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Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts

Friday, July 29, 2011

Why We Do What We Do

Written by Jim Larkin

I recently had the occasion to view a “TED” lecture. It was delivered by Simon Sinek, author of the book “Start with Why.” In a nutshell, Sinek distinguishes between “Leaders” and “those who Lead.” Leaders, Sinek says, hold positions of power or authority, those who lead inspire. We follow those who lead, not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead, not for their sakes, but for our own. And what inspires? Knowing the “Why” of what we do, not just the “What.”

Take a moment to think about why you do what you do. If you’re answer is to help point students in the right direction, think more deeply. Helping students find direction is what you do, it is the outcome. Why do you help them find direction? I believe you do it to help them become happy, satisfied, and content (or whatever your bottom-line is) in the direction you help them find. Sure you’ll feel good in five years when that “lost” student comes back into your office to thank you for helping them find a job/career because now they are making a lot of money and are climbing the corporate ladder. How much better will you feel when that same student walks into your office and says thanks because you helped them find job satisfaction; not because they make a lot of money or they are progressing, but just because they like what they do, they are satisfied and content in their work life?

What you do may be to help your students understand what it means to be an ENTJ or an Artistic, Enterprising, Social (AES) individual. Why you do it is to help them be at peace with what it means to be an ENTJ or AES individual. Why you do what you do is to inspire your students to be better at being themselves, to find the joy in their lives and to find a job that won’t push that joy down, make them suppress it inside, or have to find it somewhere else.

If you would like to view the Simon Sinek’s TED lecture, you can find it here. Find your “why” and let it ignite a fire in you to inspire your students to ignite a belief in themselves. You are the inspiration! Identify why you do what you do and it will inform the what of what you do.
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Thursday, July 21, 2011

Instructions to use with Students when taking the Strong and MBTI assessments – Part 2

Written by Jim Larkin

In continuation of my 2-part post, I discuss more instructions to give students when taking assessments - specifically for the Strong Interest Inventory® assessment assessment. For the Strong, the confusion is often around the student thinking that they are indicating whether they think they could actually do the job well or be successful in a class about a particular subject. The Strong does not measure skills and abilities, only INTERESTS. You might tell them to imagine getting on a cross-country flight. When the person sits down next to them and they go through the typical introductions and find out that the person is a Broadcast Journalist, Pharmacist, or a Recreational Therapist, does that pique their interest to make them ask some questions (showing some interest or that they LIKE that occupation) or do they want to just say, “Oh, that’s interesting” and turn to pick up the airline magazine and do the crossword puzzle (showing indifference) or make them think inside, “Ugh, who would be interested in that?” (indicating they DISLIKE that occupation). Remember to emphasize that their interests are being compared with the interests of 1,000s of people who have completed the Strong, who are successful in their jobs, have been in their careers for at least 3 years AND are satisfied in their jobs. The theory states that people with common interests will have a high likelihood of achieving high job satisfaction and success in the same jobs.


I hope you found this helpful. If you have any tips or insights of your own to share, please post as a comment!
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Thursday, July 14, 2011

Instructions to use with Students for taking the Strong and MBTI assessments – Part 1

Written by Jim Larkin

The best results in any personality or interest inventory will be returned when the “client” has clear instructions on how to approach the questions. This is equally true for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® assessment as it is for the Strong Interest Inventory® assessment. When giving instructions to your students who are sitting down to take either or both assessments it is critical that they know how to approach the questions. With the MBTI assessment, you want to emphasize “preferences”. With the Strong you are, of course, after the students’ interests.


When instructing your students who are taking the MBTI® assessment, emphasize that they are to indicate their PREFERRED behavior when answering the questions. They may find that they typically act one way more often, but given the choice, they may actually PREFER to act more in line with the other answer. Their typical behavior may reflect what they have learned to be the “correct” behavior, but if they truly answer honestly, they may find that they are not acting in a manner that would be more natural or comfortable for them. Another way to approach this is to answer as if no one else is going to see your actions and give you their approval or judgment about that behavior; no friends, parents or teachers are going to tell you whether you did the right thing, only yourself. There are no expectations or “shoulds” included in the answers. There is no “normally” I do this, because the possibility is that they may “normally” be acting outside of their preferred behavior because of an outside expectation.

