Career Dreams Incorporated

Talent-Based Leadership System

The Talent-Based Leadership System (T-BLS) is the key to the Career Dreams Educational Foundation programs and services. T-BLS is the very foundation upon which the programs of the Career Dreams Educational Foundation are built. It is the primary mechanism, the "catalyst," for achieving the dynamic and innovative results with individuals and groups that have made us nationally recognized.

PHILOSOPHY

Everyone of us is brilliant at something! Brilliance is directly related to the talents with which we were born. Re-discovering and unleashing our talents and our own personal brilliance is the cornerstone for building individual competence, confidence, and self-respect. Everyone of us is unique and brilliant at something. We should take that basic truth into our families, schools, communities, work environment and into our hearts. When we discover our individual brilliance and begin working with it, we become happy, successful, and fulfilled. Each of us enjoys realizing our full potential. When this is done by everyone (administration, faculty, staff, custodians, students, etc.) and everyone builds on both their own talents and the talents of others, unity is secured and rapid progress to realistic and achievable goals is imminent.

FOUNDATION

Natural Talents and Creativity

Brilliance is the combination of one's natural talents, creativity, passion, dreams, and learning style. Utilizing one's own brilliance is the cornerstone to success and the fulfillment of dreams. It is difficult to be creative when one does not use their natural talents. When our natural talents and creativity are restricted, we are locked "in the box" which characterized the industrial revolution. That revolution is over. We are now in a "Creative Revolution" and our natural talents and creativity are essential for success.

"Your Own Company" and "Your Personal Product"

"You are our own company" is a fact of life. Whether an individual works within an organization or is planning and developing a new job or career, they must understand that "they are their own company." Anyone to whom they supply a product or service is their customer. Their "customers", therefore, include teachers, co-workers, students and employees, in addition to parents and people outside their school or organization. Customers consist of anyone to whom you supply anything. An individual's natural talents are the basic assets of their "Personal Company."

Dreams

Every successful organization has a vision. Its vision is its dream. Also, each individual must have a vision, a dream for themselves, their own "Personal Company." It is critical to the success of the school or organization that each person within that organization, has a dream for their job, their career, their team and the school that employs them. It is critical that each person shares the vision, the dreams of his/her "Personal Company" with his/her customers, their staff and students. When we begin to understand, to unleash, and to share our dreams and take action toward those dreams, the barriers that surround us quickly begin to dissipate. When individuals are allowed to be creative and share their dreams with each other, the whole organization takes on a new, dynamic, productive atmosphere. Everyone must dream in order to be successful today. Every employee and every student, no matter what position or grade level, will understand that they are all mentors to others, and those others include administration, staff, faculty, and students.

LEARNING AND FACILITATION

The Career Dreams approach to facilitation and learning is not very complex. However, it is critical to the success of the CDEF programs that these principles be faithfully followed when designing, implementing, and facilitating CDEF programs and services.

Self-Discovery and Self-Directed Learning

The Career Dreams Educational Foundation does not come into your school, organization or company and tell you what you are doing wrong. You already know yourselves and your schools better than any outside source ever could. That is why the emphasis in Career Dreams is on self-discovery and self-direction and dreams. Our programs allow organizations to revolutionize from within in a powerful, positive, and joyful way. We do not tell you how to "do things right." We do not tell individuals what they should be doing for their career dream or how they should be doing their jobs. We do not give your typical assessment tests that tell you what your personality is like or what your skills are, or what you would be good at doing.

The CDEF approach to learning is through self-discovery. Participants engage in the learning process and draw their own conclusions under facilitator guidance. Ten percent (10%) of your staff will be trained as CDEF certified facilitators. The facilitator is not there to counsel participants nor provide them with answers regardless of the facilitator's personal or professional background. Our program enables participants to come up with their own self-discoveries as often as possible. The effects of the program on participants are much more powerful and long-lasting when answers and discoveries come from within the participants themselves and their teams. The facilitator may supply facts to the participants that they do not discover for themselves, but may do so only sparingly. Your specially trained CDEF facilitators will create a positive atmosphere in which self-discovery, growth and sharing can occur WITHOUT LIMITS and WITHOUT NEGATIVES. This results in increased self-worth and a real "team spirit" atmosphere within the schools. Career Dreams facilitators KNOW and TRUST that all participants will discover their own answers.

Experience, Action, Reflection

The Career Dreams programs use a learning process of experience, action, and reflection. This model is known as the Honey-Mumford Learning Cycle. All CDEF programs, seminars, workshops, and training workshops take this approach. First individuals have an experience. Then they take action. Then they reflect on their experience, and take action again.

Professional Development

The Career Dreams programs are focused on individuals and their professional lives, not on their personal lives. Though the CDEF program does positively affect the personal life of each individual, an individual's personal life is off limits within the CDEF program. The #1 RULE is that there will be NO discussions about personal or family issues.

