Leadership Development That Makes a Difference

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article | Leadership Development | Leadership Development That Makes a DifferenceAs a leader, there are multiple competing demands on your time. Too often, leadership development falls by the wayside. It’s too easy to file that under ‘get to it later.’ Yet, most leaders expect results.

If you didn’t spend time on your financial portfolio, would you expect results? What about your physical fitness and overall health? Would you expect to be in optimal physical health without any effort?

The problem with all these scenarios is that you can get by for some time without any effort. However, two issues arise. First, when it comes to your leadership, is getting by enough? Second, eventually that approach catches up. You will realize results. They just won’t be optimal.

Results require effort. There are no shortcuts. However, you can make smart investments in leadership development activities that have impact. These fit into two categories – low cost and high cost.

If you are looking for the best results and you have a higher budget to work with, the single best approach you can take is to hire a qualified leadership coach – emphasis on qualified. Their approach will be thorough and include an assessment of your current leadership, a plan tailored to your unique needs, multiple interactions over a defined period, and regular feedback and support. Much like a physical fitness trainer, they will stretch you outside your comfort zone and hold you accountable. This is a great approach, but it requires a more substantial investment of time and money.

Coaching is not for everyone though, and not everyone has an extensive budget to work with. Aside from cost, another drawback from coaching is that it has a finite timeframe – usually six to twelve months. After that, you are on your own.

For sustainable results, you must incorporate leadership development activities into your weekly routine. There are a wide variety of low-cost, high impact ways to develop your leadership skills.

The activities described below have little to no cost and can be incorporated into your regular routine. The caveat is that when pursuing these activities, it is not about checking a box and moving on to the next activity. You must get feedback, reflect, and reframe your perspective for learning to stick. For these activities, cost and time are both less and impact can be high, but you need to be self-driven and own the accountability.

When pursuing leadership development, there are three broad categories to focus on: take your pulse, build your core, and maintain flexibility. To avoid wasting your time on the wrong activities, never begin your leadership development game plan without knowing what you should work on. This requires an assessment. Although there are many options available, the best low cost, high impact assessment option is a good, reliable 360 assessment. Use the results to build your leadership development game plan.

Once you know what to work on, focus on your core. Building your core is about strengthening your knowledge about your industry, business and competitors, technical skills, and leadership skills. There are a wide variety of ways for you to do this including business books, trade publications, industry reports, and leadership podcasts. Your game plan should incorporate these activities on a weekly basis.

Maintaining your flexibility is about being nimble. These activities include what has come to be known as informal learning – activities that can be part of your everyday job and often help move the business forward. There are extensive opportunities to learn via collaborative and on the job approaches such as mentoring, teaching others, job shadowing and task forces.

Leadership is too important to simply get by. You need results that make a difference. When it comes to your leadership development, there are many low-cost, high impact options available. You just need to know where to look, establish a game plan, and take that first step.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Timothy J. TobinTimothy J. Tobin, author of Peak Leadership Fitness: Elevating Your Leadership Game, a learning and leadership development professional committed to helping individuals and organizations reach their greatest potential. He is currently vice president, franchisee onboarding and learning at Choice Hotels International, where he oversees the hotel opening processes and learning strategy and programs for all franchisees.

He was previously vice president of global leadership development at Marriott, and held leadership roles at Baker Tilly (formerly Beers + Cutler) and Booz Allen Hamilton, where he designed and implemented a variety of talent management solutions.  A frequent leadership speaker, he has served as an adjunct professor for more than 20 years at the University of Maryland, Catholic University, Trinity University, and George Washington University.

For more information, please visit https://www.td.org/books/peak-leadership-fitness

Four Meaningful Careers and How to Start Them

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Career Development |Four Meaningful Careers and How to Start ThemConsidering your future in the world of work, it’s not uncommon to find yourself utterly bewildered by the sheer quantity and diversity of roles available in the job market. Many of these roles require training or qualifications, which constitute a large investment of both your time and money. To ensure that you’re working towards a career that’s meaningful and wholesome, it’s best to choose wisely from an early stage in your working life in order for you to always get the most out of your working life, enjoying every day you spend in the job. Below are four ideas help you select a meaningful career.

