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Spirit of the Season

Each year at the holiday time, our newsfeed is filled with stories of people giving random acts of kindness to strangers. Many of these stories involve holiday generosity from strangers to homeless people, struggling families, and those with medical issues. One of the viral videos was of a woman from my state. She was driving in her town with her children, when she saw a homeless man shivering in the cold without a coat. The woman drove to the nearest store, purchased a coat, and then drove back to the man to surprise him. The video, filmed by her children with cell phones, showed her helping the man put on the new coat.


Random acts of kindness all have one thing in common. They are all free of judgement. When a coat is given to a homeless person or toys to children in a disadvantaged family, there is not any judgment about why someone is homeless or cannot afford to purchase items for himself.

This holiday lesson is not one to be lost on workforce development Often times we are so busy trying to figure people out, we lose sight of how to really help people. Our job seeking customers are seeking to find employment based on their current situation. Employers are seeking to fulfil current needs for the business and not analysis of prior practices. It is meeting people where they are in life.

The holiday season will be gone as fast as it came and the New Year will soon be upon us.  Let us take the spirit of the holiday season and bring it into 2018.  The job of a workforce development profession will not be any easier, but keeping the proper perspective will allow both the customer and the professional to move forward.

I hope everyone in the blog-o-sphere has a safe and happy holiday season!
 
~Karen Cirincione
Email: kcirincione@gmail.com
Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/karenjcirincione
Twitter:@kcirincione

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