“Our key career management strategies are knowing our strengths, following our passions and seeing the opportunities in ongoing change. Our career goal is to keep finding the intersection between who we are, what we love, and the experiences we encounter along the way. This is both insanely easy and amazingly hard.”
~ Michele Martin
I count myself one of those lucky people that is very passionate about my work. There are three arenas in which I really get into the “flow” – developing and deepening the professional skills of colleagues and students who work in learning and development roles, promoting the application of theory and research in our practice, and championing workplace learning and the creation of comprehensive learning strategies to support knowledge and skill development. Those are big, bold things and I get excited thinking about my work in each of these areas.
These are the topics I want to focus on here. This is my space for thinking out loud, sharing ideas in progress, and taking a stand – and it’s where I can gather input and reaction from people around the world who share these passions. So today, I’m relaunching this blog and rededicating myself to regular posts. Some of you may notice a whole new look, and a new organizational scheme based on categories (although I’m still working on categorizing the old posts).
This rededication is born out of several months of introspection. For a variety of reasons, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about my personal and professional goals and the path forward to achieving them. I’ve been working on identifying my strengths, clarifying what I want to contribute professionally, and finding my passion.
For their advice, I am eternally indebted to Marcus Buckingham (Go Put Your Strengths to Work), John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison (The Power of Pull). I don’t know these folks, but the ideas they have published through various sources have been challenging and centering. I’ve been working through strengths exercises with colleagues at work, and I’ve found these conversations have really helped me clarify my passions. (Thank you all!)
Most importantly, I am indebted to Michele Martin, consultant and author of The Bamboo Project Blog, whose recent series of posts and ”day camps” on positive professional development provided a profound list of questions to ponder on the journey. I do know Michele, and I appreciate how she has shared her own career jouney and the ideas that brought her clarity and inspiration. Many, many thanks, Michele!
I hope you’ll join me in virtual conversation on this path forward.
