Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: career

  • Career Unstuck

    Career Unstuck

    How to Play to Your Strengths to Find Freedom and Purpose in Your Work Again

    The world of post pandemic COVID, now more than two years on, is a world that is changing, has changed and will keep on changing in regard to how we earn a living, what we are prepared to tolerate in our Career pathways, with so many people choosing to opt out of what was once seen as the standard work day world of a 9-5 job.

    According to Gallap* research the average person spends 81,396 hours of their life working. Fifty-nine percent of these people are emotionally detached at work and eighteen percent are plain miserable. If this is the case it then reflects on output, quality and company/workplace culture.

    What to do about making a change is something that is seen as very challenging, if not downright terrifying, but when Charlotte Blair sets out the pathway which is there to be travelled, somehow the unachievable becomes achievable and your career becomes unstuck.

    Career Unstuck is more of a chat with a good friend than a manual on how to do it, filled with hard earned life experience, helpful hints, facts, figures, worksheets, and questions deliberately structured to make you think about the road ahead.

    Part One asks you to choose a number as to your ratings with how you feel about your career/job, then unpick why you feel like this, what damage is it causing not just to your work performance but to your personal life and mental health. The most important aspect of this first section is facing up to what is keeping you stuck: a most interesting question that only you can answer.

    Part Two looks at moving onto the new pathway, what your new life could be like, discovering your strengths and weaknesses, trying and failing, nothing to be ashamed of there, just life learning, discovering a Mentor and eventually more than one Mentor to help you along the way, before you ‘dip your toe’ or ‘jump right in’ to what comes next: Job satisfaction and success.

    Charlotte Blair reaches out with humility, knowledge and understanding as well as a good sense of humour to enlighten you on your journey, and when it is time for you to ‘jump’ she is happy to either metaphorically or otherwise hold your hand.

    Career Unstuck is a book that is long overdue to be written and is one that anyone looking at how they earn their living, how they feel about what they are doing and how maybe they need to change directions or jobs should most definitely read: particularly if you have what is often referred to by Charlotte Blair as a ‘shitty’ boss and toxic workplace culture.

  • Lola Dutch When I Grow Up

    Lola Dutch When I Grow Up

    When you are little and growing up the choices of what you want to be once you are all grown up are many, which can become somewhat of a puzzle to try and choose what it is you really, really do want to be, eventually.

    Lola Dutch, who as you know can be more than a little enthusiastic about her latest plan, and always seems to want too much as life is so exciting is wondering what it is, she wants to be when she is all grown up. On this particular morning she calls out to bear about an emergency, which as it turns out, is all about trying to discover just what it is she wants to be once she is all grown Up.

    Now Bear, being Bear is a bit of thinker and he says, this is a very big decision and one that should be discussed over perhaps a cup of tea, which of course Lola thinks is going to take up far too much time. She heads for Bears den which is filled to the brim with books that will provide inspiration and so the beginning is began, as only it can be when Lola Dutch is involved.

    By the end of this fun filled discovery of a huge number of things she may like to be, which of course ends up involving Pig, and Croc, and Crane of course and an amazing flying machine, a huge amount of fun has been had, but she is no closer to making a very big decision about the rest of her life.

    Once again, The Wright’s have created a fast paced, fun filled story about so many fascinating things, Lola Dutch style, which when coupled with wonderfully flamboyant artwork, is light-hearted, filled with loveable characters and will have a very wide appeal to young readers.

  • Career leap : how to reinvent and liberate your career

    Career leap : how to reinvent and liberate your career

    Never a truer world was spoken than “gone are the days of slowly making your way up the corporate ladder to retirement”, or any other employment ladder for that matter. The business world is changing faster than any other time in history, with a move away from hands on to what is referred to as the ‘gig economy’, changing expectations from employers as well as employees, which has left many wondering and worrying about the way forward.

    Presented in the form of a workbook, and career guidance manual, Gibbings uses her extensive skill base in helping to prepare employees and employers for the ‘future of work’. That knowledge base is now presented in Career Leap, which sheds a refreshing light on how to future-proof your career in a manner which is easy to understand, pulls no punches, but will help educate and inform enabling you to research your strengths and weakness to improve your work life, in preparation for the years to come.

    Gibbings address the issue of change; not just in career choices but career directions which over the course of a modern working life are now the accepted norm. Gone are the days when jobs were plentiful, manufacture was booming and life in general was pretty straightforward.

    Exactly the opposite is now considered as normal in the Global workplace, where the skills once needed to be able to work in an industry or profession of choice have changed considerably. Experience and a blunt honesty on a personal level, nerves of steel and the ability to make changes in order to keep abreast of modern workplace requirements are a necessary component of the modern workforce, to be able take advantage of opportunities as they are offered. Making and being prepared to adapt to fit the requirements is also essential. But how do you go about making the changes both mentally and emotionally?

    Designed as fitness and wellbeing check for your career and ambitions, Career Leap offers a wellness check as the first thing required to be undertaken. This is followed by discovering your hidden potential, exploring options, a look at choosing which area to progress, constructing a plan, shaping your new career identity and then taking a serious look at influence and how this will affect your marketplace.

    Then, Focus, Accelerate, and get set to Launch the new, workplace savvy you.

    Each of the chapters is introduced with some very wise words from many people who have overcome adversity to achieve their goals. Rumi, Lao Tzu, Denis Diderot, Geronimo and Florence Nightingale are all quoted. Back in their day, what is now considered as wise words, were probably created from a once again changing world!

    It somehow helps to place the modern workplace in some kind of perspective: scary but able to be managed with the right tools, a good dose of personal honesty and understanding of the shifting ground that is now the modern workplace.

    The single factor tying the chapters of not just this book, but your career together is well stated in the words of Gorgi Coghlan, when she says ‘Regret is far worse emotion to live with than fear’. So as both Michelle Gibbings and many others have discovered, do the tough stuff, undertake the career wellness check, be prepared to leap and reap the rewards.