Education Elements, an organization that helps school districts personalize learning,embodies the saying “Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand” in their approach to education. Because of their belief that learning can be customized for every student, powerful results are being seen across the nation in student outcomes.

Their story demonstrates how passion + productivity for the work that they do and for improving K-12 education leads to students who are better prepared by their education for college and career so that they can give back to their communities as they get older.

With a growing need to manage project based work coupled with the need to vet an individual’s leadership capabilities, organizations are assigning hi-potentials with informal leadership roles, or project manager roles, before giving them the positional and formal leadership authority over others.  

Engineering is a “hot field” right now. Whether you are considering changing your college major or are currently in the workforce and looking for a career change, engineering may be one option you should consider.

Do you enjoy science and math? Maybe lab work and analyzing data is something you do in your current career that you like and want to continue to do. Or maybe you enjoy working with blueprints and designing. If so, a career in an engineering discipline might be a good fit for you.

If matching individual and company values drives job satisfaction and organizational results more than anything else, maybe one thing we need to add to our selection processes is a bumper sticker check.

One of our key questions around this idea is: What characteristics are most important in terms of employment marital bliss?  Dating sites have isolated key variables leading to marital satisfaction by matching people correctly, can’t we get better at doing the same thing for employers and employees and save us all a lot of time and headaches?

We’ve been getting a lot of questions lately related to performance evaluations. Specifically, these questions center on how to structure evaluation forms in a way that supports priorities of the organization and drives individual and, therefore, organizational performance.

Of course, it’s really not about the form at all. It’s about knowing what drives the performance of your organization, translating that to individual metrics, then equipping leaders with the ability to focus on constant performance feedback.

Do you love planning? Are you a good communicator who has a passion for designing? Are interested in geography? If so, then a career as an Urban Planner may be perfect for you.

On the other hand, if you don’t enjoy working directly with the public or developing strategies and thinking creatively, becoming an urban planner may not be a good fit for you.

As January comes to a close, many of us are saddled with the potential reality that our new years resolutions, many of them fitness and health related, are falling by the wayside.

Susan Ozier, a Health and Fitness Coach, knows how many of us feel when it comes to this reality and is using her personal experience to fuel passion and productivity to give back to others in a way that helps them achieve their goals.  

I’ve always been a list maker. I love to make a list at the end of each work day, so I can draw a red line through item after time the following work day. And, by the way, I don’t just do this for work. I do it for everything: grocery list, kid’s activities for the week, Christmas shopping list, cleaning for the week and the list goes on and on. I’m the queen of lists. 

I want to round out the goal setting discussion by focusing on the importance of feedback.  To illustrate, feedback has played a critical role in a current client business coaching engagement.  To begin the coaching process this past summer, we employed a 360° feedback mechanism to help set priorities for the client's development.  Feedback was first necessary to set goals and priorities.

A career as an athlete is something many dream about, but only a small percentage of those who dream of playing a sport actually make that dream come true.

After your “glory days” or maybe after you begin a family, you may consider a career change. Regardless of whether you have an injury that forces you to consider a new career or if you are just ready to get out of the game, where do you begin? What’s your next move?

In my last post, I talked about the importance of goal commitment when setting goals for yourself and/or those you lead.

Today, I want to discuss the law of diminishing returns and how it relates to goal setting.  I have honestly thought about a dozen different things that I want to focus on for the New Year, have you?The law of diminishing returns tells us that the more goals we set, the less likely we are to achieve them.  One goal distracts from another, leaving us less likely to accomplish anything.

Research has shown that goal setting, if done correctly, is one of the most supported motivational techniques (Jex & Britt 2008). Setting goals can help you maximize success for yourself and/or the people that you lead.

Hopefully you’ve gotten your 2015 new years resolutions down on paper and have a way to track attainment towards them.

Once you’ve done this, I’d encourage you to forget about the goal(s) for 2015 and instead focus on the process that leads to achieving the goals.  Why?  Focusing on the long-term often leads to paralyses in the short term.   For example, if your goal is to lose 100 pounds, this could easily become overwhelming.  If you instead focus on a sub-objective towards that goal of limiting your calorie intake to say, 2000 a day and exercising for 30 minutes 5 days a week, these sub-objectives are much easier to measure on a daily basis and much easier to achieve from day-to-day. 

Do you love kids? Are you a good communicator who has a passion for coaching and developing others? Is organization one of your strengths? If so, then a career as a High School Teacher may be perfect for you.