Dr. Spencer "Skip" Niles, President-Elect for National Career Development Association was at his summer camp here in Maine recently about 25 minutes from me. So I decided to interview him at his camp on Great Pond about his work on being authentic in career development and weaving hope into our work. I was inspired to interview Skip after attending his series of three webinars called, Reclaim your soul: Making choices that honor your authentic self. Watch this interview where we … [Read more...]
Journaling: Taking ‘Fuzzy Thinking’ to Concrete Ideas in Career Development
As a career coach/counselor, do you ask your clients to journal? I do occasionally because I believe the process of taking ideas out of their heads and putting them on paper can be a very powerful activity. “A goal not written is only a wish.” I believe this is true in the career development process...write it down and think it through. Personally I try to journal every day, first thing in the morning. I choose to free-style it and just write about what is important to me that day. It … [Read more...]
Changing Perspectives Using Intentional Serendipity
In my first blog on this topic I spoke about: [1] helping people embrace chance events in their lives [2] taking action, and [3] encouraging curiosity. Let’s talk about what else you can do as a career advisor to assist people in “intentionally” creating “serendipitous” events to create opportunity by changing their perspective of the situation. 4] One “gift” we have as career advisors is the ability to reframe events in peoples’ lives in such a way to make it look like an opportunity. … [Read more...]
“It’s Not What You Know….” cuts both ways.
Sometimes knowing a person can be a problem. My mother-in-law has always stated “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” And I argued with her once (only once :-) that you also have to KNOW something AND be a good person as well. I KNOW some people and I can guarantee I would NEVER hire them! As career counselors / advisors, we all know the power of networking and how important it is to find someone on the “inside” of a company, but that is only the first step. … [Read more...]
Fight or flight in career decision making
Trust Those Instincts Every decision a CEO makes is based upon incomplete information, often less than 10% according to The Two Second Advantage book I recently finished. Why would career decision making be any different? … [Read more...]