Striving For Excellence

Excellence is not perfection. It's the result of putting quality into everything you do. It's the gradual result of always trying to do better. It's being the best you can be.

Some of the tools that can help you along the way:

• Enthusiasm for your job;
• A can-do attitude;
• A sense of responsibility and pride in your work;
• Taking initiative and owning problems;
• Going the extra mile;
• Understanding your working style.

Do you know the optimal conditions under which you concentrate best? Is the office light too bright? Would you operate better in a smaller team? Find out.

Why The World Won't End In 2012

It's official: the world won't be ending on 21 December 2012. Not only because the Maya didn't bother to add a leap year to compensate for the fact that a year is actually 365.2422 days, thus making their date 60 days out of kilter with our calendar (i.e., their Doomsday was meant to happen back in our October). No, there's another more compelling reason: Creative Learning's new group profiles.

Group profiles are useful for corporates, high-risk professions,  team leaders, managers, church ministers, teachers, even home-schooling parents. They show the synergies of the group and how best to communicate your message to the members of the group. In conjunction with the LSA Manual or the WSA Manual, a group profile is a powerful tool that allows lesson planning, training planning and team work planning.

How do you get them? Easy. Have a look here. The Maya liked them so much, they've cancelled the end of the world....

Job Seekers' Guide To Learning In Style

(read to see this week's special on our Working Style Analysis tool)

If you’d like a job - any job, or just a newer, better one - you’re not alone. Sadly, in this job market, promotions often go hand in hand with upgraded technology skills. Today's technology advances at an astonishing rate, with the amount of new information doubling every two years. Blink, and you’re left behind. Take a year off work to have a baby and when you come back they are using different software. Become a stay-at-home mum and, before you know it, your child’s school project involves technology you’ve only ever heard of.

Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Learning according to your own unique Learning Style or Working Style will make updating your computer skills seem as easy as saying Abracadabra. As long as you do the course and the tasks in accordance with your learning preferences, and not against them, you will have a much higher chance of success.

Of course, you have to be realistic about your goals and expectations. “I want to program in C++” may not be the right goal four you if you've never programmed before.

Be specific. “I want to get better at computers” is vague and difficult to measure, while “By the end of the year, I want to be able to write a PowerPoint presentation” is a clear, achievable goal.



Set your goals with a positive attitude. Stay excited and passionate about your goals.
 
Most important of all, discover the preferences and non-preferences of your Working Style today. Order it before 20 July 2012 and get it at half price by quoting this promo code: BVFDELE.
 
 

Global Change and Learning Styles

Are you prepared for change? Generation Y has compressed the traditional 20 year career cycle into approximately 1-2 years. People who were born between 1975 and 1995 don’t want to spend a lifetime waiting for their life to happen.

“I need to feel that I’m constantly learning and growing,” says the 29 year old Andrew, a software engineer. “If I have to work on one thing for more than six months, or if a promotion passes me by, I will move on.”

The global economic situation doesn’t bother him. “My age and my qualifications have, so far, been recession-proof. There are still many good companies out there who are recruiting. But you have to be flexible and prepared to learn new things.”

This implies that to beat the recession and get the job of your dreams, you have to be willing to develop your existing skills and learn new ones.

Sounds easy? If we consider the human brain, it’s clear that its main function is to learn. Because of the brain’s enormous potential, information intake should be fun, easy, long-lasting and stress-free. So why isn’t it always the case?

Barbara Prashnig, the director of Creative Learning Company in Auckland, New Zealand, and a world expert in the area of learning techniques, believes that the key to successful learning is knowing and satisfying one’s unique Learning Style. “Learning style,” she says, “is simply the way in which human beings concentrate on, absorb, process and retain new and difficult information. People can learn virtually anything if allowed to do it through their own personal strengths.”

What’s your learning style? Have a look here to find out.

Your Learning Tools for Life

What would you do if you could learn anything in the world?

· Would you learn a new language?
· Would you go back to school to get a qualification?
· Would you learn how to program computers?

Checking your own unique Working Style Analysis (WSA), available from Creative Learning Systems and Prashnig Style Solutions, will give you the power to change. It will give you the confidence in your ability and all the practical tricks you need to turn you into a successful learner.

