Tag Archives: achievement

Reflection on a workshop that was…

Posted on by acrystelle
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…..awesome!

I co-facilitated a workshop at NLS6 a couple of weeks ago titled ‘Building and managing your professional identity’, with nearly 40 participants. Surprising turnout, I must say. I thought, “People actually want to see me speak?…..Cool!” (…followed by, “Oh crap!”)

I couldn’t be happier with how it went.

For those not so familiar with the New Librarians Symposium, here’s the description for the workshop from the program -

New to the online networking scene? Not sure if building an online presence is for you? Don’t know when to share something personal or professional? This workshop is for you. Let’s talk about the drivers for being in the online space. Differing perspectives and experiences about being online will be offered for discussion, as well as fine tuning of your use of some professional networking tools.

The objectives, directly from our lesson plan, that guided the workshop were: -

  • provide participants with an understanding of an online professional identity, what is means to them and to the profession
  • overcome any fears or barriers keeping participants from active involvement in the online professional community space
  • enable participants to make informed decisions about interacting with others online and how to present themselves
  • provide participants with an overview of key social networking tools – how to use them, what to watch out for

The approach we took in preparing for the workshop was to split the workshop into three, well-defined parts, but kept the agenda flexible enough to adjust to participants needs. We wanted to allow conversation to flow where it needed to go. We prepared a lesson plan that kept us to the objectives of the workshop; thought about who might be in the workshop, so what we were assuming and expecting from participants’ prior knowledge and experience; did up some slides to guide the structure of the workshop (nothing fancy), and came up with simple activities and discussion topics to get conversation going. Both my co-facilitator and I were on the symposium committee, so this approach worked for us and thankfully, the participants.

At the beginning of the workshop, when people were arriving, I felt uncomfortable sitting up the front. I didn’t want to feel or be seen as this ‘hot shot’ who was about to impart my lessons and wisdom. I wanted to be part of the conversation, THEIR conversation. I introduced myself and encouraged participants to introduce themselves and get talking among themselves, because hey, they were going to talk to each other whether they liked it or not! This made me feel more comfortable and hopefully, this had the same effect on them.

Okay, so I mentioned there were three parts.

1. Why actively develop a professional identity online?

In this section, we explored what was meant by ‘professional identity’; compared ‘professional identity’ with ‘personal brand’, and discussed drivers for being in the online space and actively developing a professional identity. We used butchers paper for brainstorming what ‘professional identity’ means to the participants, then for the discussion about drivers, we had participants brainstorm in groups and had one person from each group share what their group came up with. We stuck up their ideas on the walls.

2. How to play nicely with others

Here my co-facilitator, Matthias Liffers, led the participants through some of the common social networking tools – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, as well as some hobby related ones like Flickr and Runkeeper, just briefly. We also looked at when to share or not share, personal and professional accounts.

3. But….what about?

We delved into some interesting discussions around some scenarios Matthias put forward to the participants. These scenarios centred on one thing – “What if your employer discovers your content?”  We also spoke about and shared experiences with what to put on our resumes. I finished this part of the workshop with a mini-lecture/ presentation on my views about professional identity and how it fits into the wider context of learning as a profession. I could have done this first thing, but then the participants would walk away with my views and not their own. I wanted the participants to formulate their own ideas, the way it makes sense for them, then put the ‘spanner in the works’, so to spark.

A few things made this workshop awesome, or made it the one people wanted to be in.

  • Interaction and discussion – this was by far the biggest strength in this workshop, and was partly due to the great bunch of people Matthias and I had the pleasure to work with. Participants had the opportunity to have their ideas and experiences heard and boy(!) did they bounce around the room! It was fabulous to see. Matthias and I valued what the participants had to say. This was their workshop. Interaction is what a workshop is meant to be about!
  • We were real – Matthias and I openly shared our experiences. We didn’t say ‘this is the way to do it’, instead we said something like ‘this was our experience and we’re sharing our lessons and tips’. We kept it real. This approach certainly worked with both our personal styles, in my opinion. It was great to bounce off another person. We worked well – I kept him to time, he kept me from freaking out from nerves.
  • Flexibility – We aimed for the participants to get as much out of a discussion as possible, and if it needed an extra 10 minutes to do that, so be it. We adjusted time, activities and discussions accordingly.

