Student | Teen Program Outline

Youth leader, Diane, gets her youth group off to great start by:

• helping them appreciate their personality traits
• learning to respect differences in other people’s styles
• flexing their style to improve communication

By starting with a short communication skills workshop she can avoid misunderstandings that typically pop up between teenagers.

The student/teen version of the INSIGHT Inventory helps teens identify their own strengths and see each other’s positive characteristics. This gives them a quick way to get to know each other and meet new friends from a positive, strengths perspective. Using the INSIGHT Inventory also gives Diane a way to design her youth program so that it is interesting to teens with different personality preferences.

Program Title: Communicating Better with Friends and Family
Appreciating your Strengths and Respecting Each Other’s Personality Styles

Hour one

• Clarifying the importance of communication and respect
• Learning about your personality strengths
  (take and interpret the INSIGHT Inventory)
• Exploring differences and how they lead to both friendships and misunderstandings

Hour two

• How your behavior may be different in class than it is at home
• What triggers stress and how do you react – is it working?
• How to flex your style to connect better with friends
• How to cope with parents who have different styles

Diane finds that these workshops give teens an opportunity to:

• get to know each other better
• avoid misunderstandings and personality conflicts
• improve communication from the start

Since teens tend to be quick to judge the INSIGHT Inventory gives Diane a positive, very concrete way to redirect that tendency and make it positive rather than negative.

In her youth program Diane shares own personality characteristics and describes how these relate to the way she connects with her friends, conducts classes, deals with discipline issues, and even reacts to stress on bad days.

Diane also believes that she benefits as much—if not more—than her students. She learns at the beginning of the program what each teens’ personality strengths are and can then use this information to adapt her content and leadership so they are more effective.