What an extraordinarily difficult year! We all have stories of stress, anxiety, work, or relationship challenges affecting ourselves or others this year. So I’m hoping that this summer break will help us to reset ‘the story’ for 2022.
While it has been important to cope with these challenges, the question for me is, how can we have hope for the future when the world is facing so many issues? I’m thinking of the global impacts of the ongoingness of the Covid pandemic, lack of social cohesion, and climate change in particular. It feels that things are on the cusp of falling apart around us and the prospect of significant impacts is deeply concerning.
However, it is not all doom and gloom as there are some great things happening that will provide many opportunities for recalibration and redevelopment. It’s not going to be easy. At the end of this big year, I think we could be thinking about this and beginning to connect with any small contribution we can make; to imagine a future that we all want to live and work in. If you want, check out Snyders Hope theory.
2021 has been an innovative year for CareerEQ. Through the success of our business in 2020, we managed to invest in the development of our online Career Intelligence assessment (CI) and coach portal. This was launched in June and for the last six months, we have trained many career coaches in the use of the assessment.
We have continued to provide quality career coaching, people development, and redundancy support around the country and employed our wonderful Practice Manager, Neela Hatangadi in March to help. Having Neela has enabled me to focus on developing our assessment resources and training materials.
2022 is already shaping up well for us. The success of the Career Intelligence assessment indicates significant potential for the business and in January we have another 20 organisational coaches to be licensed to use the CI assessment.
There has also been a strong interest in what we are doing from school, university careers advisors and independent career counsellors who work with youth. In response to that, my lockdown months were spent developing a careers self-assessment for our rangitahi. The aim of the assessment is to offer a more holistic approach to career decision-making so that our young people can have a greater sense of hope and agency. This will be launched in January.
The power of this assessment will be in connecting rangatahi with what matters to them about the future. It will also ground them in who they are, where they come from, and encourage them to imagine a future they want to live and work in.
As I head towards semi-retirement the connection to what matters to me motivates me, even more than ever. I want people at all ages and stages of their careers to feel empowered to make the change they need to regain a sense of meaning. Although aspirational, putting aspiration into action, no matter how large or small, is important.
So, while the challenges are there for us all, we continue to walk the path in front of us – with hope and action which together, create our experience.
‘Traveler, there is no path,
You make the path by walking.
By walking, you make the path.’
Antonio Machado
Thank you to all our business clients, coach community, and coaching clients for your continued support this year. I hope that these holidays will help you to reconnect to what matters to you and that you can ‘reset’ what is needed so that 2022 is a good year.
Hari Kirihimete
Have a happy Christmas and a safe and peaceful holiday.
Kaye Avery
CareerEQ