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Lend me your ears

Kids' audiobooks (also known as "books on tape") are a well-kept secret. But once you discover them, you'll find they open up a private, calm literary world into which children can retire, discovering much joy and diversity. Battling limited hours in the day, parents experience a surge in blood pressure at every pronouncement from the experts on the importance of reading aloud and at every hint of a literacy crisis among boys. Audiobooks give some reassurance because they present literature in an almost incidental manner.  Source.

Tips for aging fabulously

Each year, 75 million Baby Boomers spend $100 billion on clothes--but you'd never know it to look at them. Just ask one of America's leading style consultants, Sherrie Mathieson.  Alarmed at the lack of fashion sense of her fellow Boomers, Sherrie has set out to change the look of an entire generation.  The result is Forever Cool, a guide for those who are asking, "How can I look great and still be age-appropriate?"  Her answers will help both men and women reassess and reinvent their looks to balance their changing physiques with their active lifestyles. Sherrie’s clever, affordable tips let those people approaching or over 50 express their personalities with a way of dressing that is stylish, practical, and utterly cool. Forever Cool will forever change the look of middle age!  "At last! A style book that is dedicated to the over-50 set (both women and men) who are looking for what's comfortable, appropriate--yet hip. A must read, illustrated with amazing before-and-after photos of "real people" models. Sure to be the perfect gift for those who are stylishly challenged."  Full article here.

Time for a career checkup?

Most people could benefit from such a career checkup, the pros say.

A huge number of people drag themselves in to work each day thinking there has to be a better way to make a living, but never consider that they could be happier and have higher potential in another line of work, says Herb Greenberg. 

In fact, up to 80 per cent of people are "misemployed" -- in jobs that don't use their strongest aptitudes and interests, Mr. Greenberg and Caliper vice-president Patrick Sweeney estimate in their new book, Succeed on Your Own Terms.

The 80-per-cent "misemployment" figure is based on analysis of aptitude tests Caliper has given to thousands of managers worldwide over the past 40 years. The tests measure dozens of personality attributes, such as assertiveness, ego, empathy and risk-taking, that indicate the kinds of work people would find naturally interesting and at which they'd be most likely to do well, Mr. Greenberg says.

Aptitudes can be measured with testing, but you'll know whether you are mismatched to your job just by the level of enthusiasm you bring to work each day, he says.

Full article here.

Aptitude Testing is available locally at:

MCC BC Employment & Community Development offices:

(a) Abbotsford:  COMPASS ~ Setting Career Direction, 604-859-4500.
(b) Richmond: Employment Essentials, 604-303-9025.
(c) Vancouver: Employment Essentials, 604-264-7001. 

Testing is available to the unemployed only and to those legally eligible to work in Canada. The Government of Canada has contributed funding to both initiatives.

The fine art of envisioning

Appreciative intelligence is the ability to perceive the positive inherent potential in the present. The authors say it shows how some people who claim they aren't very smart were able to devise breakthrough products, champion top talent, or concoct a solution to a problem that seemed insurmountable. They saw what others couldn't see.

It involves three components.

Workforce Crisis

Companies know how to shed mature workers through early retirement programs. Many have been doing that, almost instinctively, during the past 15 years, whenever they hit a bump in the road. But they will have to learn the opposite instinct, how to persuade older workers to stay on the job, if they want to avoid a coming work force crisis.

That's the argument of three consultants -- Ken Dychtwald, Tamara Erickson and Robert Morison -- who say that a shift in the age distribution of the general population means we'll soon run out of sufficient workers. From 2000 to 2020, the normal working age population of 20- to 64-year-olds in Canada will grow by only 16 per cent, less than 1 per cent a year, and, in the following 30 years, the expectation is that it will stay essentially stable.

Source.

Workplace Stress

We're all familiar with workplace stress, and how much difficulty most of us have in dealing with it.

This is because what we describe as workplace stress is actually three different stressors: conflict, pressure and change.

Full article here.

Do what you do best

Link: Welcome to www.thehumankindnessproject.com.

Recent Gallup Poll analysis suggests that of the hundreds of thousands of people who have been questioned, only 20 percent of them say they do what they do best every day. Their analysis also suggests that 'doing what you do best every day' is number three on the work satisfaction scale. In a transient work world with a human work shortage on the horizon where employees leave companies for better parking spaces, having only 20 percent of them agree to this critical happiness measurement, just isn't good enough.

Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton from their book Now Discover Your Strengths tell us that working with our strengths is gratifying and empowering. Sadly few employees have the chance to do what they’re best at. There are two essential reasons why this happens: one, employees don’t know what they’re strengths are and two, even if they do know their strengths, the company and their manager fail to recognize them.

Darcy Rezac's Networking Tips

Link: Darcy Rezac's Networking Tips.

Darcy Rezac is the managing director of the Vancouver Board of Trade and the author of The Frog and Prince: Secrets of Positive Networking.

Sacred Art of Listening

QUALITIES OF DEEP LISTENING
Listening for essence

"Perhaps one of the most precious and powerful gifts we give another person is to really listen to them, to listen with quiet, fascinated attention, with our whole being, fully present. This sounds simple, but if we are honest with ourselves, we do not often listen to each other so completely.

Listening is a creative force. Something quite wonderful occurs when we are listened to fully. We expand, ideas come to life and grow, we remember who we are. Some speak of this force as a creative fountain within us that springs forth, others call it the inner spirit, intelligence, true self. Whatever this force is called, it shrivels up when we are not listened to and thrives when we are.

The way we listen actually can allow another to bring forth what is true and alive to them. Sometimes we have to do a lot of listening before the fountain is replenished. Have you ever noticed how some people seem to have a need to talk? They go on and on, usually in a very superficial, nervous manner. This is often because they have not been truly listened to. Patience is required to listen to such a person long enough that they get to their center point of tranquility and peace. The results of such listening are extraordinary. Some would call them miracles.

Listening well takes time, skill and a readiness to slow down, to let go of expectations, judgments, boredom, self-assertiveness, defensiveness. I've noticed once people experience the depth of being listened to like this, they also begin to listen to others in this way.

Listening is an art that calls for practice. Imagine if we all spent just a few minutes each day practicing the art of listening, of being fully present with the person we are with. There would be a collective sigh of contentment and joy. Listen!"

Sourced from the author's website; more information here.

Small Talk

In the recently published book The Fine Art of Small Talk: How to Start a Conversation, Keep it Going, Build Networking Skills -- and Leave a Positive Impression! corporate trainer Debra Fine points out that, after public speaking, starting a conversation with a stranger ranks as the second-most-common social fear among Americans.

This is because most people are shy. Fine. But here's a secret: The best small talkers I know don't even talk much. Instead, they have mastered the art of drawing other people out. They are interested (or manage to look like they are interested) in what their conversation partner has to say.

"The first step in becoming a good conversationalist is becoming invested in the conversation and actively working to help the other person feel comfortable," Fine writes. To this end, she includes an exhaustive list of icebreakers, including: "Describe some of the challenges of your profession," "What's your favourite thing to do on a rainy day?" and "How has the Internet affected your life?"

They're all fine, I suppose, but a great opening question should elicit a response you'll truly be interested in. A great small talker once told me his favourite icebreaker, and since then I've used it constantly. "I just ask people what they did today," he told me. "I ask them to start at the beginning and tell me exactly what happened from the time they woke up."

You would be amazed at how fascinating an average day in the life of a person you don't know can actually be.

Full article here.