Why Specialists can struggle with Career Navigation and Trajectory
By T. N. Tavantzis
Why are there more people from the Specialist Personality orientation than Generalist Personality orientation who come to our door seeking career development help?
I am perplexed. If Generalist's outnumber Specialist's in the population then I should see more Generalists in my practice. After all the research studies offered by Johnson O' Connor Human Abilities group as well as AIMS, another ability center, all indicate approximately 65% of the population are Generalists. Once I take out the Corporate populations with whom I work who tend to be primarily engineers and scientists, where one would expect greater numbers of Specialists, I still however find myself primarily consulting to Specialists in both my consulting practice and my Career Development graduate classes.
I teach a graduate class made up of working adults (late 20's to 60 years of age) who are primarily in or desire to move into the training and organizational development field. In each class based on the THAB data I have collected since first (2001) offering my Advanced Career Development Course, Specialists easily outnumber the Generalists (3:1).
I thought about this for awhile and then sought some answers from the vast database the Highlands Company has been developing. Surprisingly, they are seeing the same phenomena. In fact, one of their hypotheses is that young adults in our society were becoming more Specialist and that the percentage of Generalist to Specialists was more like 50/50. I didn't find that completely plausible but I accept that as one hypothesis. I continued to think, observe and research.
Recently another answer cropped up as a equally plausible hypothesis. Interestingly, this answer comes from the somewhat dusty past,1940, to be exact. I discovered a book, recently reissued, authored and written by Johnson O' Connor, the 'Grandfather' of the Ability Battery. The book title is the "Unique Individual" and it is primarily about the "Subjective" as he called it (Specialist) personality orientation. Listen to what O'Connor says:
"all men and women belong by nature to one personality type, the reminder to another. From the objective multitude (Generalists) prosperous business men, from the extremely subjective (Specialists) minority come creative artists, gifted writers, lyric poets, scrupulous surgeons, diligent scientists, and unworldly musicians."
Both the title and the thrust of his text clearly indicates that given the very uniqueness of the Specialist personality orientation that they are more likely to seek assistance or be dissatisfied with their work and careers. Additionally given the size of the Generalists orientation in the general population, Specialists are more likely to misunderstand others as well as be easily misunderstood by others!
Again let's hear what O'Connor has to say,
"In the considered choice of a lifelong career, men and women who score extremely subjective must face the disadvantages of belonging to the outnumbered species."
It was an 'aha' moment for me as now I see that perhaps it isn't that the population is changing (still a hypothesis) but also and equally plausible it is that career help was more likely to be sought by a Specialist as function of their unique take on the world!
Some points about Specialist:
1. if Specialists have not fallen into roles that allow them to develop expertise and capitalize on their personality strengths, they will feel misaligned.
2. Specialists, often feeling like a square peg trying to fit into a round organizational hole can make the mistake and seek to be a Generalist. This strategy may work for a while but is not a long term solution to solving the question of finding worthwhile work.
3. Since Specialists thrive when expressing their passion they need to spend time figuring what this is and then put the time in and develop their expertize.
4. Specialists need to look at their other hard-wired abilities and use them to seek a career role.
5. Many career blogs will say you can and should be both a Specialist and a Generalist. Unfortunately, while this can get you a job, it is also a recipe for career disnavigated Specialist.
Young Adult Development
The area we are most interested in -- and in which we can provide the greatest support – is “greater focus on personal development and maturity.” IMD has been working with young adults and their parents since 1986. Over the years it has become increasingly apparent that the launch of young adults has changed, and that over time the solutions we used to offer have also shifted away from the therapeutic counseling interventions of the early ‘90’s to the career, life and vision-development interventions of the mid-1990’s and since. The approach we have developed over time is less about focusing on weaknesses and remediation and more on identifying strengths and internal resources, and on developing the knowledge to act with greater emotional intelligence. This approach relies quite heavily on the Highlands Ability Battery as a foundational piece. Over the years we have found (and we have tried!) no better tool for assessing natural hard-wired talents. In addition to the Ability Battery and our assessment of hard-wired Abilities, or as so many traditionalists refer to them, Aptitudes, we embrace a 7- Factor Model that explores the complexity of the individual and provides a blueprint for self-direction. Due to the limitations of space I will only direct my comments to the Ability Battery and in a future article discuss the 7 other factors.
