HEALTH, PURPOSE & IMPACT

Category: Education

3 Elements To Think Regarding Your Child’s Career Path

Photo – Javier Barros

During recent weeks, I got into discussions with few parents who were thinking about career tracks to guide their children. The idea for writing on this topic came from one such discussion. This topic seems to be more active on the minds of many parents as their children get closer to the tenth and twelfth standards at school.

From my observations of working professionals and students, there are at least 3 fundamental elements while thinking about your child’s career.

1. Passion/genuine interest

This is probably the most critical element to consider. It’s normally easy to spot uninterested students in classrooms and employees in the workplaces across the world through their low commitment, engagement and efforts. While speaking with students in post graduate programs, it becomes easy to observe those who are genuinely engaged and interested (even when they are introverted). When individuals go into areas of low interest or are pushed by family, they tend to migrate to becoming average at learning/outputs and disengaged quickly. During long working careers, passion or genuine interest will drive one’s will and energy to keep going through the inevitable challenges and difficult times. Internal motivation also helps develop extra edge through proactive, continuous learning and growth over others.

2. Natural strengths, preferences and related tracks

Every individual has natural strengths and preferences in certain areas. It’s important to actively recognise, encourage, grow those strengths, figure out areas where these strengths can be applied naturally and actively. At the same time, it would be practical to think if those areas can lead to healthy compensation and life support. Sometimes, there may be adjoining work areas to explore and understand that require similar strengths. On the unhealthy side, many parents prioritise potential compensation or perks as the top point with good intentions but that may set their children up for potential unhappiness, disillusionment and immense stress in following years. Some tend to become miserable over time, feeling stuck, resulting in unhappiness and frustration across professional and personal environments.

An individual with a high degree of passion, interest and natural strengths has a much higher chance of getting noticed, becoming successful rather than working in areas where the above elements don’t exist (even when the tracks don’t seem very promising in the eyes of the world). This should not be about just finding the first job but rather thinking beyond into longer career tracks, meaning, impact and growth.

3. Clarity on areas of low interest

Even if one many not be aware of what to choose, it helps to be clear on what is not enjoyable or probably even hated by your child. These areas should be clearly avoided even when there’s lot of peer/social status pressure and seem to hold potential for high earnings or opportunities.

Many children may not be aware of their own strengths, preferences and related career tracks to explore. Schools can play a key role in that process by ensuring supporting resources, assessments, counseling and career guidance initiatives. Experimentation, getting exposure and exploration, when unclear should also be actively encouraged. Many times, lack of awareness of opportunities or career options become a big gap for students and parents. It’s important to start somewhere, even if small. If there is a sense of enjoyment and engagement, that’s a good work fit indicator. Externship and internship programs may help.

It is also always helpful to have few alternatives keeping in mind the above elements. Some experiences may lead to changing opinions on interest after a reality check.

Another helpful advice is to discuss actively with your network, experts in related areas and use all opportunities to understand more about different career tracks. Encourage your child to take accountability and responsibility to work hard in their chosen area of interest. When they feel the decision is predominantly based on their interest, their commitment and accountability tend to be much higher. That translates to a higher probability of success, engagement and enjoyment at work. There’s also a lot of supporting information available online.

From a broader perspective, when the world gets the right fit of passionate, highly engaged people in jobs (including seemingly boring or uninteresting jobs), the potential for achievement and engagement is huge. That also leads to enjoyable experiences for all stakeholders – leading to win-win outcome for society at large.

During my personal discussion, it was refreshing to see that my connection had noticed his daughter’s increasing passion and strength around culinary skills and was open to supporting her in that direction, while staying open to understanding alternatives and having a plan B based on her strengths. That approach increases the probability of success and thriving in her career.

“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.”

Oprah Winfrey

Identifying Experts To Follow In Today’s World

via pixabay

We live in a world where there are many who claim to be experts or share expert opinions on multiple topics. The amount and impact of ‘pseudo-experts’ seem to be increasing. On all forms of media, lots of expert opinions on varied topics are shared constantly and many people buy into them and trust quickly without realising the quality of information, the individual who is sharing or the actual source. As a result, low quality or unreliable perspectives find lots of eyeballs and mindspace.

I wanted to share 3 tips that have helped me in figuring out right experts, better quality information and perspectives.