Group

The Career Dreams approach to learning is through a combination of individual learning and learning through group interaction and experience. By listening, participating, creating, and reflecting in a group, the learning process becomes a much more powerful, dynamic experience.

CORE VALUES

Personal Responsibility

Each student and staff member in the school will learn to understand that they are their own company and must accept 100% responsibility for their actions, dreams and success. We can no longer wait for others to provide opportunity and success for us. We must discover for ourselves. We must take the responsibility for our own learning, our own education, our own dreams.

Take Action

The only way to dissipate fear is to take action. "Get out of the way of the speeding car!" Do what you know must be done! Take personal responsibility! Do it Now!

Positives versus Negatives

A founding principle of the Career Dreams Programs is that negatives are not acceptable. A zero-tolerance policy exists with regards to airing "negatives." Career Dreams programs provide you with proprietary tools and a unique environment that allows you to focus on the positive and those things that YOU CAN CHANGE within yourself and within education for your school or organization. Our "NO NEGATIVES" policy consistently turns negative situations into positive, action-oriented environments. Progress and productivity in education increases dramatically when everyone speaks and acts with a positive attitude. It's a simple concept. But, it's powerful and it works.

No Limits

A very critical element to the CDEF system is the elimination of the ceilings and the limits that individuals have artificially placed upon themselves and the educational process. Such limits stop innovation, creativity, productivity, and dreams for all of us within our schools, teams, and organizations. These self-imposed limits, thus, ulimately restrict our success.

Methodology

The efficacy of the Talent-Based Leadership System lies in its methodology -- the integration of Staff Development, Team Building, and long-term organizational change strategies.

Professional Development

CDEF focuses first on Professional Development unleashing the natural talents and creativity of every employee from the superintendent or dean to the bus drivers and custodians as well as the students. This is the cornerstone of building self-esteem, self-confidence, individual productivity, and personal leadership for EVERYONE within the school environment. This is truly Professional Development.

Team Atmosphere and Team Building

The Talent-Based Leadership System facilitates teamwork, sharing and open communication, while restoring respect, trust, creativity, and productivity to the educational process (see CDEF Seven Principles of Success). This results in everyone maximizing their potential for personal success and fulfillment while helping schools positively impact the students and the communities.

Change Strategies

By integrating CDEF long-term organizational change strategy, the Talent-Based Leadership System will positively impact organizational communication and culture. This results in higher productivity and a healthy "school atmosphere."

Process

Facilitation/Interview

The Talent-Based Leadership System uses a proprietary facilitation and interviewing process whereby participants discover information for themselves. This process is for individual development and self-directed learning. Additionally, this process is designed to help individuals discover and unleash their natural talents, creativity, passions and dreams. These are the cornerstone of self-respect and self-confidence.

Action Group

The Talent-Based Leadership System uses a facilitated group process. This Action Group process encompasses a set of rules and structures which continue to help individuals and organizations achieve. The Action Group process is designed to break self-limiting and negative behavior patterns, build relationships, and focus on responsibility and action for the future of their schools.

Workbook/Materials

The Talent-Based Leadership System uses a workbook and materials that work in tandem with the rest of the program. They contain points and principles of The Talent-Based Leadership System concerning teamwork, vision, and dreams, etc. The workbook and materials also contain sections that act as a self-reflective journal.

The Talent-Based Leadership System

In the Workplace

Today, individuals and organizations continue to grapple with the challenges posed by the ever changing workplace environment. Employees no longer feel secure in their jobs and are scrambling to find meaning in their work. Employers are trying to open workplace communication, motivate their workforce, improve employee retention, and remain innovative while dealing with the impact of change.

The critical challenge, therefore, is to maintain a positive, productive, and motivated workforce while building a collaborative workplace of trust, respect, and open communication amidst constant change. Districts must create a workplace atmosphere within their schools where diverse groups of people work well together, innovate ideas, trust their own brilliance, build on the brilliance of others, and create the education needed to achieve success at every level -- for their teachers, staff and, most importantly, their students.

Career Dreams Incorporated and its Educational Foundation have successfully worked with all types of corporations, non-profit organizations, government agencies, educational institutions, and individuals. From our extensive work with clients we have learned that to develop a positive, productive "workplace atmosphere" schools and organizations must:

• Unleash the natural leadership of each person (Teachers, Staff and Students).
  
  
• Utilize the individuality -- natural talents, creativity, passions, and abilities -- of every person.
  
  
• Open workplace communication.
  
  
• Increase trust, respect and personal responsibility.
  
  
• Institute a permanent approach to change.

CDEF provides an array of integrated workforce training and development programs that will help individuals maximize their potential and will help schools build a healthy and innovative "workplace atmosphere." All CDEF programs are based on the proprietary Talent-Based Leadership System©.