SAM
Sam is 21 and heading into his junior year of college with his major undecided. His experience is that the school doesn’t reach out to him, and that he, like many others, “can’t” find the Career Center. His parents feel out of control as they see their child flounder, but they try to work within the university system from a distance. Sam located our website and suggested to his parents that he take the Highlands Ability Battery. Let me underline this: Sam took the initiative. Parental anxiety momentarily subsided as action took place. (Rule of thumb – when working with young adults, action, any action, is always preferable to paralysis in the case of life and work goals!). After taking the Battery, Sam and I met to review and discuss his report. Among the many interesting results of the Battery we discussed during our 2-hour review (while the CD I burned recorded our meeting for Sam’s parents to hear later) indicated a strong hard-wired basis for Sam to prefer a smaller school (or at least smaller classes), with more opportunities to interact in class, with an emphasis on experiential learning and tangible hands-on outcomes. The large liberal arts curriculum wasn’t a good fit for Sam. Initially, Sam’s parents had taken many of their cues from the High School Counselor at the private school their son was attending. However, the tools available to the counselor, as well as the school’s own marketing approach, prevented creative thinking about what might have been a better college choice for Sam.
John
John, 27, a graduate of one of our nation's most prestigious colleges, easily found jobs but never chose one with adequate information about his own strengths and resources. In college he availed himself of little help – though he did visit the Career Center once. (He didn’t find it especially helpful.) Upon graduation, not knowing what else to do, he followed his peers into lucrative positions as Financial Consultants – because that was where the money was. His anxiety about what to do was momentarily settled.
Now, 27 years old and 3 jobs later, he worries about his future fate as he watches the “grey men in their forties glumly going to their cubicles,” and he wonders if he will always be dissatisfied with his work. When I discussed John’s results with him, it was clear that he needed to find an area of expertise, that his longing for a passionate commitment to a job was as much a part of him as his eye color. He had a short learning curve and he longed to work in an environment in which he could contribute to long-range solutions.
At the same time, he needed a fast-paced, problem-solving environment in which his ability for strong rapport-building could be maximized. Until now, everyone had detected only one of John’s abilities – his gift for working with numbers. That one gift appeared to shape everyone’s view of what John should be doing and in turn limited the information John had about himself! His parents were very supportive of John’s search for a new direction, because they could see the long-term benefit of his getting it right.
Gail
Gail, 29, graduated from a University with a Communications degree, and never quite “latched onto an area of interest”. She did things and landed jobs as “opportunities” rather then from a sense of direction or purpose. Fortunately, her natural gifts identified her as a rising star. Eventually, she rose to a management position in a retail store! Her problem was that she wanted to choose for herself what she would commit to. And it wasn’t retail management! Gail had managed to remain untouched all through High School (wealthy suburban) and University by any career development information. Gail’s parents supported her in looking at her alternatives knowing that her choice was important to her. Overlooked by Gail and the others were her artistic talents, coupled with her talent for seeing the big picture, for sensing the gifts of others, and for helping them succeed. All this worked together to make her excellent at roles in which she taught others, fueled by her passion for delivering concrete results.
Each of these young adults and their search for fulfillment are not offered as proof of my awesome powers as a psychologist! (Although my family, grad students and clients think I am pretty amazing!) Rather, these are fairly standard outcomes of our work with The Highlands Ability Battery and the 2-hour feedback session. The Battery is not just an assessment – it is brought to life and becomes a life intervention by the power of the 2-hour feedback conference.
Concluding Remarks
With each of these adults, their parents were actively involved in supportive roles. They assisted their adult children in sorting out alternatives, knowing the value to be derived from taking time to explore and put together a tentative plan for success. In turn, each of the young adults found the Battery enlightening. In some ways I often feel as though I am giving water to a very thirsty person. John, for instance, was astounded that he had never been exposed to any assessment as comprehensive and penetrating as the Battery. He declared, “this should be mandatory in all colleges and high schools.”