Journalism

Speaking truth to power and making public issues that ought to be, journalism has always been regarded as a noble and esteemed vocation. While the pay doesn’t necessarily reflect the hours you put in, the variety, excitement and fast-paced action is what attracts people to the world of journalism. There simply isn’t a comparable job that’ll keep you curious and on your toes for decades. To get into journalism, you’ll need to read and write extensively, and you’ll benefit from a degree or qualification in the discipline.

Teaching

Another esteemed and well-regarded job, teaching is seen as one of the most rewarding and varied vocations out there. Again, you’ll need to complete courses of training in your desired discipline – whether that’s primary-age teaching or higher education lecturing – and you’ll need to feel confident in the materials that you teach. As well as transferring knowledge to the younger generation, you’ll also be a role model for hundreds, maybe thousands of children over your long career. That’s where you really extract meaning – and pride – from your day-to-day job.

Nursing

Giving care is often lauded as one of the most compassionate and meaningful jobs in the world, and it’s no wonder, really. You turn up to work with the sole purpose of making life easier, more comfortable and more enjoyable for those under your care. It’s relatively simple to convert your caregiving tendencies into a nursing qualification – simply find online Nurse Practitioner programs in Virginia to see if you’re eligible to take up a course and build the necessary skills to take to the hospital floors with a wisdom that’ll only grow as you care for patients in need throughout your life.

Public Service

A wide range of jobs fall under the ‘public service’ umbrella. Those include the emergency services – everything from ambulance drivers to firefighters and the police – through to the military, the civil service, and other public office roles. Whatever you feel most drawn towards, you’ll always be happy in the knowledge that your job is serving your community and your nation – a source of pride and meaning that’ll guide you to success in your vocation. Naturally, the wide range of job opportunities in the public sphere require a wide range of qualifications – but some, like policing and the military, take those without formal qualifications.

The four jobs listed above should give you adequate thinking space to consider your next move into a career that is truly meaningful: day-in, day-out.

10 Personal Development Tips You Can Try Today

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article
 
Growing personally and professionally are ways to remain competitive and stay ahead of the market today. As a professional, you have to always be aware of the fact that your personal development starts with you; it is your responsibility to know how you want to improve and advance in your career and in life in general.

Personal development doesn’t have to be complicated too. Simple changes to how you do things, actively seeking new skills to master, and learning continuously are among the things you can do to continue to grow as a person and a professional. These next 10 personal development tips will help make managing your own growth even easier.

1. Now Is the Time

Don’t wait until tomorrow to take charge of your personal growth. Do the things that you can do today and worry about the rest later. Now is always the best time to start because the longer you wait, the further away you are from the goals you want to achieve.

Besides, there is no room for procrastination in a market as competitive as today. Whether your goal is to advance in your career, to make a jump to a new field, or to simply grow as a person, figure out how to achieve that goal and take action today.

2. Small and Steady

Big leaps are exciting and often take you to new places, but it is not always possible to make such a big leap forward. Rather than wait for the opportunity for that big step to come, focus more on making smaller steps and steady growth.

Taking small steps to improve yourself as a professional is much more sustainable than waiting for big opportunities to seize. You will be surprised by how far you can go when you start taking one small step after another.

3. Have Clear Objectives

It is much easier to plot a course when you know exactly where you are going; the same principle applies to personal development as well. There is nothing wrong with having big goals to achieve, but you also need to set smaller, more reachable milestones to keep you going.

Having clear objectives allow you to set clear plans on how to achieve them. More importantly, they let you stay driven for longer.

4. Define a Plan

Now that you have the objectives nailed, it is time to work on a detailed plan for how to achieve them. If the goal is to land that managerial position you have always wanted, find ways to showcase what you can do to get the attention of your superiors.

When the goal is to boost your wealth, learn more about how you can offer services and generate additional sources of income while working a full-time job. Every objective is reachable; you just have to know how to get there in a timely manner.

5. Learn from Others

One of the fastest ways to learn – especially for personal growth – is by learning from others. Fortunately, you have plenty of role models to follow and people whose skills and experience you can absorb.

Let’s say you want to start investing in the financial markets. Learning about the basics and mastering technical analysis are things you can do on your own. Quickly gaining the experience to be a successful trader, on the other hand, isn’t as straightforward.

As a solution, you can learn from other traders who are more successful in the market. It is possible to turn to trading signals and the technical strategies that other traders have used to speed up your learning process.

