Preparing for the Future

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Preparing for the Future

• Traditional approaches to career planning assume
  that society is static, that individuals do not
  change, and that work choices are made for a
  lifetime. But we need only look at the
  burgeoning literature on career transitions to
  realize that those assumptions are no longer
  correct. The most frequent estimate is that the
  average adult will make five to seven major
  career changes in a lifetime. (Source
  Hansen, 1997, p. 10)

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Beginning Questions

• What do you currently do?
• How do you define Career?
• What was the first job you ever thought about?
  How old were you?
• What do you think will be the final job in your
  life?

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Building on Your Strengths
A C T I V I T Y G U I
D E

• Your Career Development Journey

Presented by
Don Schutt Office of Human Resource
Development University of Wisconsin-Madison dschut
t_at_bascom.wisc.edu http//www.ohrd.wisc.edu 608-26
3-1016
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Agenda

• New Approaches to Career Development
• Career Planning
• Appreciating
• Envisioning
• Co-Constructing Sustaining
• Endnote

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Life Planning Influences
Please take an index card
Earliest messages from caregivers
Life you envisioned at age 18
Name or position of someone who influenced you
What will you be doing 15 years from now?
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Finding Connections

• Please share your pieces, corner by corner, with
  someone near you.
• What patterns do you notice in your responses?
• What commonalities do you share with your
  partner(s)?
• What are your unique strengths?

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Redefining Career Development

• Is a lifelong process
• Enables individuals to find personal connections
  to the world of work
• Considers entire Life Context
• Career Development as
• Life Planning

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Specific Processes

• Developing and refining your picture of yourself
• Increasing your understanding of the world of
  work
• Enhancing your ability to plan

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Three Critical Questions

• Who Am I?
• Where Am I Going?
• How Do I Get There?

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The Career Development Process
Assessment

• Who Am I?
• Life priorities
• Interests
• Preferences
• Aptitudes
• Skills

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The Career Development Process
Assessment

• Who Am I?
• Life priorities
• Interests
• Preferences
• Aptitudes
• Skills

Exploration

• Where Am I Going?
• Career Information
• Labor Market Information
• Career research
• Goal Setting

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The Career Development Process
Assessment

• Who Am I?
• Life priorities
• Interests
• Preferences
• Aptitudes
• Skills

Action
Exploration

• Where Am I Going?
• Career Information
• Labor Market Information
• Career research
• Goal Setting

• How Do I Get There?
• Skills to develop
• Education/training
• Self marketing activities
• Obstacles/strategies

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Enter, Appreciative Inquiry

• Something works
• Our focus becomes our reality
• Multiple realities are created every moment
• Asking questions influences our behavior
• We are confident with the future when we know the
  past
• Carry forward the best
• Embrace the uniqueness of what we offer
• Language creates our reality

Hammond (1996), pp. 20-21.
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What is Appreciative Inquiry

• Appreciative Inquiry is a collaborative and
  highly participative, system-wide approach to
  seeking, identifying, and enhancing the
  life-giving forces that are present when a
  system is performing optimally in human,
  economic, and organizational terms.

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Appreciative Inquiry Applications

• Strategy for intentional change
• Identifies the best of what is and
  possibilities of what could be
• Process for engaging people
• Choose consciously to seek out inquiry into that
  which is generative and life enriching
• Engaging people to build an organization in which
  they want to work
• Way of seeing
• Attentive to and affirming of the best and
  highest qualities

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Core Processes
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Appreciative Inquiry Processes

• Strategy for intentional change
• Affirming highest qualities of a system
• Identifies the best of what is
• Pursues possibilities of what could be
• Cooperative search
• Strengths
• Passions
• Life-giving forces

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The Career Development Process
Assessment

• Who Am I?
• Life priorities
• Interests
• Preferences
• Aptitudes
• Skills

Action
Exploration

• Where Am I Going?
• Career Information
• Labor Market Information
• Career research
• Goal Setting

• How Do I Get There?
• Skills to develop
• Education/training
• Self marketing activities
• Obstacles/strategies

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A More Affirming Process
Assessment
Discovery What gives life? (The best of what
is) Appreciating
Action
Exploration
Dream What might be? (What is the world calling
for) Envisioning
Destiny How to empower, learn and adjust/
improvise? Sustaining
Design What should be the ideal? Co-Construc
ting
Troxel, J. (2001)
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Challenging Assumptions

• Flawed Assumptions
• Each person can learn to be competent in almost
  anything.
• Each persons greatest room for growth is in her
  or his areas of greatest weakness.

