SESSION OVERVIEW
This highly interactive, practical workshop introduces a strengths-based, coaching-informed approach to helping students feel seen, capable, and connected. Our strengths shape how we think, feel, and behave, yet research suggests that only around one in three people has a clear understanding of their own strengths. When strengths are intentionally noticed and activated, they are linked to greater wellbeing, stronger relationships, and higher engagement and satisfaction.
Drawing on over 20 years of strengths research, the session explores how to notice, name, and encourage strengths in yourself, your peers, and the students you support. The workshop is designed around short, interactive activities including:
• A brief “peak experience” reflection to identify strengths in action.
• Triad coaching practice using simple, strengths-focused questions.
• Small-group design tasks to embed strengths into events, volunteering, and peer programs.
• A guided reflection on applying strengths in culturally responsive and neurodiversity-affirming ways.
Participants will leave with practical coaching questions, reflection activities, and ideas for strengths-based interactions they can use immediately in conversations with colleagues and in student-facing programs. The session will also include suggestions for practical strengths-based activities that staff can incorporate into student events and leadership training.
Session Outcomes:
• A clear understanding of how to identify strengths in themselves and others.
• Simple coaching questions and reflection activities they can use with staff and students.
• Practical strategies for shifting conversations from problem-fixing to capability-building.
• Ideas for embedding strengths-based practice into belonging, resilience, and engagement work.
• A cross-cultural and neurodiversity-affirming lens for applying strengths in practice.
• A transferable framework they can adapt for future student workshops and programs.
PRESENTER
Nigel Woods is an experienced coaching psychologist based on Dharawal Country (the Illawarra) in NSW, working with individuals and groups to enhance insight, wellbeing, and performance. He worked extensively in higher education, including close to 10 years as a university counsellor supporting student mental health and academic performance. During that time, Nigel championed initiatives to drive student success, including a group therapy program for mood disorders and a highly successful peer coaching initiative. Nigel designed and established a student success coach function within the University of Wollongong, which during the pandemic pivoted into delivering a peer-coaching program in which he trained and supervised senior students to provide telehealth coaching to peers identified as at risk of not adjusting to rapidly changing circumstances.
Nigel regularly designs and delivers workshops on topics such as strengths, resilience, self-care, mindset, and leadership. His approach blends curiosity and empathy with humour under a strengths-based, neurodiversity-affirming lens. He is passionate translating psychological research into practical tools that SENCON participants can use in everyday conversations and in the
fantastic work they do engaging students to feel seen, supported, and able to belong.