To wrap it all up, we did some informal feedback in the form of post its. Our questions were:-

1. What did you like about this workshop?

2. What did you learn and will take away from the workshop?

3. What didn’t we cover that you think we should have?

4. What could we (as presenters) improve on?

Feedback was overall very positive. I’m really stoked participants got so much out of it. We got a a few on Twitter! We got a few thinking about their professional identities. We got people thinking about a landing page to bring all their online presence together. Here are some of my favourite pieces of feedback.

“what I liked about the session was the engagement/ bounding around of ideas between tables, the group and the presenters”

“both discussions were informal which I find enjoyable and less nerve racking”

“the candour of the presenters”

“that developing an online presence could be a really fun way to add to my professional development”

“connectivism – think more about what I share with the world in return for what I gain”

“everybody has something to contribute no matter what”

What we could improve on….

“lollies”

“maybe more table discussion in 2nd half – just to balance out”

“I think the 2 group discussions were great where small groups reported back to the larger group. We could have done more of that.”  << I didn’t anticipate participants being comfortable with this! So much so, they wanted more!

All in all, I declare this workshop a success! Many thanks to Matthias for co-facilitating, the symposium committee who agreed to have us on the program, and to the participants. You guys rock!

Planning Session 1 – Get it all out!

Posted on by acrystelle
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I couldn’t wait to plan my fresh start. It was difficult to know where to begin, but with pen, paper and a whole lot of ideas jumping round my head, one way was to just write. Here, I detail my first planning session, kicking off 2012.

Write, list, draw, whatever, all commitments for the year. For example, I have subjects to complete towards my Masters degree, ALIA NewGrads and writing here at Flight Path. Some times I can’t do things (or think) in any coherent order, so I’ve written all over a piece of paper. Whatever came to mind, seemingly random items. Questions which assisted my thought process included: -

  • What did I learn from last year?
  • What worked? What didn’t work?
  • What area/s of life do I want to work on?
  • What area/s of life need working on?
  • What behaviours or habits do I need to look out for?
  • What is stopping me from achieving goals?
  • What projects/events will I have on this year?
  • (for me) What will be my research/exploration focus?

Write down everything. I mean, EVERYTHING.

Guidance may need to be sought during this process. I looked to position descriptions (for jobs I’d like to aim for) and ideas of mid to long term plans and goals. I then highlighted items of particular importance, my focus areas – fitness, writing, well-being – with a bubble. But whatever takes your fancy.

I wrote down everything from what I definitely knew I had on, to what I’d like to do, such as learning Mandarin. As projects and commitments jump onto the page, this process may seem quite overwhelming, and it was. It’s supposed to. For me, it was like some sort of shock therapy to bring some perspective and realise I can’t achieve and do everything that’s landed on the page. Believe me, without established priorities and planning, if I attempted to pursue everything on that piece of paper, I’d most likely end up burnt out again, or on a bathroom floor, literally.

The second activity in this session was to identify what planning tools I’ll need to help me see the year ahead. Planning tools I’ve chosen are: -

  • Diary – for what’s on and due
  • Task manager – to be an inbox for tasks and managing next actions for projects
  • Year planner – to view all projects for the year on a Gantt chart-like spreadsheet
  • Quarterly planner – for a closer look at projects and due dates, particularly for the university semester
  • Checklist – to tick off regular tasks, such as reading, blog posts and exercising.

Each tool will be assigned a function. For example, my checklist is for habit development and repeating tasks. I will not be writing in due dates, events or appointments. This is what my diary is for. And this way my repeating tasks won’t bulk up my task manager.

I also started to think about my personal learning environment, systems and processes I need to have in place. I’m a systematic type of person. I like to plan and set in place whatever I can to free my mind from mundane, day-to-day processes, and time-wasting moments like ‘where did I file away my last bank statement?’ and the hunt that proceeds. Systems and simple processes that become routine and habit can save time and allows for focus on other, more complex tasks. I’ve already proven this to myself.

Some questions to ask are: -

  • Where and what tools serve as in-trays or inboxes?
  • How are day-to-day things processed?
  • Where can efficiency by improved so I can routinely capture the information and tasks I need?

For example, work emails, Gmail, physical in-tray, Evernote and Google Reader are probably most places where I’ll find tasks to action and ideas to organise; inboxes for things ranging from mobile phone invoices to blog post ideas and professional reading. For this first session though, I didn’t think too much about this and I still haven’t. At this point I figured once the projects and goals are set, I’ll have a better picture about what tools and processes I’ll put in place to facilitate them.