• Alternative Assumptions
• Each persons talents are enduring and unique.
• Each persons greatest room for growth is in the
  areas of his or her greatest strength.

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What Does This Mean?

• The process of career development may be
  different now compared to what we learned it to
  be.
• We need to view ourselves as the ARCHITECTS OF
  OUR OWN CAREERS.
• We need tools to help us do this tools like
  CAREER PLANS.

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Creating a Plan

• Capturing the Career Development Journey

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Organizing the Plan

• Who am I? (Appreciating)
• Where am I going?
• (Envisioning)
• How do I get there?
• (Co-constructing Sustaining)

• Self-assessment
• Information seeking and goal setting
  (Convergence)
• Action Plan

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Appreciating

• Who Am I?
• Self-Assessment

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Success Satisfaction

• To excel in your chosen field and to find
  lasting satisfaction in doing so, you will need
  to become an expert at finding and describing and
  applying and practicing and refining your
  strengths

Buckingham Clifton (2001), p. 3.
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Strengths

• Consistent near perfect performance in an
  activity

Buckingham Clifton (2001), p. 28.
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To Build on Your Strengths

• Distinguish your natural talents from things you
  can learn
• Talents naturally recurring patterns of
  thoughts, feelings, or behavior
• Identify your dominant talents
• Find a common language to describe your talents

Buckingham Clifton (2001), p. 28.
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In Other Words

• Capitalize on your strengths and manage around
  your weaknesses.

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Activities Scan

• Take out a piece of paper
• Identify three activities that you have been
  involved in and enjoyed (leave a little space
  underneath each)
• Identify the skills and/or interests used in each
  of the experiences
• for likes, - for dislikes
• Look for patterns across the activities
• Describe how those patterns represent you

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Connecting Family Work

• Find a sheet of paper
• Draw a line across the middle, and draw five
  circles on one half and five circles on the other
  half
• Indicate in the top half circles the roles that
  are currently most important to you
• Indicate in the bottom half circles the roles
  that you expect to be most important to you in
  ten-fifteen years

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Connecting Family Work
Currently Most Important
Most Important in 15 Years
Son Student Mother Teacher
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Process Questions

• What are the expectations associated with each
  role?
• How much of our time, energy, and talents do we
  give to each role?
• What is the impact on significant others of the
  way we carry out our roles?
• Where do leisure, service, and volunteer roles
  fit in?
• How can awareness of role options help us in life
  planning?

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Envisioning

• Where Am I Going?
• Information seeking and goal setting.

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Old Yiddish Proverb

• When you dont know where youre going, just
  about any road will get you there.

Quoted in Kimeldorf (Winter 1996-97)
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Developing the Possibilities
Skills Interests Knowledge Capabilities
Occupation
JOB OF YOUR DREAMS (for a while)
Values Work Environment Work Schedule Work style
Location
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Important Decision Points
Age 6-7 Age 18
Age 19 Age 23
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Decision Points

• Identify the last three career-related decisions
  that you have made?
• What played into those decisions? Environmental
  influences? Family considerations? Financial?
  Values?
• What is then next career decision you anticipate
  you will have to make?

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Goal-Setting Decision-Making Process

• Define the challenge
• State the goal clearly
• List the initial alternative solutions
• Collect information and expand the alternatives
  list
• Compare several alternatives
• Chose one goal, identify strategies
• Take action, review and make new decisions

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Tell Someone!
My Goals
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Exploring Developmental Relationships

• What is your development goal? (pp. 170-171)
• What developmental roles would be important as
  you work on this goal? (pp. 170-171)
• Who can provide this role? (pp. 170-171)
• What forms of relationships do you need? (p. 182)
• Be sure to clarify the formal relationship. (p.
  188)

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Co-Constructing Sustaining

• How Do I Get There?
• Action Planning

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Planning Components

• Synthesize the past
• Assess current situation
• Project into the future

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Ecological Perspective

• Behavior does not occur within a vacuum
  microsystems macrosystems contribute to making
  the achievement of women and people of color
  potentially more challenging
• Career development emerges from a lifelong
  dynamic interaction between the individual and
  environment

Cook, E.P., Heppner, M. J., OBrien (2002).
Career development of women of color and white
women Assumptions, conceptualizations and
interventions from a Ecological perspetive. The
Career Development Quarterly, 50 (4), pp. 291-305.
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Utilizing Your Plan

