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Exercising Your Chi in Workforce Development


 
 
The newest addition to my exercise routine is Tai Chi. Unlike the other exercise classes I do, Tai Chi is not just something you do. It is deliberate. Without going into a long discourse on the subject, Tai Chi is slow. It is focused. Each movement the body makes flows into another one. Unlike a high-impact dance aerobics class, where the goal is to get faster and increase your heart rate, Tai Chi is the opposite. The goal is to learn the preciseness of the form at a slow pace in order to complete the move correctly. Also it’s sort of meditative.
 
This class gives me time to think and concentrate. I am developing my core muscles in a stress-free way. All this slow preciseness makes me wonder how I can take my Tai Chi and move it to my life in workforce development.  Don’t get me wrong. I am not ready to pack in my fast paced life just yet, but I can certainly apply some of the principles I have learned in Tai Chi to life in workforce development.
 
 
Getting a Core Workout!
 
Although my husband doesn’t think that Tai Chi is real exercise. It is exercise that works the muscles in your core.  In workforce development, we need to work our core. The core is the basic body of knowledge that makes up our industry as a whole. These are the areas that everything else fits into. The National Association of Workforce Development Professionals has nine areas of competency someone must demonstrate in order to receive certification as a Certified Workforce Development Professional. They are: Business and Economic Development Intelligence; Career Development Principles; Collaboration and Problem Solving; Customer Service Methodology; Diversity in Workforce Development; Labor Market Information and Intelligence; Principles of Communication; Program Implementation Principles and Strategies; and Workforce Development Structure, Polices and Programs. These areas make up our core in workforce development. Each day we work in the industry, we need to make our core areas stronger by gaining new experience and training in these areas.
 
 
Focus! Focus!
 
How many people can relate to this? You are sitting at your desk completing a task, the phone rings. You answer it, interrupting your task. Then the email “dings” that a new message has arrived. You stop to read it. While reading it, someone comes to your desk to ask you a question. After all of this, your thought process for the task has been lost. There are times to multi-task. Then there are times to only work on one thing at a time. It doesn’t matter if you are writing a blog, administering a career assessment, auditing a file, or listening to a job seeker’s story, there are times to put the multi-tasking aside and focus! It is unreasonable to expect ourselves or others to multi-task and complete everything perfect all the time! There are times we just need to focus.

Being Deliberate

Once you have focused, you can concentrate more on what you are doing. This leads to the next principle of being deliberate, or “meaning to do that.” Once you are focused, you are able to send an email, without a correction or update because you took the time to make sure that everything was included. Once you are focused your message is clear and you become more deliberate. Being deliberate means that you can see details that previously may have missed and you are in control of your projects, rather than projects being in control of you.

 
Get Into the Groove
 
Have you ever worked on a project and one thing flows into another easily? It does not seem forced. In Tai Chi, each movement flows into the next movement, so that the movements seem like a natural progression for the body.  I am the kind of person that likes a to-do list, a planned day, where I can check things off and move on to the next. Sometimes in order to do this, I have to apply force for this to happen. The truth is that I work in a One Stop Career Center. There are many moving parts that make up my day. Those parts can be unpredictable as people- colleagues and job seekers alike- are unpredictable.  Sometimes you have to let the flow drive you day and not force your agenda.
 
 
I want to make it clear that I am not a Tai Chi expert. That is my disclaimer. There are many readers of this out in the “blogger sphere” and on the World Wide Web that know much more about Tai Chi and could probably explain all of the technical stuff better than I.  My goal is only to comment about my knowledge of Tai-Chi here and apply it to my workforce development life.
 
One final comment on Tai Chi. The symbol for Tai-Chi is a Yin and Yang symbol. The reason for this is that the symbol stands for balance.  If nothing else, we must learn to balance our personal and professional self, the workforce development self with the professional self, and our own goals with the goals of the greater whole.  Thank you for reading. I hope that everyone can achieve some balance. If anyone would like to comment, feel free to comment below. If there are any Tai-Chi experts out there feel free to comment also. ~ Karen Cirincione [


 

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