y)our BEST year yet ;)!

Until next time, stay positive and take care of yourselves!