Your report will discuss:
· The 4 aspects of your environment that you can change to improve your brainpower.
· The 3 physical requirements you need to satisfy for your mind to function optimally.
· The 6 attitudes that can help you or hold you back.
· The best composition of your study group or project team.
· The best way for you to receive instructions and information.

Learning is 50% frame of mind and 50% technique. Everybody can learn if they have the right mindset and know a few simple guidelines suitable to their unique style of obtaining knowledge.

Let us walk you through your recipe for success.

LSA and WSA: your learning tools for life.

Beware of unverified personality tests on the Internet

Personality tests are fun. Who can resist discovering your perfect career match, or what your colour preference says about your temperament, or why your current Mr Right is really right for you?

Open (almost) any magazine or run an Internet search, and there you have them:
· Are you a workaholic?
· How do you handle stress?
· Are you a good boss?
· The bear and your attitude to everyday problems.
· What the contents of your fridge says about you...

The tests range from learning styles and handwriting to analysing the shape of your lipstick. They are fun. But are they accurate and should you follow their advice when it comes to choosing the right job or the right life partner?

Over the last week, I’ve taken thirteen free online personality tests, each time giving honest answers. This is what I discovered:
· I am a gregarious person who loves people.
· I’m a loner.
· I’m emotional.
· I think analytically.
· I am practical.
· I’m a dreamer.
· I am a happy settled person who knows what she wants.
· I should be a novelist, a graphic designer, a historian and a university professor.
· My Mr Right is a faceless somebody on Facebook. If I’m to believe his online profile, he lives on another continent, and is married with children.

Most of it was as amusing as it was entertaining. But the pedantic side of me flared up when I specifically said in one online quiz that I prefer working in a group and that I like to be in the centre of the action, and yet the results said: "You like to avoid attention at all costs. You tend to keep to yourself, and not interact much with the people around you."

That quiz was supposed to help me choose the career most suited to my personality, and yet it contained a glaring error. I sincerely hope that nobody makes a wrong choice based on advice received from that specific test.

(For a list of questions to consider before you choose a learning style analysis or a career guidance test, please click here.)

Learning Styles and Your Career

Calling all Teenagers - Second-Timers Welcome!

Your career choice is one of the most important decisions you will have to make. Whether you are 16 or 46, you want to ensure that the job you’ll be doing for the next few years, 8 hours a day (at least), 5 days a week, is something that you can be passionate about and something that suits your own individual Learning Style or Working Style.

Every person has his or her unique learning style: some of us want visual props like photos and diagrams, others prefer listening to a taped lecture, others still will pace up and down the room in order to understand the new material better.

Similarly, we are also poles apart when it comes to the way we work: some of us tackle one task at a time and keep at it until it’s finished, while others prefer working on several things at the same time.

All these different preferences are called your Learning Style. And the thing is, they can be measured by applying a Learning Style Analysis (LSA).

It’s an online questionnaire and takes about 10 minutes to complete. As soon as you answer the questions, you receive a report with your own personal learning profile.

(You can find a free demo of learning style analysis here.)

So how do you use the information contained in the profile?

It’s really simple. The profile will make recommendations as to which careers may or may not be suitable for you. For example, if you can’t stand routine, your profile will say something like: “As you love change, and enjoy trying out new things, you hardly ever do the same thing the same way twice. It is important that you take into account your strong need for variety and your love of change when you consider future career planning.”

If you’re a talker who needs people interaction, the profile will guide you as follows: “For your future career planning it is very important to consider jobs which require good communication skills and a lot of people involvement.”

Sometimes the profile will list your preferences and let you decide what to do with the information, without suggesting a specific career path. Let’s imagine that your report says: “You have very strong analytical skills when it comes to problem solving or brain storming, and you always tend to use your rational, left-brain style first. When something is neither logical nor proceeding sequentially, you are not really interested.” The report will not state explicitly that you should seek careers that require strong analytic skills.

Your Learning Style Analysis report will not tell you that you should become a lawyer or try to dissuade you from following your dream to be an actor.

What the report will do, however, is list your strengths, your flexibilities and your non-preferences. That knowledge will be priceless when you’re considering your first (or your tenth) career.

(The link to the free learning style analysis demo again: click here.)