Lea Waters

Professor, esteemed speaker, mom guiding parents, school systems and workplaces through positive education and psychology

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Dr. Lea Waters is a substantive and inspirational speaker. She is also one of those rare speakers who brings research to life so that it can be directly applied in practice. She is engaging, informative and impactful, providing lasting impacts on the audience who is fortunate enough to hear her speak.

Jane Dutton PhD.

Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

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With a warm and personable approach, keynote speaker Lea Waters, Ph.D., builds a bridge between science and inner self to reveal the power of positivity. Founder of The Strength Switch, a facilitated program focusing on strength-based parenting and positive education, professor Lea is the author of more than 100 scientific articles and book chapters.

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Keynotes

Keynote by Speaker Lea Waters: Strength-Based Parenting

In research, Lea Waters, Ph.D., has found 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
, speaker 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

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

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Keynote by Speaker Lea Waters: Strength-Based Parenting for Kids on the Spectrum

Parents with kids on the spectrum are all too familiar with being told about the deficits and challenges their children face. Yet, what happens when we consider the upside that comes along with having a different neurotype? Like all kids, those along the spectrum have both strengths and weaknesses – the two don’t cancel each other out. Building up strengths can occur at the same time as we work with challenges. The problems and differences for kids on the spectrum don’t negate the many strengths these children have and yet it is typical for schools, psychologists and others to focus on the negative.

Strength-based parenting is an approach that helps parents see the upside, it provides a new way to see and enable kids along the spectrum and to build happy, peaceful family dynamics. By intentionally seeing and building strengths in your children (and yourself) you can:

Focus on the positives and put the negative into perspective

Build off the confidence of your child

See the big picture and use strengths to help overcome challenges

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Keynote by Speaker Lea Waters: Strength-Based Teaching

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. Speaker Lea Waters, Ph.D., 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 takeaways:

Key research findings that clearly links strengths to well-being and academic achievement;

Best practices for introducing strengths into the classroom

Practical methods for how to embed strengths into the staff room.

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Keynote by Speaker Lea Waters: Making Wellbeing Visible in Schools

Schools across the world are aiming to turn wellbeing policy into practice. To address this problem, professor and speaker Lea Waters, Ph.D., designed Visible Wellbeing™ which combines the science of well-being with the science of learning to make well-being visible in all classes and across co-curricular. In this presentation, Lea shares the Visible Wellbeing tool kit of flexible well-being practices that go beyond traditional well-being programs. She provides techniques that help teachers to use the learning process itself as a delivery mechanism to build student well-being. 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 well-being 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 takeaways:

Knowledge of techniques that help teachers to use the learning process itself as a delivery mechanism to build student well-being

Be able to help students and staff to more clearly see their own and other’s well being using Visible Wellbeing practices

Understand how to use the SEARCH framework to help students and staff more systematically build well-being and facilitate learning through the Visible Wellbeing classroom process

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Keynote by Speaker Lea Waters: Gratitude at Work

Does your workplace suffer from Gratitude Deficit Disorder? Professor and speaker Lea Waters, Ph.D., conducted research on the application of positive psychology to business cultures and 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

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Customer Reviews

Jane Dutton PhD. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

I have worked with Lea closely as an educator in both Hong Kong and New York and have seen her inspire teachers and parents in both contexts. She has a rare combination of superb academic qualifications matched with a deft personal touch. I recommend her highly!

Sarah McLean Director| Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, NYC

Working with Professor Lea Waters is insightful, inspiring and invigorating; indeed she lives and breathes every aspect of Visible Wellbeing. Lea’s outstanding ability to connect with others enables her to develop strong rapport with those she works with. She is a woman to be admired and a role model for all.

Joanne Wastle Principal| Kambrya College, VIC, Australia

Lea is an outstanding and inspirational leader. Her courage, professionalism and passion for positive psychology are contagious. She is a delight to know and a pleasure to work with.

Alex Johnstone CEO| IPC Health

Lea Waters

Get motivated and inspired with positive psychology

Why book speaker Lea Waters?

She can lead parents to positivity. Humans are wired to focus on the negative. As your keynote speaker, Lea proposes a better way. Learn how to short-circuit defaults with a mental switch that shifts attention from weaknesses to strengths, from negatives to positives.

She will strengthen your education team. In her book,
The Strength Switch
, Lea writes in detail about how the strength-based approach gives us the power to live the good life. It begins with by drawing on the most abundant inner resources (our strengths!).

She supports science with strategy. A professor and keynote speaker, Lea takes the concepts of positive education and positive psychology from the blackboard to the boardroom and gives audiences real-world, actionable strategies.

Through extensive academic research, Lea has earned the distinction of being one of the world’s leading experts on positive education, positive organizations, strength-based parenting and teaching. She is the president of the International Positive Psychology Association, serves on the World Happiness Council’s Council of Happiness & Education, and she is the founding director of the Centre for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne, where she has worked for more than 20 years.

As a university researcher and renowned keynote speaker, Lea combines science into strength-based strategies to help organizations, educators and parents around the world build resilience in their employees, their children and themselves. Her teachings have resonated with audiences in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Amsterdam, China, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, New Zealand and South Africa. Her book,
The Strength Switch
, was named the top new release in the parenting category on Amazon and has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Japanese, Hungarian, Arabic and French.