• Connect something you love to your future
• Consider education or additional training
  (lifelong learning?)
• Develop knowledge in an area that is of interest
  to you and others
• Identify and further develop your skills
• Use the plan to organize your personal
  information, to make connections to the world of
  work, to make contributions in intentional ways,
  and to make informed decisions

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Add to Your Learning

• Describe any introductory course, workshop, or
  seminar that you would like to take in a subject
  that is new to you.
• Write an intention statement describing how you
  will take advantage of this course or delve into
  this subject.
• I intend to

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Five to One (Shoulds, Wants, Wills)

• SHOULDS
• Identify from your lists, five items that you
  feel like you should do for your own professional
  development.
• WANTS
• From that list of five, choose three that you
  really want to do.
• WILLS
• From the list of three, choose one that you
  actually will begin tomorrow.

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It takes work

• Before enlightenment
• chopping wood
• carrying water
• After enlightenment
• chopping wood
• carrying water

-Lao-tzu
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Endnote

• Final Comments Closure

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Critical Tasks

• Finding work that needs doing
• Weaving our lives into a meaningful whole
• Connecting family and work
• Valuing pluralism and inclusivity
• Exploring spirituality and life purpose
• Managing personal transitions and organizational
  change

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Actions for Individuals

• Engage in your own growth and learning.
• Cultivate your spiritual and emotional self as
  well as your intellectual and physical skills.
• Re-examine your material lifestyle in the context
  of increasing the quality of life create a
  different form of prosperity.
• Spread the word. Share your questions. Create a
  community.
• Relationships count for much more than we
  realize. Live with integrity and influence
  anyone you can.
• Come to peace with risk and change.

Lulic, 1996, p. 249
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Appreciative Inquiry Resources

• Annis Hammond, S. (1996). The thin book of
  Appreciative Inquiry. Plano, TX Kodiak
  Consulting.
• Cooperrider, D., Sorenson, P. F., Whitney, D.,
  Yaeger, T. F. (1999). Appreciative Inquiry
  Rethinking human organization toward a positive
  theory of change. Champaign, IL Stipes
  Publishing L.L.C.
• Magruder Watkins, J. Mohr, B. (2001).
  Appreciate Inquiry Change at the Speed of
  Imagination. San FranciscoJossey-Bass
  Publishers, Inc.
• Whitney, D., Cooperrider, D., Trosten-Bloom, A.,
  Kaplin, B. S. (2002). Encyclopedia of positive
  questions Volume one Using Appreciative Inquiry
  to bring out the best in your organization.
  Euclid, OH Lakeshore Communications.

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Online AI Opportunities

• Appreciative Inquiry Commons http//appreciativein
  quiry.cwru.edu/
• What is Appreciative Inquiry? http//www.thinbook.
  com/lib/thinbook/whatisai.pdf
• Appreciative Inquiry An Overview
  http//www.cditrainers.org/appreciative_inquiry-ov
  erview.htm
• UW-Madison Site (under construction)
• www.ohrd.wisc.edu/ai

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References

• Buckingham, M., Clifton, D. O. (2001). Now,
  Discover Your Strengths. NY The Free Press.
• Hansen, L. S. (1997). Integrative Life Planning
  Critical Tasks for Career Development and
  Changing Life Patterns. San Francisco
  Jossey-Bass Publishers, Inc.
• Lulic, M. A. (1996). Who We Could Be at Work.
  Newton, MA Butterworth-Heinemann

• Troxel, J. (2001). Affirmation Works The
  Appreciative Basis for Community and
  Organizational Development. Paper presented at
  Annual Association for Quality and Participation
  conference, March 20, 2001.

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Resources

• Ellis, D., Lankowitz, S., Stupka, E., Toft, D.
  (1990). Career planning. Rapid City, SD
  College Survival, Inc.
• Farr, J. (1991). Getting the job you really
  want A step-by-step guide. Indianapolis, IN
  JIST Works, Inc.
• Ilardo, J. (1992). Risk-taking for personal
  growth A step-by-step workbook. Oakland, CA
  New Harbinger Publications Inc.
• JIST Works, Inc. (1998). Creating your lifes
  work portfolio An interactive career and life
  planning workbook. Indianapolis, IN Author
• Ludden, L. Ludden M. (1993). Job savvy How to
  be a success at work (Instructors Guide).
  Indianapolis, IN JIST Works, Inc.

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Questions? Comments?

• Thanks for your time attention!