Author: Mary Ila Ward

Career Spotlight: High School Teacher

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.

On the other hand, if you don’t enjoy being around children or are interested in an enormous salary, becoming a teacher may not be a good fit for you.

High school teachers help prepare students for life after graduation. They teach academic lessons and various skills that students will need to attend college and to enter the job market. Read more at Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Check out this article from The Washington Post to find out the 12 Qualities Great Teachers Share.

What do you need to be a High School Teacher?

Education:

A Bachelor’s Degree is required to become a high school teacher.

If you are a high school student and would like to become a teacher, focus on taking classes in the subject(s) you plan to teach.

If you are interested in a career change to the education field and already have a Bachelor’s Degree, you can enroll in an alternative certification program and become a teacher in 1-2 years. Find out more at Education Portal.

Skills:

High School Teachers know about:

Learning Strategies
Speaking and Active Listening
Critical Thinking
Time Management
Reading Comprehension
Social Perceptiveness

Is the field growing?

ONET reports a “Bright Outlook” for High School Teaching Jobs. Careers in this field are expected to have a large number of job openings over the next 10 years.

According to Teach.com, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education is a great example of an area where there is a high demand for great teachers. Teaching might be an ideal career change for an individual with a degree in one of the STEM areas.

What is the pay like?

What’s the Holland Code* for a High School Teacher?

Interest code: SAE- Social, Artistic, Enterprising

Social — Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.

Artistic — Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.

Enterprising — Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.

Source: http://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/17-2141.00

If you are interested in learning more about becoming a High School Teacher, check out ONET.

Would you want to be a High School Teacher? Why or why not?

*Holland Codes are a way to classify a person based on their skills and interests as well as jobs based on the nature of the work. If you have an interest in knowing what your Holland Code is in order to match yourself to careers to pursue, you can read more about our assessment process.

January 6, 2015

New Years Resolutions 101: Don’t put the cart before the horse
It’s a new year. Have you set your resolutions or goals? Most of us do, but then give up on them by the end of January.

One key reason I see people fail at goal setting in the leadership and career coaching we do (and for myself as well) is because we put the cart before the horse. We set a goal and don’t have any method put in place for measuring progress towards it or achievement of it.

Maybe a couple of examples will help:

1. I’m so guilty of this, so I’ll use myself as an example first.   In 2013, I set a goal for my family to sit down at the dinner table and eat together on average four times a week. And as you can read about in this post, in 2013 this goal was a total flop.   One of the main reasons it was a failure was because I put the cart before the horse. I didn’t put in place a way to track it and therefore my progress towards it, which lead to no motivation and no results achieved.

I reset this goal in 2014, with a plan to track progress towards staying on track for this effort because I felt like making dinner together as a family a priority and a habit is important to my family’s health in so many ways. Thank goodness for my mother-in-law and one of her Christmas presents to me at the end of 2013. It was a simple weekly calendar booklet that had a magnet on the back.    I set out to plan our weekly meals on this, design a grocery list around it and then simply check off the days we had achieved a meal at the table. It was stuck to the refrigerator as a visual reminder all year.

As you can see here, the “5” at the top is the number of days we ate together. Not all weeks were this good, but overall, the goal was met. More importantly, I’ve established a habit that will hopefully keep this priority going without setting a goal for it (and hopefully my mother-in-law knows how much I love this simple tool and has another one waiting for me this Christmas).

2. One of the clients I love working with went about establishing an accountability culture in 2013, and created a performance dashboard to track their progress.

You can read more about their story as a company here. As I now work with this team coaching their managers, I love setting goals with them because they have already established ways to measure performance.   It is not uncommon, when setting goals with companies and individuals for one of the goals, or sub-goals of a large goal, to first put in place a way to measure and track performance towards the desired outcome. With this company, the horse is already there and it helps pull the cart.

If you are looking to set your New Year’s Resolutions or make sure they are achieved, don’t put the cart before the horse:
1. Put in place a mechanism for tracking goal progress and attainment.
2. Make the tracking mechanism visual and put it where you see it ALL the time.
3. Monitor and record performance toward the goal with your mechanism at least weekly.
4. Recalibrate if your mechanism is creating more work, thus decreasing motivation. Don’t get rid of the goal, just find a more efficient way to track it that leads to synergies in other areas.
If you need help doing this, our goal setting worksheet, which includes a section for “measurement” of each goal may help you.

