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Can You Take the "Individual"
Out of the Development Process?
Not if the outcome is expected to be successful.
Guest Author
Pia Ritch is Chief Officer of Programming and Human Resources at Mission Community Skills Centre Society, which operates in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. She has over 13 years' experience as an employment professional specializing in the development of programs and services that empower individuals to manage their careers.
Pia believes a collaborative and holistic approach to career management maximizes success.
www.missioncsc.org
For over 13 years, Mission Community Skills Centre Society has worked with thousands of people in the field of career development and transitioning to employment. They participate voluntarily or are compelled to attend to ensure continuity of income-assistance payments.
A successful outcome depends on how the person reacts to the career planning process.
Experience shows this process must be relevant to the individual, which means the process and the career plan must have value—even to those compelled to attend.
Our employment service uses CRG assessment tools and models to build relevance and value for the individual with the expectation of success for all stakeholders.
No matter the age, gender, cultural background, work experience, economic situation, education, or other demographic variations of the participants, employment coaches find people want to become more self-aware to better control their career and their job decision-making.
In employment service delivery, whether in group or one-on-one, participants start their planning process by completing the Personal Style Indicator.
The interpretation of the PSI results provides the individual with valuable information about who he or she is and confirmation that the tool is credible.
The credibility and confirmation create a building block that coaches can use to facilitate the understanding of Personal Style preferences within relationships, in personal and work environments.
Constantly, people report that the feedback from the assessments provides a better awareness of themselves and that the feedback is true and relevant.
Employment coaches then have participants buy-in to build on this relevance, to address personal dreams, goals, barriers, roadblocks, or challenges in career development. People learn to manage their lives and their careers, based on their personal values.
It is important to understand how an individual reacts in a situation; it's essential to know how a person's values impact his or her decision-making around career management.
As part of the career planning process, participants complete the Values Preference Indicator to identify their values, needs, and fears. On countless occasions, people have stated, "Oh, that's why I left my last job. I loved the work but felt I was not respected."
Respected could be replaced with any other word that carries value for the individual in the environment, such as acknowledged, liked, recognized, included, challenged, secure, and more. Debriefing the values, needs, and fears helps address and strategize the personal goals, barriers, and challenges that an individual identifies in the career planning process.
When the values are identified, the person has the confidence to make decisions—in personal and work environments—that align with his or her values. In this way, the individual feels in control of career development decisions.
The self-awareness developed through the PSI and VPI tools provides the foundation for career coaching and planning. Participants work with the employment coach to review the way their style and values preferences impact communication; interpersonal relationships; work preferences—tasks, people, and ideas; time management; career choices; conflict management; job match; employer values match; compensation/benefit negotiation; and more.
Stress impacts our ability to manage our careers effectively. Identifying stressors is the first step to managing stress. For that reason, employment service delivery includes CRG's Stress Indicator and Health Planner as part of career development planning.
Career or job change can be very stressful. For career development to succeed, the impact of this stress on the individual and on interpersonal relationships must be managed.
As with the other CRG assessment tools, SIHP provides the framework to discuss stress and strategize stress management techniques. Stress management activities help alleviate stress for the whole person, with the intent of improving career development success.
In our quickly changing economy, lifelong learning is imperative as a component of career management.
- Deciding on a career choice is one of the first steps.
- Understanding how we learn best is the next step to having a successful career.
Service delivery participants assess their learning style through the Learning Style Indicator assessment tool.
With a deeper self-awareness of their learning style preferences, people are better able to choose the learning medium that is best for them in formal and informal training environments.
One client indicated his learning had increased substantially at work after he was able to identify to his supervisor that he needed to see a flowchart drawing of how the work was to be completed. With that chart, he felt he learned faster and accomplished the work more successfully.
Similarly, supervisors aware of the learning style of their staff members help minimize training frustration and maximize effectiveness and knowledge retention. Employment coaches can adapt their delivery to the learning style of the client.
Employment coaches employ CRG's other assessment tools with similarly effective outcomes for the individual and the career development planning process. When individuals have a strong self-awareness of their personal style preferences, values, needs, fears, learning style, and stressors, they are able to demonstrate more confidence in career decision-making and
planning.
For the thousands of participants in our employment delivery services, CRG assessments have provided results relevant and credible to the individual. Together with the employment coach, individuals adapt the results to their personal and workplace environments.
Consistently, feedback indicates people are more self-aware and more confident in managing their life and career after participating in the employment services process. With the CRG assessments, employment coaches have the tools to facilitate clients through the roadblocks that restrict them from attaining their career goals.
There are many other assessment options in the marketplace that we have used or tried over the years, but they have not yielded this level of positive results. Our organization continues to use CRG's holistic set of assessments for employment service delivery. Individual success contributes to programming success, which contributes to organizational success.
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