Is this the final piece of the story for each of these people? Of course not. They all left our feedback conference with homework – read your complementary copy of “Don’t Waste Your Talent”, listen to your CD or MP3, read and re-read your 34-page report, and if you’re not entering one of our workshops, contact me in a month on your progress. I provide them with all these things so they can move in the direction of developing a career- and life-vision, and use the 7 other factors that go into creating a personal strategic plan and a Career Vision.
In the midst of an environment, breeding disaster and failure at the economic-environmental-social-political level, with faltering signs of occasional improvement, each of these young people will do what he or she can to get by. They will all share a common desire to contribute more of themselves, to feel passion and live a valued life. Each of them found his or her way to our door and signed up for The Highlands Ability Battery – the starting place for self-knowledge for thousands of people over the years…a responsibility we take very seriously!
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This blog post covers part II of an article published by Dr. Tavantzis in the Highlands Ability Battery newsletter. The article deals with career anxiety of 'quarter-lifers', young adults who are just beginning their work life....
Young Adulthood
During this stage, Donald Super – and most career theorists would agree --
considers that the most significant developmental task is Establishment. Young adults go through a series of "trial" jobs (Exploration Stage), before establishing themselves in what seems a stable career. On both sides of the Establishment stage they meet with a series of crises when they are forced to find answers to the basic questions life poses. At each crisis or turning point, life poses the same essential questions to each of us, and we have to find new answers as we outgrow our last ones. The questions are:
1. How can I best contribute or be productive?
2. How do I find satisfaction and, yes, even passion in my work?
3. How do I balance work and love (my intimate relationships)?
This process of establishing oneself is the primary task associated with young adulthood. Once stabilized, Consolidation and Advancement become the next developmental tasks.
In this stage you are faced with the consequences of entering and completing college. You have been in two worlds (high school and college) populated primarily by your peers, and you are suddenly launched to a place where you need to find meaningful work. At the same time, you face hearing the voices of your parents, and seeing your own family going through changes. You may even understand that they have not stood, frozen in time, while you were in college during those 4 (or was it 5) years! And in the midst of all this, you still need to focus on becoming your own person, the main event in your life. To become your own person, you need to continue acquiring self-knowledge. However, while the basic issues are the same today perhaps what has changed most is the length of time of this stage, as well as its character!
Key Themes Impacting Young Adults
Some key themes that reflect the lengthening and complexity of this life phase emerge from our research (see Transition to Adulthood, Spring 2010). They are:
Need for higher education
Life expectancy expanding
Financially greater challenges in establishing oneself
Cultural change in attitudes towards sex
Greater focus on personal development and maturity
All these result in the need of young adults for more ongoing support from their parents to help them launch their careers successfully. The old markers of 18 or 21 years of age are now meaningless. The notice we used to hear from parents (hopefully no longer) “once you are 21 you are on your own” no longer makes sense. The period we are in now in resembles more the pre-industrial world in which independence was acquired over a longer period of time, and within the confines of the supportive family of origin.
“Changes in the coming-of-age schedule are, in fact, nothing new. A century or more ago, the transition to adulthood was also a protracted affair. In an agriculture-based economy, it took many young adults some time to gain the wherewithal to leave home and form a family… Today young adults take far longer to reach economic and social maturity than their contemporaries did five or six decades ago. In large part, this shift is attributable to the expansion of higher education beginning in the late 1960s.”(Furstenberg, 2010).
Unfortunately, as Furstenberg (2010) and others point out, societal supports for these changes are non-existent. Mass media recognized the gap and came up with pejorative labels that made it seem that we were experiencing a breakdown in personal character, calling young adults who return home ‘boomerangers’ and parents who intervening in the college or work life of their children ‘helicopter’ parents. What is often not addressed is that young adults in their senior high school years are continuing to make decisions with little basic information (Career Institute for Education and Workforce Development, 2002), or that “too few depart high school with the agility, self-reliance, critical-thinking…needed to adapt in the future” (Feller, 2003). From our personal experience and conversations with students ‘things don’t get much better in college’.
TO BE CONTINUED...
