Book Review 2013

Reading is key to writing, or so I believe, so 2013 started with a personal goal to read 30 books. I’ve got a few weeks left until the end of the year, and I’m on number 28. I’d like to make a habit of creating a year-end book review to point others in the direction of what reading I found most insightful and meaningful. The 2013 list: Topic: Personal Leadership Choice: First Things First Blog posts from this year that include excerpts or ideas from this choice: A Lesson in Personal Leadership 1: Define and Focus on What’s Important Personal

Are You Offering Your Child Gold for Career and College Advice?

I wish I had a dollar for every student I talked to about career and college choices that has said something along the line of “….but my dad doesn’t think that’s a good idea” or “my mom told me not to go into that.” Even though most parents don’t think that their teenaged or college aged children care at all what they think, the truth is, they internalize what you are telling them about career and college choices and often, rule out things that they might be drawn to because of your words. Even your words that may have been

Our best leadership movie pick! Up at December’s International Leadership Carnival.

The December 2013 Leadership Development Carnival: Leadership at the Movies Edition My favorite movie for Leadership (and career) Development is Coach Carter.  The reason I have chosen this movie is because of the following quote that one of his players stands up and shares after the coach has made a profound point with his players and the school board about priorities and what it means to be a leade: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask

Learn and Do

In a work skills class I teach, each person takes a learning style quiz.  Usually, more than half the students identify themselves through the assessment as a kinesthetic (learning by doing) learner, yet most of the way education is structured today is geared towards visual (read it or see it on a slide presentation) and auditory (hear it in a lecture) learning, not learning by doing.  Yet it takes all of these methods in order to maximize learning, regardless of your dominant style. A key to discovering your talents, passions and values is to actually do something to see what you like and don’t

Want to maximize your learning?

If you’re like me, you may be a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of information that is out there just waiting to be absorbed.  And so much of it is free! It’s exciting to think that so much potential for learning is just a click away, but it can be daunting to think about where to start in consuming the knowledge that may be of interest to you. Before launching into an in-depth search for learning material based on that in which you are passionate, challenge yourself to discover how you learn best and then find mechanisms that help