The first step in finding your light is to know yourself. The three pieces of knowing yourself involve discovering your talents, passions and values. We’ll start first with identifying your talents. There are many ways to define and identify talents, but for the purpose of career exploration and development, I think they best way to identify your talents is to define them in the way that employers do. After all, the whole point of knowing yourself is so that you can be able to find a career that you enjoy doing so that your light can shine. KSAOs – Knowledge,
4 TIPS FOR C LEVEL EXECUTIVES TO EMPOWER THE MIDDLE MANAGER I often think that being a “middle manager” may be the worst place to be in the organizational hierarchy. I often have middle managers in my leadership classes who complain that they feel stuck in the role of go-betweener. They feel as though the purpose they serve is to act as a buffer between employees and upper management without the authority to make key decisions that they feel are best for their people and the company. I recently saw this happening to a middle manager that told me, “I
As a child, I remember singing “This Little Light of Mine” in Vacation Bible School. My favorite part was when we got to sing, “Hide it under a bushel, NO! I’m gonna let it shine!” I think I, in part, loved this section of the song because we got to yell the word, “NO!” when yelling was hardly ever allowed in church or at any other place for that matter. Now as a career and leadership coach, I find that I love this part of the song because shouting a resounding “NO!” to hiding your “light” under a
I attended a seminar last week discussing ways to improve productivity and communication in the workplace. One thing that stood out to me in the presentation was the emphasis the presenter placed on eliminating stressors so that people could be innovative and creative. He placed a value on innovation and creativity as the only differentiating factors in creating a sustainable advantage. What if standard or traditional work arrangements are creating workplace stressors and reducing innovation and creativity? This leads me to consider a tie to a book I mentioned last week, The Elephant and the Flea and its emphasis on
I will be starting a weekly blog post on Thursdays (in addition to our leadership focused blog post on Mondays) that focuses on Career Development. Although this will be useful information for people of all ages, it should particularly be helpful for students. Hope you enjoy this new series! Here’s what we’ll cover: Part 1: Your Horizon A. Know Yourself: Explore your talents, passions and values to make wise career decisions. -Talents as employers see them- KSAOs (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Other Characteristics) -Passions through your Holland Code -Values- know your ideal workstyle and lifestyle B. Understand the Market -Are you useful?