The fol
lowing article was published in the Highlands Ability Battery Forum By Dr Thomas N. Tavantzis, CEO Innovative Management Development, Adjunct Faculty, Organizational Development and Leadership, Saint Joseph’s University. It it being re-published here in two parts. This is PART I.Three students – Gail 29, John 26, and Sam 21 – though of different ages, share much in common. They are in the midst of developing themselves so they can successfully launch their careers and, well, their lives! Each is still single, all live independently from their parents (Sam is in college) while experiencing (considerable) ongoing parental support. They all share trying to develop themselves as people, finding careers they can be passionate about, but all appear stuck, in large part, from the consequences of too little self-knowledge. They’re grasping for information. How do I go about making decisions? How do I problem-solve? What are my learning styles? What work environment do I want? What are my values? My impact on others? My emotional resources? How do I learn the basics for self-management?
A recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer called ’Quarterlife: [It] Gets A Whole Lot Harder’ discusses the challenges faced by young adults at the quarter point of their lives. My first reaction was: a whole lot harder than what? Given that I am past 2 quarter lives (or at my half-life), a father of 3 “quarter-lifers’ and constantly around “quarter-lifers’, I think I can safely say that having a period of my life described by the label Quarter-life strikes me at first as yet another useless marketing label created to sell a book. On second thought, maybe it does serve a purpose. Perhaps it can serve to demarcate a clearer time in life. Today, figuring out life in the midst of its complexity and chaos is a challenge for everyone, including quarter-lifers, especially if one clings to outdated and rigid ideas about young adults.
Current World Right now we are in the midst of several disasters simultaneously: BP, 2 wars, a poor economy, terrorism, perhaps another recession, job loss, catastrophic climate change, a private sector rift with ethics issues driven by greed run amok, while Government is seen – strangely enough – as both overly powerful and intrusive, and ineffectual and broken. Does that sum it up? This all while continuing scientific and technological change inundates us daily. These major external issues only serve to heighten our overall anxiety and filter anxiety down to the young adults planning a direction for their lives. They face a planning process which is already compounded by the usual challenges of the Quarter-lifer (ages 20-30) – lack of self-knowledge, confusion about work-roles, fear of commitment, helplessness, and the sense of frustration caused by instability and change. Everyone ends up at wit’s end in this phase of the Quarter-life, including (and perhaps especially), the young adult’s parent(s)! For the Quarter-lifer, the central challenge only heightens the importance of staying focused on what needs to done. The good news is that, no matter what the problems facing society or the economy, the basic issues facing the Quarter-lifer remain the same: his or her main task at this phase of life is still to develop and refine a vision or a blueprint for a happy and productive life ahead.
You may ask what does Career counselling offer a new college grad? Once you have graduated college, you may have noticed that your career search in this job market isn't what you had hoped. Due to the economic conditions, and competitive nature of the candidates you will find it tough out there! A resume becomes your marketing tool and reflects your personal brand in this new world of work. Here's the question: does your resume clearly reflect your aptitudes or abilities, your strengths? Here is some resume advice.
Consider what Johnson O'Connor, developer of one of the first Aptitude batteries almost 90 years ago, said "The individual who knows his own aptitudes, and their relative strengths, chooses more intelligently among the world's host of opportunities".
In a recent workshop participants after first reviewing their results from The Highlands Aptitude Battery test and then participating in an exercise aimed at re-discovering and acknowledging one's many skills-several participants exclaimed,
- "Now I need to re-write my resume to really reflect what I do easily and well" or
- "I never thought how my natural abilities are behind many of my skills" or
- "I never thought there is a difference between abilities and skills".
- "I always thought they were the same" noted a 28- year old manager".
Like many college grads in career search situations, there is a confusion between Skills and Abilities. Abilities are what you are hard-wired to do easily, almost automatically, while skills, what you are trained to do, can complement strong abilities or supplement weaker ones. When one combines an ability with a skill training then you have excellence.
Take a look at your resume and ask yourself the question: do your natural abilities shine in your marketing tool? Does your emerging personal brand build on your natural talents?
The first part of this blog set up the Advanced Career Development graduate course I have developed and delivered to working adults in our Organization Development and Leadership Program. Here is part II.... 
