I took a day off watery work today, to facilitate a workshop coordinated by the Canadian Chair for Women in Science and Engineering (CWSE-Prairies) for women in the Agriculture Faculty at University of Manitoba keen to learn new life skills to help them in their career/life planning. Today's women came from a range of departments within the faculty and included graduate students and staff in different roles, whose ages ranged from 20's to 50's.
A spirit of openness, respect and confidentiality encouraged fantastic participation and made my role easy as I steered the participants through tasks such as understanding their individual values and why this was important, a discussion on the pre-conceived ideas we had about our abilities or what others thought, SWOT analysis on ourselves, how to form desired outcomes in a development plan and all before a fantastic lunch.
Manitoba Institute of Agrologists joined us for a discussion about networking and how valuable it can be, and this led to a discussion about mentors and peer support. With all this in mind we then drafted our own personal development plans and set ourselves a number of actions to do as a result of the workshop - some were to address values we felt were not fully met, and others to help develop strengths or build skills to address weaknesses (of growth points as we decided to call them).
The mood was positive and everyone seemed tired from all that personal analysis and reflective thought but yet energized by an action plan and new ideas. I look forward to hearing how everyone is getting on in their quest for self improvement.
A fantastic day - thanks to everyone who participated!
Selena Randall
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