Strong Interest Inventory Assessment

I watched some introductory webinars about the Strong Interest Inventory Assessment and wanted to share some high-level notes. It’s a widely used assessment for career counselors (e.g. at Stanford). They ask you questions like … how interested are you in the following: making a speech, writing a report, or doing research work. It looks helpful as a starting point, since it gives you directional advice and should help you find a job you would enjoy today. The gap of this assessment is that it probably isn’t as useful long-term because it tries to fit you into careers that already exist in the world. I’m an idealist who hopes that your future job is a job you create and it will be a combination of your skills + passions.

• Grounding Principle: What people do is a reflection of their interests. Measuring interests rather than abilities.
  • This assessment helps you determine what you’re most motivated to do right now in a career. Over time, they believe your main motivations don’t change, but the order of them do. For example, if Socializing is most important to you today and being Artistic is secondary … these probably switch over time.
• Foundationally they use the framework of General Occupational Themes, which are below. As an exercise, I put down some opinions about how these might correlate to the Myers Briggs.
  • Realist (“The Doers”) … possible correlation to ES types
  • Investigative (“The Thinkers”) … possible correlation to IT types
  • Artistic (“The Creators”) … possible correlation to NP types
  • Social (“The Helpers”) … possible correlation to NF types
  • Enterprising (“The Persuaders”) … possible correlation to TJ types
  • Conventional (“The Organizers”) … possible correlation to SJ types

Hmm, I’m probably Investigative, Social, and Enterprising as my top 3. Which might mean that it’s top-of-mind for me to learn more about this “people development” space, see how it affects the people around me, and see if “solutions” or theories that develop as a result, grow into something bigger.

 

Outcomes of the Integral Coaching Seminar

WOW. I attended a two day coaching seminar at a school called New Ventures West in the city. The content was rigorous mentally AND emotionally, made deep connections immediately with the caring folks there, and personally became aware of my own deep, personal blind spots. Discovering these spots drained me, but afterwards I felt amazing how I had several body sensations that represented long-time subdued emotions.

Anyways, I think I’ll be forking over $8K to take the year long, coaching certification course next year!

Selfishly, I’ll document my own personal learnings here … and not reviewing the general methodology they practice. Simply, they try to accept the current state the client is coming to you as and try to improve upon it. They take an approach that leaves the client empowered to self-correct and self-improve.

1. You are what you practice.
2. Use the five elements model (immediate concerns, commitments, future possibilities, mood, personal/cultural history) to quickly get-to-know people.
3. During coaching intake or assessment, try to avoid fleshing out a hierarchy of information or understanding of a client. Instead take on words or phrases that you don’t understand their meaning of, and find the links necessary to gain their interpretations.
4. To build rapport for first-time relationships with clients, consider sharing how your body is feeling at the moment and open them up to share as well.
5. Imagine people as seeing the sky through a straw. Coaching helps find a new point in the sky to look at and helping them move & grow the straw.
6. Coaching can be as simple as dropping a drop of red dye in water. Help someone see one thing differently can change their life.
7. Don’t flood clients with information or advice. Try to ask “is this useful?” as a filter.
8. If you dig too deep into trying to understand the “why”, you may find yourself wasting time on discovering a nice-to-have. You might be a shy person that doesn’t want to be one anymore and trying to understand why the heck you are a shy person might be a waste of your time. Instead, you might want to accept that you’re a shy person and take actions towards changing it.
9. Putting yourself in another person’s shoes is good, but don’t forget your own state and power that you can bring to the relationship.
10. What domains of competence are you trying to solve a problem? If you choose the wrong domain, your solution will be ineffective. The domains are self-management (“I”), group (“We”), or things (“It”) domain? Look for gaps or strengths in these realms.
11. If you’re procrastinating, what are you pretending not to know.
12. Words that come out of people’s mouth generally tell less than 10% of the story. Look for body language, energy, gestures, tone, etc.

 

A good read — how to create change

I don’t even know how I came across this article. All I know is that I was doing a mad internet search and downloaded all this stuff. This document happened to be one of them and I just happened to double-click through them today.

The concepts in this doc are solid. A great refresher for those who want to tweak their mindset to create change in this world.

Never the Same: How to create transformational experiences.

My reactions in the next post.  Cheers.

 

Benefits of Leadership Development Program

I got asked about my experience in my current job for some book. If you don’t already know, I’m wrapping up my two years in Intuit’s Rotational Development Program. Somehow, in the past year, they decided to change the word “rotational” to “leadership”. We’re far from being the kind of leader that has a gabillion people working for us. This picture is NOT what we’re learning to become. This goofy picture I found on one of Wharton’s websites and EVERY post needs a picture.
1) What are the benefits of a leadership development program?

The main benefit to me has been accelerated learning:

• About myself (my strengths and weaknesses, passion, brand, direction in life)
• Around how to do jobs & ask good questions in core business functions at Intuit
• Around the basics of collaborative leadership

… all through exposure to very different jobs that require different ways of thinking (programming, marketing, product management, and strategy) and coaching from leaders & peers.

2) Has the program been meeting your expectations?

My expectations have been exceeded in the area of learning and development. For example, I never imagined that so many leaders at the company would share stories about their life journey with me (~40+ so far)… which I think have been the most rewarding insights.

3) Why did you choose a leadership program?

I enjoy taking “point person” roles inside and outside of work and value the impact you can have as the driver. Some of my personal goals seem to only be achieveable by leading teams, so I wanted to be able to make this a key learning area.

Of course there are downsides to a leadership development program (most of which I don’t mind):

• Not being an expert on something early on … focusing on breadth
• Lots of change – Changing jobs frequently, steep learning curve every time
• Having the pressure of high expectations from others