Results
In my most recent graduate class this summer I gave this RBS exercise as pre-work three weeks before the Program (along with completion of the THAB). I struggled over when to insert the RBS (I knew it worked well from prior uses in other classes) but I wasn't sure where to insert it as we went through the Graduate course adaptation of the Highlands Personal Srategic Planning Seminars. Finally it dawned on me to insert the RBS in the Integration phase of the Program, right before the brainstorming. Wow, what a hit! The RBS had provided one more highly emotional moment for many clients, joining the Family of Origin genogram exercise.
The experience reminded the presenters of their moments of success, but the process of reading aloud what they had put together - the strengths and positive strokes - was for some just emotionally overwhelming. At a more cognitive level, there was clearly confirmation from folks in work and outside that the abilities they had identified for themselves were reflected in their Best moments, along with their skills, values and personal style.
As I look through the feedback for the RBS exercise, I find the responses very interesting. They definitely tie into the exercise we did about owning what you do well.
Here is one graduate student describing in her weekly reflection journal (another powerful exercise to be discussed in the future) to me her experience with the RBS: "It is a bit difficult to see it the way others see it. I remember the events or situations the respondents are remarking about, but at the time (and even now) I don't see it in quite the way they do. I'm tempted to ask them who the heck they're talking about. You can surmise that people care about you, think you do a good job and so on, but the really impacting sentiments like " I make a difference, I am selfless, I'm an expert," and the like kind of blow you away."
And here is someone else commenting in his journal on the entire experience of Integration and then Brainstorming:
"Saturday's class was a lot of fun and thought provoking. Putting together all my statements and then reading them was very impactful, more than the brainstorming. I liked the brainstorming because it gave me a chance to catch my breath. I felt sort of exposed up there reading all my stuff and the brainstorming allowed me to "put my clothes back on". Over the last two days, I've felt like - not a new person - but a version of me that I hadn't identified with in a long time. It feels good, comfortable. I have realized that what I do has to strongly be identified with who I am. Others are able to work as a means to an end; it's not the way for me. I've tried that before (and certainly may have to do it from time to time) and know that is not a sustainable model for me. I also know that I need to have a number of different channels or aspects to work - a mix of paid work, volunteer work, helping friends, etc."
This RBS tool should definitely be added to your Coach toolbox. It's powerful, inexpensive, strength-based and aligns well with our important Highlands work.
By Dr. Tom N. Tavantzis
Introduction
Over the years, I have looked at how to strengthen an already powerful program. Our Personal Strategic Planning Seminar (PSPS), as it was originally called, has been a core program since the beginning of Highlands, and it still shapes many of our shorter programs (my own Invest In Yourself, and The Highlands Company's Team Program and Paths to Success etc.). Yet I constantly search for new ways to strengthen this remarkably successful program.
Each year I offer a modified version of the PSPS to my graduate students as an Advanced Career Development Program. Graduate students in our program are typically are working adults between the ages of 26-60. The summer program is usually held over three weeks (three sessions on Tuesday and Thursday from 6-9 and two on Saturday from 8-4). Much to my delight the course gets rave reviews and is much sought after as a result of the great word-of-mouth among the students. Each year I work to keep the number of students to 15. Over the past two years I have experimented with an additional assessment tool and with exercises to add and strengthen the PSPS (see, My Best Self Exercise in my Paths To Success manual). After using these in different courses and seeing their success, I incorporated them this year into the SJU Advanced Graduate Career Course.
Background
EI and then positive psychology caught my attention in the mid-'90's. As they added emphasis on Positive Organizational Scholarship, I incorporated the readings, etc., into my graduate courses and client workshops. We were already in the Strength-based movement with the THAB and our workshop approaches.
Another influencing thread in my work - and one that at the same time plagues me - is the 360 multi-rater feedback tool. The use of feedback from everyone around you has its value, and I have used 360's for years (even in the past experimenting with the Highlands short-lived 360!) but 360's appear to me to be hampered often by distortions in reputation, and/or organizational climates that favor middle-of-the-road ratings or overly positive ones, regardless of the person being analyzed. Additionally, since it is pre-arranged usually with reference to the company's competencies and a fairly iron-clad response requirement (1-5 point scale) one can miss the more qualitative elements of the analysis. But again I want to emphasize that I use 360's and find them useful, though I really don't see them as a worthwhile tool for searching for strengths.
