038 Hacking your professional development

Fit for Work

What does your professional development look like?
Do you have a coach challenging you to ‘do the work’ to become a more effective leader?
How much influence do you have in your workplace? What are you doing to boost this?

Today I interview a fellow podcaster who’s become a great friend. Andrew Barrett is host of Safety on Tap, a professional development podcast supporting health and safety leaders around the globe. Andrew loves doing different things to get different results. Seeing the demand for alternatives to traditional professional development, he founded Safety on Tap Connected, a growth accelerator program enhancing the learning and in turn performance of health and safety professionals. Andrew is also embarking upon an Australia-wide research project to explore change leadership through agricultural industry associations. Andrews mission extends to regularly speaking at conferences, delivering internal presentations and facilitating workshops to support more effective individuals and teams.

My experience of Andrew is that he loves to shake up the status quo, be curious, ask the hard questions, coach and connect people and ensure words are used to their full effect as per his title of Chief Change Agent.

In our chat we challenge conventional learning and hack professional development. Be prepared to be challenged…

My Key takeaways from this chat with Andrew

1. We need to work WITH our preferred learning styles: the 70:20:10 model tells us that the vast majority of learning gains occur outside of the classroom or work shop, so amp up your social and experiential learning avenues in order to get the greatest value from your professional development. Tune into episode 36 of the Safety on Tap Podcast to learn more about the 70:20:10 concept and also download the bonus worksheet.
   
2. Increase your influence by being an enabler: shift from feeling like you need to be all knowing to being curious and asking good questions. There is inherent energy, inspiration and talent that comes from the crowd when they’re enabled.
3. It’s NOT all about ME – we become better at our jobs, at life, when we realise our job is to serve others. How are you serving others in your role? It’s a powerful reflection, one that I’d encourage you to chat over with your coach to help you do the work to become more effective. If you don’t have a coach, adopt Andrew by joining us in the Safety on Tap Connected community at safetyontap.com/connected.

As a devoted learner myself, I’ve really valued having access to a coach in Andrew through his Safety of Tap Connected community. I’ve appreciated being able to chew the fat on challenges and decisions in my professional life which I otherwise wouldn’t have someone impartial to nut it out with. I hope after listening to this episode you too are challenged and inspired to seek out a coach to support you to do the work.

If you’re not already listening in, can I encourage you to tune into Safety on Tap Podcast. Andrew is on fire with his weekly episodes and is currently churning through interviews with speakers of the Safety Institute of Australia National Conference on 23-24 May in Melbourne of which I’m one of those speakers. Check out Andrews interview with me in his next episode of the Podcast where we talk about the rationale for wellbeing at work and some low-cost options to get the ball rolling.

Resources

Safetyontap.com
Safety on Tap Connected
LinkedIn Andrew Barrett
Email [e-mail]
Unstuck Events

Thanks for listening to episode 38 of the Fit for Work Podcast. I hope you feel encouraged and inspired to increase your effectiveness so that you can continue to be part of the solution in taking your workplace from good to great.

Continue the conversation at www.fitforworkaustralia.com.au, say hi on LinkedIn or flick us a personal note at [e-mail].

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