Next week, I’ll share some insights for the Strong assessment.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Linking Personality Type to the Career Exploration Process


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Working so closely with the Education Market, I was naturally curious to generate the different reports that are available for students in helping them with the career exploration process. One of the most recent ones generated for me was the MBTI® Career Report Form M. Even though I am no longer a student, I still found the results to be very interesting, as this report is also a great resource for anyone looking for a career change or for increasing job satisfaction.

The MBTI Career Report matches your preferred personality type with a list of occupational titles that compare with those of your same type who are satisfied in those fields. Here is a walk through of the report sections with what I found to be the most useful aspects to share with you during a counseling session with your students:

Summary of Your Myers-Briggs® (MBTI®) Assessment Results
As with all reports, this page gives you a brief summary of your type. The table on this page is a great resource to use with a student as a way to verify their preferred type after they have been given their initial interpretation of the MBTI instrument.

How Your Type Affects Your Career Choice
I was given a summary of both Preferred Work Tasks and Preferred Work Environment according to my type. The majority of my own work tasks included helping others, such as “focusing on people and process issues rather than on technical problems”. This section gets your student thinking about a certain occupation they may be considering and how their type may play out in that particular environment. A great online resource to find information on occupations is by visiting the O*NET database (http://online.onetcenter.org/). This is especially helpful as most students do not know what to expect as far as environment or work tasks in their desired occupation.

How Your Type Affects Your Career Exploration
This section identifies what your strengths are in the career exploration process. You are also given a list of challenges along with suggested strategies. This is a great section to help your students familiarize themselves with their preferred type and have them focus on their strengths. For example, one of my challenges is that I may make decisions on what I think will please others. My dominant Feeling preference sometimes gets in the way as I tend to worry about others around me instead of thinking about how it will affect my goals and their outcome. Therefore, that is what I need to get myself to focus on next time I have a decision to make.

How Your Type Affects Your Career Development
I found this section to be most useful for someone who has been out in the ‘real world’ at their job. As you know, certain aspects of our workplaces are not always ideal for our natural preferences. For example, having a preference for Introversion in a company which expects you to brainstorm ideas out loud during meetings can be hard to get used to. We have to learn to adapt by sometimes using our nonpreferred preferences in order to survive, or at least feel comfortable in our jobs. This section gives you a list of how your style has helped you to develop strengths in different areas. Just as the section above, you are also presented with challenges and suggested strategies for overcoming those.

Job Families and Occupations for [Your Type]
This section gets into the fun part! This section is divided into three parts. The first lists what’s called a Ranking of Job Families for [Your Type]. Here you are presented with a bar graph that includes 22 broad occupational categories (“job families”), each with specific occupations, and how they rank in popularity with those who share your type. This graph is broken down into Most Attractive, Moderately Attractive and Least Attractive.

The second part lists the Most Popular Occupations for [Your Type]. It is important to note that a student should not take the listed occupations too literally, especially since they do not have much experience with the world of work. The tasks and the environment of the occupation are what need to be stressed for the student to gain a better understanding of which job titles may be of most interest to them.

The last part lists the Least Popular Occupations for [Your Type]. Again, it needs to be stressed to a student that the listed occupations should not to be taken too literally. It is important to remember that people with your student’s type do enter these occupations, but not in large numbers as to be classified under a popular occupation for that type. This is where a follow up session may come in to place to discuss what type of environment your student should expect in this occupation and how to manage any situations that may arise.

If you are interested in learning more about this report or sharing it with your students, check it out here. I hope you found this walk through helpful and look for more blogs like this to help you during your counseling sessions!
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