How are you measuring your goal(s) for 2015?
January 1, 2015
Passion + Productivity = Give Back (Real Estate)

As I walk into Micor to talk with their Vice President, Dave Ponegalek, about how they demonstrate passion + productivity = give back in the work that they do, there are signs on every door in the building that say “Thank you Ms. Lydia for your 5 years of service.”   When I arrived, I saw “Ms. Lydia” as most affectionately call her, walking over from the other building with a huge cake in her hand. Her anniversary cake. Everyone in the company has been over at the building celebrating her five years of contribution to the company.

Although Dave never mentions celebrating employee anniversaries as a way the company demonstrates a give back mindset (it is just so ingrained in who they are and what they do it doesn’t seem noteworthy to him), it is just one example of the passion, leading to productivity and giving that runs through Micor Industries.

Micor was established in Union Grove, Alabama, by Mike Heath in 2000. In 2002, the company moved to its first location in Decatur, Alabama, and since that time has grown to be a go-to provider of machined parts for a variety of customers. In addition, the company has won the Alabama Emerging Manufacturer of the Year and has grown to 70 employees.

When asked about Micor’s focus on passion, it is obvious the focus is on being a valued partner to customers by being the best in their business. Micor hires and retains individuals who are passionate about machining quality parts and meeting customer needs.

What strikes me the most, though, in the way that Micor achieves its results is through a relentless focus on tracking and measuring performance. In 2013, a focus on establishing an accountability culture was created. Every important factor in the business was set and measured in the form of a dashboard. It is visual, it is reviewed weekly, everyone sees it and everyone knows where things stand. The next step in this accountability culture is driving the visual reminder of the results that need to monitored and achieved through TV screens throughout the company’s two facilities. This focus on the productivity measures that drive profitability lead to increased rewards for all at Micor.

Because Micor knows the focus on passion and productivity is driven by it’s people, the accountability culture is a part of all the team. “If everyone cares about what they are doing, they are going to give more than their all everyday. They will care if the part ships today instead of tomorrow, and care about if the product is right, packed right, etc.,” says Dave Ponegalek.”

This leads to a focus on continuous professional development, rewards in the form of bonuses when profitability goals are met, gift cards given out at random for a job well done and, yes, anniversary cakes.

The focus on being a valued partner extends beyond customer and employee partnerships. Micor sees itself as a partner in the community. This creates a “ripple effect” as owner Mike Heath emphasizes that being involved in the community leads to better results for everyone.

One example of Micor’s focus on giving back comes through their partnership with Decatur Heritage Christian Academy.    Each year, Micor holds a contest for high school seniors at the school.   The students are required to write about what they want to be when they grow up and are then interviewed by a team. The winner(s) get to job shadow with Micor, which includes a trip to Houston to meet with Micor customers.

“We want to spark interest in our industry and create more people with a passion for what we do,” say Dave. The value of seeing first-hand what an industry and a job is like is, unfortunately, not an experience many high school students get to have or try to pursue.   When a passion for what you do leads to giving back in ways that allow others to spark a passion, we all win- individuals, companies and communities.

You can learn more about Micor by visiting their website at:

http://www.micorind.com/

And by following them on Facebook.

December 29, 2014
The Best Books to Give for Every Person on Your Christmas Gift List

My reading list for 2014 has been shorter than my 2013 list for a variety of reasons- new baby, more time spent devoted to working with some wonderful clients and probably, most importantly, due to not setting a goal around reading this year (But that’s a post for another day- stay tuned for lots of good goal setting stuff soon to help us all kick off those New Year’s resolutions in the right fashion.)

But, I have read some good ones this year and want to recommend my top picks organized for those hard to shop for people in which you may still be searching for the right gift.

For the Business Person: Scale: Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back Although the title of the book implies that this book is for business owners, the book is really for anyone that wants to work smarter not harder.

Favorite quotes from the book:

“The world doesn’t pay you for the hours you put in; it pays you for the value you create.”

The right parking space for your company lies at the intersection of three factors: your company’s biggest strengths (your parking space must rely on what you do really well); your market’s deepest desires around your type of product or service (it must be something that your market values); and the open spaces your competitors don’t already own in the mind of your market (it is very expensive to move another company out of a space if they truly already own it).

For an article that says the same thing as the above quote for the job seeker check out: Why Pursuing Your Passion is Not Enough

For the seemingly lost and the youth contemplating direction for his or her future: Steve Jobs

Favorite quotes from the book:

“Jobs also began to feel guilty, he later said, about spending so much of his parents’ money on an education that did not seem worthwhile. ‘All of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition,’ he recounted in a famous commencement address at Stanford. ‘I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay.’”

