Love what you do

Continuing professional development can be a mixed blessing. I recently found myself standing in an icy field directly behind a mildly flatulent horse trying to convince it to move in a direction of my choice using only the power of my voice. I am pleased to report I had some success and survived the whole incident mostly unscathed.

In fact, the only casualty of the day was my ego! I appreciate this may not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but I had a blast!! I was well outside my comfort zone – I had very little idea what to expect and I’m not a huge fan of horses – but I’m blessed with a glass half full temperament, and this was definitely not a dry, classroom based learning exercise.

In her blog earlier this month, Helen wrote about falling in love with yourself. My challenge for you is to fall in love with what you do. I joined Pro-Development six months ago and everyday is an opportunity for me to learn more about an industry that is specifically designed to help people to love their jobs. Our leadership development courses (some of which include opportunities to work with horses…) give managers and leaders the tools they need to be great at their roles and so inspire their people to work hard and aspire to improve.  The coaching and mentoring that we offer alongside these courses enable you to focus your goals and give clear steps to achieving them. There’s also the opportunity to learn the skills to coach others in your team to support their development.

One of my biggest barriers to loving what I do is my long-practised skill of procrastination. That awkward task or difficult conversation that has to happen, but it can loom over me for weeks as I keep pushing back the pain of actually doing it. I know I am not alone, but that doesn’t help me get the job done!  I am now trying to instil the principle of ‘eat the frog’ first thing in the morning – doing the hardest thing on my to-do list straight away – so, the theory goes, nothing worse will happen for the rest of the day. I am a work in progress on this and I don’t always manage to eat all of the frogs in one sitting. I cringe to think how many times I have sat down to write this and still found something else to fill my time…

Are you looking for a chance to continue your professional development and increase the love you feel for what you do? Come and join Pro-Development on an adventure that will stretch, challenge and grow you. The courses I have mentioned here are the Leadership Development Programme, Coaching and Mentoring and I first met the concept of eating the frog in the Art of Delegation but that frog rears its ugly head in other courses too!