1. Understand background and experience, both of the expert and the source

Look for the background, expertise and experiences of the individual(s) in the relevant areas. The quality, depth and breadth of those experiences and their contributions track record over time also matter. Look for how deeply they may have studied that area and shared quality insights. A basic search on the internet or LinkedIn can help. Do note that the number of connections or titles don’t translate to being an expert.

Ideally, there needs to be a mix of conceptual/theoretical and practical experiences for high quality insights and perspectives. Being an expert in one area does not translate automatically to being an expert in other areas. We tend to see that error or bias quite a bit. It also helps to observe who have liked/endorsed them or their insights or shared further. Credibility has to be developed over time and with consistency.

If studies and researches are quoted in articles or conversations, it always helps to see who or where the research was undertaken. Ask the logical questions about the relevance and environment of those studies. The quality of the institution or individuals who undertook the study can be an important factor in the validity of results that are quoted.

2. Openness to alternate views and discussions

The best experts are open to listening, discussing, learning and debating alternate or contradicting views because they understand there are multiple variables to explore, some that they may not have foreseen or others that may be worth learning or engaging further. An open mindset to a quality discussion and exploration improves the outlook of an expert perspective. Keep in mind that we generally tend to read and believe in topics that we want to believe in or have an internal bias towards. We relate better to certain conversational and writing styles.

3. Observe patiently and do your own research over time

Hold off from jumping to conclusions from one expert opinion or view, unless you have done your homework and looked across multiple expert views or studies. The predictiveness of quality is better if you have been tracking someone’s work over time. Even then, it helps to maintain a broad perspective and expand your senses to multiple experts. If the opinion relates to your own area of work, it helps to reflect on your experiences and the links to the perspectives shared.

As a result of all these, the quality of your insight and perspectives will improve over time and chances of being misled will reduce substantially. Your quality of thinking, actions and growth will be on a better curve.

Have other approaches worked for you?

“Logic, it is often said, is the study of valid arguments. It is a systematic attempt to distinguish valid arguments from invalid arguments.” – William H. Newton-Smith
Logic: An Introductory Course (goodreads)

Prepare Students For Future World Of Work – 3 Behavioral Elements

There is tremendous amount of discussion about the fast evolving future of work. While there are many assumptions about the future, many experts agree that it will be difficult to predict clearly and continue to evolve quickly. They also seem to agree that machine learning will become faster than human learning in near future. Some work may continue to be local in nature and highly valued. Some may get automated. One way to succeed or even survive in future could be to proactively develop an ability to continuously observe, reflect, learn and take adaptive actions at an individual and systemic level.

So, from an education or learning perspective, how do you prepare students for the future of work?

We can start with couple of basic premises.

  1. Success at work or life will continue to depend on a set of distinguishing abilities, behaviors or habits.
  2. The environment we are in can influence and impact them.

If educators can figure out ways to develop the following key behaviors for students through interventions and, if students can consciously develop them, readiness increases.

Three key behavioral elements for learning to inculcate early are:

  1. Curiosity, Continuing To Explore and Asking Questions
  2. Openness To Experimenting, Failure and Rework
  3. Achieving Independence Through Confident and Responsible Actions

Educators should consider various ways in which the above behavioral elements can be developed early in their students by designing their learning environments and related processes. As we know, habits once formed early are not easy to change.

Some examples on potential interventions – Classrooms should be include quality time for reflecting on the learning process, explore and develop multiple approaches and seeking out answers together in different ways. In a fast evolving and uncertain world, lack of curiosity in individuals or organizations leads to quick decline. Teachers should become facilitators of the learning process rather than aiming to become the database of answers. The process of figuring out answers should be encouraged and rewarded. Teachers should be open to exploring and learning together with their students. Labs should be places where students should enjoy experiments and figuring various approaches towards answers while becoming comfortable with working through failures. The focus there should not be on getting the right result but rather experimenting and figuring out. The “growth mindset” should be encouraged across the board. Teachers should encourage students to step up at every possible opportunity and experience the different aspects of taking actions with confidence and responsibility, inside and outside the classroom.

Educators have to themselves think deeper and modify their approaches to help prepare their students for a fast evolving future where the nature of work may evolve. Doing what made them and their students successful in the past may not apply for the future. There are of course various aspects to thinking through this. The fundamental point is to start looking at developing fundamental behaviors that enable students to navigate and adapt effectively in an unclear future, when the content itself may not matter as much as the context and behaviors. Start with and focus on one or two. Exploring these scenarios will also force you as educators to effectively contemplate and redesign your future of work.

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