“There falls a shadow, as T. S. Eliot noted, between the conception and the creation. In the annals of innovation, new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important.”

“I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people you don’t have to baby them,” Jobs later explained. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. The original Mac team taught me that A-plus players like to work together, and they don’t like it if you tolerate B work. Ask any member of that Mac team. They will tell you it was worth the pain.”

For more on the thoughts this last quote reflects see: Leadership Lessons from College Football: The “Mediocre” and Team Success

For anyone who wants to be better: Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements

Favorite quote from the book:

“1.Every day, use your strengths. 2. Identify someone with a shared mission who encourages your growth. Spend more time with this person. 3. Opt into more social time with the people and teams you enjoy being around.”

For the Avid Reader: Get them an e-reader and encourage them to go digital. I mostly made the switch to digital after extreme reluctance. I like a book in my hand and lots on my shelves. But, I have begun reading on my iPad through the Kindle app and love it. Most notably, I love that I can highlight and save quotes from books I’ve read and find them as references all in one place. Let me tell you, this blog post was much easier this year with digital files than it was last year because I could easily find and quote my favorites with a click of the mouse.

For the avid reader who is still reluctant to switch to e-reading: Give them a subscription to Signed Firsts from Square Booksin Oxford, MS. This classic bookstore just makes you happy when you walk in. It is one of the last true, locally owned bookstores and they have a program where you get a book (sometimes two) a month which include ēnew releases, hardback and signed. They mail them to your door each month and charge you monthly for the book(s) sent.

What was your best read this year?

December 18, 2014
5 Ways To Find Your Productivity Sweet Spot
Have you already started to think about your 2014 New Year’s resolutions? Before you do, consider how you can be most productive is a good way to frame those resolutions before you attempt to define them and then tackle them with the onset of 2014.

Fast Company devoted much of its latest issue to productivity by highlighting productive people. These people all found their productivity sweet spot in a variety of ways. I could find no consistency in the activities or routines each person established, but there were several insights gleaned from the ways these highly productive and successful people in all walks of life found their sweet spots:
1. Find what time of day you are most productive and maximize it. Find yourself getting the most done before lunch but waning by the time 2 pm rolls around? Get up early and maximize that time. Tackle your most important tasks in the morning. Hit your stride and motivation after dinner? Set aside your big tasks or activities that require the most thinking for that time of day.
2. Eliminate distractions during your most productive times. You are definitely a morning person, but the first thing you do in the morning is check your email and you start your day bogged down before it even really begins. Don’t open your inbox until you’ve tackled what’s most important. Find yourself feeling inspired around 9 pm but your habit is just to sit in front of the TV? Turn it off. Distractions could be as simple as spending too much time making decisions that are simply distractions. For example, one person highlighted in Fast Company said she eats the same thing for lunch everyday. It eliminates the time it takes to get the lunch together and to think about what to eat. Supposedly college football’s most sought after coach does this too.
3. Find what inspires you to be productive and engage in those Activities. Are you fueled by a good workout; a good conversation with certain people who stimulate your thinking or a good read that gets your creativity flowing? Set aside time to do these things. These activities are just as important if not more than getting to those tasks that demand your productivity.
4. Use productivity “tools” to help you maximize your productivity, not as solution to lack of motivation. I’m intrigued by the productivity app Carrot. Apparently (I don’t use it) it lets you load your to-do list, and when you check things off the list, you earn points to get things for being productive. There are also apps and websites allowing people to earn money for losing weight. You pay for the service, and hedge your bets. But guess what? These sites make money. Why? Because most people don’t see their goals through to the end. People don’t lose weight not because the tool doesn’t work, but because the tool doesn’t generate the motivation needed to be successful. So vet your tools wisely. Use them because they help you manage your productivity not motivate it.
5. Be passionate. It’s hard to sustain productivity if you aren’t passionate about what you spend most of your doing. As Joe Berkowitz stated in his feature in Fast Company, “If you love what you do, it’s easy to be productive.” Being productive for the sake of productivity isn’t actually productive. It’s just spinning on a wheel that leads to nowhere and helps no one. Find what cranks your tractor and spend more time on it.
What tips do you have for maximizing productivity as we approach a new year with new resolutions?
December 16, 2014