KCSpeaks

Workforce Development is like an industry of smoking doctors with high fat diets. We are busy preaching to job seekers and businesses about how to perform at maximum strength, but never actually take the lessons of high-performance coaching and apply it to our own industry.   I think that it is time to look at what success really looks like and bring it home. This means that workforce development “must drink the Kool-Aid.” It is time to examine success and its people to see how it fits into our workforce development world every day. §   Successful people are not “jack of all trades.”   If you examine Olympic athletes that won gold medals, you will find that they spent hours, days, and years perfecting their skill- and that is for one sport! You can be Michael Phelps in swimming, but cannot throw a javelin at all.   In another example, look at healthcare. If you go to your general practitioner and have any specific issue, you will be referred to a specialist ...

It is so important to have a laugh at ourselves every once in a while. To lighten up and not take ourselves so seriously. In the spirit of having a little fun, this week’s post is a fairy tale. Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, lived a grossly underemployed Princess named Ella. Princess Ella worked in a big castle as a Housekeeper for only minimum wage. Her hours were long, hard, and did not leave her much room to further her education or participate in professional development activities.   The job did not even pay enough money to maintain self-sufficiency and she received food assistance from the kingdom’s assistance office. On top of Ella’s frustration at the lack of opportunity her castle had, Ella’s boss was an evil queen named Elvira. The evil queen often yelled orders at Ella and did not show respect for her. Elvira was known for her notorious management style that did not use leadership principles to inspire and form a team environment amongst Ella and ...