I want to ask questions like, how do AI, the gig economy, globalization, climate change, and other forces impact workers and their lives? This is an essential question. It informs the “true efficacy” of our practice. By true efficacy, I mean how our career development interventions impact the quality clients experience living a life in a broad sense, not a life focused on work but an entire life of love, curiosity, purpose, and joy. 

Reinventing career development for the 21st Century requires career development professionals (CDPs) to change our own perspectives and behaviors. This pre-conference training will provide you with a framework to explore changes to your own behavior and make strategic shifts in your current career development and education practice.

This practice-based PDI will allow CDPs to explore four shifts in focus for our practice. Specifically:

• Participants will explore ideas about worker welfare including the impact of career development on our biological, psychological, and social functioning as components of human-centric career design.
• Inspired by the theatre technique of the “workshop” we will creatively explore four shifts to career practice that will enhance worker welfare and social justice. Workshopping is a theatre technique that uses intensive group discussion and improvisation to explore aspects of a theatre production, for example a scene in a play. We will use some of these techniques to explore:
  • Shifting the tasks of CDPs with a focus on well-being, including mental health, as an essential element of career exploration and personal change management.
  • Shifting how we focus on time as CDPs to include time as a currency in the attention economy, one that must be considered and negotiated just like pay.
  • A culture shift is needed to address issues around burnout and achievement, an issue our practice has too long been complicit in exacerbating.
  • A skill shift whereby we center selective attention as the super skill of the 21st Century world-of-work. 
• Our time together will be experiential. There will be activities to practice these shifts, and I will demonstrate often. We will attend to participants throughout our time together, working collaborative in an environment of safety and acceptance. My intention is to maintain the community we create long after we meet.

Zoom link will be sent 24 to 48 hours prior to the start time.