At the end of my first session, I had a piece of paper with scribbles, a rough list of planning tools and began to co ordinate regular events, like study, beach volleyball seasons and ALIA NewGrads, into a year planner. Details of said planner will come….however at this point I needed a boost of inspiration, so I spent an afternoon starting on my vision board by painting decorations.

For another example of conducting annual reviews and planning, see post from The Act of Non-Conformity.

 

Setting the Scene – 2012 Planning Part 1

Posted on by acrystelle
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Ah, new year resolutions. A new year, a fresh start. Goals seem to be flying about all over the place, and not without every tip under the sun about how to keep them. Well, I believe there is no point in having resolutions and goals without accompanying those with a plan to achieve them.

I achieved a lot last year, but at an expense to my well-being. It was a fabulous year for me professionally, but I didn’t set myself some boundaries. Without boundaries I tend to have no sense of when enough is enough; I didn’t consistently recognise limitations to my time and energy and I didn’t set any goals for the year. Funny that. I didn’t set any goals, yet I’ve accomplished more than what I remotely thought to be possible. I just went all out, hard, with no real defined direction. I took up every opportunity that came my way. Of course, my projects and writing this blog had purpose, but I did not deliberately say to myself, “Hey, let’s aim to present at a conference this year”. Basically I saw opportunities then did whatever I could manage to seize them.

This year will be much the same, but strategically and aligned with plans, focus, direction and goals. Seizing opportunities as they are created or presented is a great trait to have, but I believe I need to reign that tendency in a little, so to not jeopardise the efforts I plan to invest in other parts of my life which I also consider important and are very dear to me.

My lessons learnt from last year has inspired me to do some planning for next year, sorry, this year. Even before the new year began, I had my first planning session. I started tweeting my planning sessions, where a request arose that I blog about my process. This introductory post, as well as in a few posts to follow, I will detail what I have done to develop to a big picture view, down to a week-to-week system of keeping projects (and new habits) on track. Plus, I’m thinking it’s a good idea to document my planning process for reference at a later date.

Now, to return to the topic of new year resolutions and goals, here are some of my thoughts. Where goals arise, a balance needs to be struck between the efforts planned to be invested into those goals and the rest of life itself. There can be more time dedicated to writing, for example, but which part of life is going to be sacrificed in order to achieve related goals?

I’ve come to understand that I can’t achieve a goal without taking time away from another part of my life. This is where determining a (very) few focus areas, I’ve found to be important. These areas are what I’ll place above all else, when push comes to shove. I need to know what my priorities are, regardless of the goals I wish to achieve.

The purpose of my planning is to define focus areas for myself, determine when my projects are and identify any times I could pursue things I’d like to.

I define or use the term ‘project’ loosely in this context, to mean any series of tasks toward a completion of something. Projects could be completing a unit in my Masters course, organising an ALIA NewGrads event, research I’d like to do and even planning my travels.

My planning aims to: -

  • Look at what I can realistically achieve
  • Prompt strategic thinking
  • Break down goals by identifying building blocks (stepping stone projects and achievements)
  • Apply lessons learnt from last year.

Have I taken out the gold yet?

Posted on by acrystelle
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Success. Achievement. Results.

These mean different things to different people, that’s a given. What I have recently realised is that these may also change depending on the challenge, task, goal, path and nature, of what outcome is sought in each stage of our lives and careers.

Above is a picture of my old hand guards I used for the uneven bars as a gymnast. They’re a visible result of my hard work, commitment, pain, blood, sweat and tears dedicated to my sport. My beloved hand guards. After 10 years they’re still good for something. I pulled them out of my old gym bag the other day, from a cloud of chalk that still existed. I sat looking at them strewn on the floor. What did they mean to me now? Those hand guards prompt thought from time to time but more to the point, in this instance, they’ve helped me arrive at a realisation.

Recently I’ve slowed life down a bit to consider how I’ve approached my new career. In one word, I’d say, aggressively. Leading up to this point, I’ve often wondered, so what’s all this for again? At times I’ve thought, what are my results? Am I getting anywhere? What’s it all worth?

Success, achievements and hard work look significantly different now from what they were 10 years ago. The difference between experiencing success in gymnastics and successfully launching (and managing) my career is: -

  1. immediacy of results
  2. structure, and
  3. war wounds.