I was left searching for a 360-like tool that also offers a strength-based approach. In my meanderings for materials on positive organizational scholarship, my own visits to the University of Michigan in support of my past counter-terrorism work, and the text-books for my graduate courses, I found the U. of Michigan's Ross School Business Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship ( http://www.bus.umich.edu/Positive/POS-Teaching-and-Learning/ReflectedBestSelfExercise.htm).
Breakthrough
The teaching tool I came across is the Reflected Best Self Exercise (Quinn, Dutton, Spreitzer, 2003). Here is the description from their website:
The Reflected Best Self (RBS) exercise enables people to identify their unique strengths and talents, making it an excellent tool for personal development. Each participant requests positive feedback from significant people in his or her life and then synthesizes it all into a cumulative portrait of his or her "best self." (It costs $6 person to download the materials.)
Here is briefly how it works: Your clients compose an email that asks people (10-20 in all) who have known them over the course of their lives to write three brief stories, with examples they recall, that show your clients at their best.
Once all the emails are returned, the client's job is to analyze and organize the data into themes and then finally write an interpretive paragraph, a Best Reflected Self Portrait. In my classes and workshops I ask folks to read the statements out loud to the entire group.
Part II Looking at the Results
When the weather warms up and summer beckons my thoughts return to the country I grew up in-Greece. From May to October, my high school friends and I usually were on the Greek islands. Mykonos, Rhodes, Corfu, Paros, Ios, Santorini, Skiathos-all lovely islands all with different charms all sharing the fabulous Greek sunlight described by American author Henry Miller in his great travel book, Colossus of 
Maroussi 2006_04_01.html
Our personal discovery adventure to Greece is conducted in this beautiful area of the world.
In 1964 when I was 14, we were visiting a friend of my parents, a local Greek priest, to celebrate Orthodox Easter on the island of Paros. During our 10 day stay one day my family decided to take a car tour of the island. Right about lunchtime, we happened on a very small fishing village, sparsely populated, with beautiful beaches, Aliki. As we walked out to the tip of the village and past the houses, the story goes, I pointed to my father and then to the land we stood on, three-quarters of which was surrounded by the Aegean, and I "pronounced", ‘Dad, if you buy land in Greece you should buy this land’. My father then turned and went back to the village, found the owner negotiated a price ($650 dollars!) and the small parcel of land was ours. (Of course, depending on the day and the frustrations my father faced building a house on the island, my words were considered by him as prophetic or very regrettable! Of course, I would wonder what on earth was he doing listening to a 14 year anyway!)
Many years have past, my father has passed away, the house he built has aged, however the house has seen and taken care of many members of my extended family and friends for years. The village has grown but it still is a fishing village. The characters that populated the village have grown old and now their children are replacing them in many of the same roles. In my adult life, I have used Aliki, Paros as my retreat and place to think and dream, to do personal planning, over the future without the hassles of my hectic life. In the past few years, I have even invited executives and leaders, my coaching clients to take part in Vision Development workshops. The workshops gave me a chance to share Aliki with others and give others an opportunity to take a break, think about oneself, and envision themselves anew.
We all need spaces that we can reliably reinvigorate ourselves, reduce and manage our stress and anxiety, to remind ourselves of what is important. I hope you have a Aliki in your life!
Free yourself from your work system self to look at your career trajectory, your work life balance!
As I compose a flyer announcing our upcoming July workshop in Aliki, Paros Island, Greece, a flood of memorable participant experiences fills my head. For instance, I recall vividly four years ago, the experience of a young German scientist, Manfred, from a global Pharma company. Manfred was at a crossroads and needed some time to reflect and consider his options. Considered a High Potential, he was in the midst of deciding what would be his next move. Would he advance on as a technical scientist or move into the ranks of management? Fortunately he had a leader who had the ability to listen carefully, understand, and assist her people in developing themselves. Given his manager’s previous experience with IMD’s development programs, Manfred was then offered the opportunity of IMD’s program on Paros.