6. Appreciate Your Achievements

We’re back to the smaller milestones you have set earlier. The main purpose of having smaller milestones to achieve is so that you can appreciate hitting those milestones. Do so and show yourself the appreciation you deserve.

Whenever you feel tired of pushing for the big objectives, the smaller milestones will keep you going. You know that hitting one milestone means you are one step closer to your final goal. You can stay motivated for longer and you will be able to focus on your goals better too.

7. Challenge Yourself

There is nothing wrong with feeling afraid or uncertain when trying new things. Those emotions are parts of the process. Overcoming those emotions is exactly how you become a better person and a more capable professional.

You also want to challenge yourself frequently. Learn new skills and practice implementing those skills in real-life situations. You can bring the new abilities to work and become a better professional too. Don’t be afraid to try new things; don’t be afraid to fail at those things, especially on your first try.

8. Explore Your Passion

While you are at it, make sure you also listen to yourself better. Learn more about your true passion and give yourself the opportunity to pursue that passion to the fullest. You’ll be surprised by what you can achieve when you start doing things you are really passionate about.

Going after your passion is a realistic thing to do, especially since you have your full-time job acting as a safety net. As long as you can utilize your time effectively, you’ll be able to achieve great things while following your true passion.

9. Evaluate

We discussed how it is completely okay to fail when trying new things. Failures aren’t such a bad thing, especially when you think about the many things you can learn from them. All you need to do is be more critical about your failures – and your successes.

Evaluate your steps, assess the new skills you master, and get a clearer view of your progress as a whole. Whenever adjustments are needed, don’t hesitate to change your course and return to pursuing the big objectives you have in mind.

10. Persevere

Patience is your biggest asset in personal development. You cannot achieve great things overnight; everything takes time and you have to be patient enough to go through the process.

At the end of the day, every step you take to grow as a person and a professional is a step worth taking. With these tips in mind, personal development is even more manageable than you think.

What Degrees Do You Need to Become a Veterinary Surgeon?

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StrategyDriven Professional Development ArticleIf you’re researching the viability of becoming a veterinary surgeon, you’ve likely already discovered it takes a lot of hard work, grit, determination and skill. Most veterinary surgeons decide from a young age that this is the career route they want to progress down, and so plan their school-age studies to lead them towards their end goal.

That’s not to say, though, that you can’t pivot and retrain to become a vet or veterinary surgeon once you’ve already graduated from high school or college. Regardless of your pathway into training, here’s a brief overview of the degrees and qualifications you’d need to become a veterinary surgeon.

Your route into studying Veterinary Science…

Typically, to set yourself up from a young age you’ll need to select the right subjects to study at school and high school. To win a place on a higher education course to study veterinary science, you’ll need to have attained high grades in the Sciences – Biology, Chemistry, Physics – as well as Mathematics. It’s also useful to have studied some Latin, if that’s available on your school curriculum; many animal genus names stem from Latin sources, so you’ll more easily get your head around species groupings if you have a basic understanding of this ancient language.

If you don’t find yourself to have a natural ability with the Sciences at a young age, you may find progressing towards a career as a veterinary surgeon difficult. A propensity for these studies will put you in good stead to succeed; if you underperform at this stage, it’s not to say you can’t make it through to your desired job role, you’ll just need to continue to work hard.

Typically, once you’ve graduated high school, you’ll need to study veterinary sciences at a higher level — at college or university, for instance — before receiving a place on a dedicated veterinary school course.

While at Veterinary school…

Congratulations on making it into veterinary school! Now you’re here, you’ll need to buckle down and truly commit yourself to your studies.

In order to become a veterinary surgeon, you’ll need to complete all the standard veterinary training your course offers, as well as specializing in surgical skills. The level to which you specialize is somewhat up to you; you may want to narrow down your skillset to operating on a species of animals, such as cats, dogs or bigger animals such as livestock and horses.

Once you’ve completed your veterinary school training, you may be able to look for entry-level jobs — through a platform such as www.vetpetjobs.com.au — to get started on your professional journey.

Further training required…

If you struggle to land a job straight out of veterinary school, don’t worry; it’s an incredibly competitive sector to work in.

Consider what you can do to further bolster your chances and make your application more desirable. Perhaps you can undertake further training, or volunteer at a rescue center, zoo or small veterinary practice; this work experience will do wonders for your confidence and skills, as well as producing a standout application.

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