In gymnastics, my successes were measured by staying on the beam, ‘hitting’ all my skills in a bar routine, landing on my feet on vault, how high my scores were, whether I got on the podium. Competition season was every year. There were different levels of competition – local, state, national and international, and a judging code. So here I see the structure, a well-defined path my results would be measured against.

A career, a defined one, a distinct path, is perhaps difficult to firstly identify and understand, then even more so to achieve one’s desired outcomes. What is a successful career , at least these days, is not as well defined than a competition season. Nor is a successful one attainable in just a few years or by putting in some consistent, hard yakka.

Okay, so my results during gymnastics may not have been so immediate. I trained for years to achieve podium finishes, titles and a reputation. But my point is, I’d compete four rotations between apparatus’, about two hours worth of anticipation, nerves, stress, things going wrong, then I found out my results. I was either on the podium or I wasn’t. Titles and status were clear. And simple. This is not the case when it comes to one’s career.

War wounds back then were constant injuries, trips to the physio and massage therapist, never-ending pain, bruises in places you’d think you shouldn’t, blisters, tears….you get the picture. And worn out hand guards!

What do the possible war wounds look like now? Burnout, low motivation, little sense of achievement, a love affair with a Mac, feeling lost.

What’s common between the two careers? I can think of three things – self-doubt, frustration and rejection.

But the war wounds were more physical, you could SEE them. So there’s the difference. When I’m tired and worn out, it’s mentally and emotionally, and yet I find myself thinking ‘Alisa, get your act together! You’re fine, there’s nothing wrong with you!’

Nowadays, in career and life, I’m on my own. No one can define a path for me. No one can define success or measure my achievements other than myself. Success is based on the desired outcomes I set for myself.

No matter how much effort I put into my career, not so much blood and sweat, but perhaps some tears, hard work and commitment to study, professional development, planning and involvement in the profession, if I don’t identify successes along the way, I could very well wind up feeling lost and frustrated because I won’t be realising the rewards, benefits and results immediately after my input of effort. If I keep pushing myself further and take on too much for my own good, I could wind up losing my ability to see the end goal.

My problem, I now realise, is I hadn’t yet identified what an achievement would look like, what would mean to me and the objectives I had set.

So how do I apply my old training habits to my career? When is it competition season?

Well, just like Rome, a career isn’t built in a day. And there’s no such thing as competition season. There’s only one competition, and it’s defined by the individual. The meaning of success may evolve over time. I know mine will. Success, to me, will be an achievement of a state of being; the kind of life I’d like. So how will I know I’ve reached it? Answer: milestones. Which milestones will you choose to be your “podium finishes”?

To train hard and train consistently, will involve setting benchmarks for myself. Okay, so I had to achieve eight successful (no falling off) beam routines in a training session.

  1. When will be my ‘career’ training sessions? Perhaps the time I spend on PD activities?
  2. What will be my benchmarks to achieve each training session?

Experiences between then and now have seen my lessons be applied to how I define success, achievement, results, and distinguishing between each of them. I believe it’s important to understand how each of these concepts contribute to the very life you’ve set out to lead.

A Source of Inspiration

Posted on by acrystelle
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Do you have a ‘thinking spot’? A place where you can be with your own thoughts? Somewhere you can just be you – no judgement, no expectations, no agendas? Totally alone.

The photo in the header is my ‘thinking spot’. Expensive to reach (from Australia) and one I experienced for only an hour. It’s Giant’s Causeway (Northern Ireland) right on sunset.

Two years ago I had done some soul searching and decided to make my adventure in Ireland a personal challenge, to drive around the country by myself. My trip to Ireland was highly anticipated and meant an incredible amount to me.

After battling Friday afternoon traffic out of Belfast and getting lost finding my B&B, I finally made it to the famous landmark. I found all tourists had gone. It was just me and a professional photographer. You couldn’t have wiped the smile off my face. The thought which kept repeating in my mind was ‘I made it. I did it.’ I sat and watched the sun go down. It was so beautiful. It was surreal. It was majestic.

Giant’s Causeway is my ‘thinking spot’. A place where my mind may be freed of clutter, allowed to wander and to reconcile. This photo in the header serves as a reminder to always be true and honest to my thoughts, my ideas and opinions. The time I spent in my ‘thinking spot’, my memory of the feeling I felt while sitting there watching the sun go down, continues to be my inspiration.