His response to our consultation on his results from The Highlands Ability Battery assessment http://www.highlandslifeandcareercenter.com/assessment.phpwas his first revelation. He got his question answered. He heard about how his hard-wired strengths would contribute to his possible roles. He then heard the challenges inherent in his strengths in his role options. However, while he did get the answers, he needed to be reminded that making a decision without considering the other 7 factors would be a potential error! 
When we are experiencing career or life anxiety all too often it seems to me that we all look for the quick fix to reduce the discomfort we are experiencing! Like fast food it is short-lived and not terribly good for us or likely to sustain us. Manfred was at that moment, having received his Ability Battery results and got what he considered was the immediate answer to his question -"Yes, stay a scientist, stay technical"was ready to pack it in without hearing the rest of his own story.
Manfred, nor any of us, are reducible to one dimension or one factor. It is just hard to try to capture our complexity and think of ourselves in multiple ways --The Highlands Ability Battery. After holding him back and asking him to stay open for several more days, and as the workshop progressed he started to see his bigger picture-all the other factors that we could systemically look at and ask the participant to attempt to integrate into a larger, newer, more up to date narrative.
I leave you with 2 questions I struggle with myself and that others, like Manfred, do as well. 1) How often do you find yourself seeing only one dimension of who you are and 2) how do you communicate your complexity to others?
I was telling some of my corporate clients about my planning for the upcoming IMD Summer workshop on the isle of Paros in Greece. One person asked, 'why go that far away'? I guess to me it is obvious but I thought I would provide a brief rationale. When life and career stress and anxiety symptoms surface, it's important to know how to deal with them. What better place to reduce anxiety than on a beautiful Greek Island? What better place to gain a perspective on your life?
We help clients with "natural remedies for anxiety" on the lovely Island of Aliki. Reducing anxiety can be a difficult task, and IMD works with clients on a daily basis to reduce organization and career situational stress and anxiety while helping business leaders become more confident as well as successful.
IMD's four day workshop course is offered to a small group of participants on the isle of Paros as an opportunity to learn more about their personal style and working style. The session assists individuals with mid life career change, reducing stress and anxiety, and career assessment. Often times this workshop provides an opportunity for leaders to examine their careers and gain a new perspective.
However this doesn't convey the personal side of this choice. A quick story on the origins of this workshop location...
When the weather warms up and summer beckons my thoughts return to the country I grew up in-Greece. From May to October, my friends and I usually were on the Greek islands. Mykonos, Rhodes, Corfu, Paros, Ios, Santorini, Skiathos-all lovely islands all with different charms all sharing the fabulous Greek sunlight described by many authors including the American author Henry Miller in his travelogue "Colossus of Maroussi". In 1964 when I was 14, we were visiting a friend of my parents, a local Greek priest, to celebrate Orthodox Easter on the island of Paros. During our 10 day vacation one day my family decided to take a car tour of the island. Right about lunchtime, we happened on a very small fishing village, sparsely populated, with beautiful beaches, Aliki. As we walked out to the tip of the village and past the houses, the story goes, I pointed to my father and then to the land we stood on three-quarters of which was surrounded by the Aegean, and I said, ‘Dad, if you buy land in Greece you should buy this land’. My father, a action oriented business man, then turned and went back to the village, found the owner, negotiated a price ($650 dollars!) and a small parcel of land was his. (Of course, depending on the day and the frustrations my father faced building a house on the island, my words were considered by him as prophetic or very regrettable! Of course, I would often retort, 'what on earth were you doing listening to a 14 year anyway!))
Many years have past, my father has passed away the house he built has aged, however the house has seen and taken care of many members of my extended family and friends for years.
The village has grown but it still is a fishing village. The characters that populated the village have grown old and now their children are replacing them in many of the same roles. In my adult life, I have used Aliki, Paros as my retreat and place to think and dream over the future without the hassles of my hectic life. In the past years, I have even invited executives to take part in workshops to give an opportunity to take a break, think about oneself, and envision themselves anew.
We all need spaces that we can reliably reinvigorate ourselves, to remind ourselves of what is important. I hope you have a Aliki in your life! Tell me yours in the comments!"