Val Kinjerski’s engaging book, Rethinking Your Work: Getting to the Heart of What Matters is a perfect way to blend personal/career development with the Olympic spirit radiating from the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Most athletes competing at the games are deeply committed to pursuing a dream of excellence. While some have golden visions of fame and fortune that will come from winning medals, many athletes are fulfilling a deeper sense of purpose. They’ve invested years of incredibly hard work to push themselves to their very peak – and then a bit beyond – of performance excellence.

Most people have a job. Some people have fulfilling careers. A few people have a sense of calling or deeper purpose that lives through their work. Val’s excellent book, Rethinking Your Work shows that what matters most is not what work we do, but how we think about it. Drawing from her speaking and consulting work in employee engagement and building spirit at work, Val starts with a diverse variety of stories that illustrate spirit at work and the varying paths each person took to develop a deep sense of purpose in their work.

The main part of Rethinking Your Work provides practical actions and how-to steps to deepen our sense of purpose or spirit at work. This includes helpful “Reflection Questions” at the end of each chapter.

The book is built around a simple four part Spirit at Work framework. Here’s how Val describes the model:

•    Engaging Work – involves the belief that work is meaningful and has a higher purpose. Our values and beliefs are aligned with our work. We are authentic and experience a profound sense of well-being at work.
•    Sense of Community – arises from sharing a common purpose with others and being connected through feelings of trust, respect, and love.
•    Spiritual Connection – being connected to something larger than self that has a positive effect on the workplace. It often involves a sense of love for others.
•    Mystical Experience – those times in which we feel vital, energized, and have a sense of joy and bliss at work.

I’ve studied, worked to personally apply, and written extensively about Deepening Spirit, Meaning, and Purpose. This book is an inspiring, entertaining, and very practical addition to this vital topic. The closest most of us will ever come to the Olympics is cheering on our favorite athletes from our living room. But we can capture some of that magical Olympic Spirit in our work.

Visit Val’s blog at http://www.rethinkingyourwork.com/blog for further insights handily by topic area related to employee engagement and spirit at work.

Practical Leadership Development for Peak Performance Archived Webcast and Slides Download Now Available

The webcast is my voice through an audio broadcast synchronized with my slides full of the usual animations and transitions I use when presenting in front of a group. We now have the broadcast available on our site for viewing as streaming audio and video on site or download the WMV file here. When you click on this link you’ll also see the agenda of what was covered in the webcast.

So you can catch the webcast on your own time, show it at your next team meeting, or bring people together for a shared learning experience and do the assessment/discussion exercises recommended in the presentation.

Leading @ the Speed of Change public workshops in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Calgary, and London

Typically my Leading @ the Speed of Change workshops are highly customized for delivery inside a Client’s organization (CLICK HERE to view those options.) I rarely offer any public workshops and haven’t offered Leading @ the Speed of Change outside of my hometown (Kitchener-Waterloo) for nearly ten years. I am delighted to be working with the Canadian Society for Training and Development to make Leading @ the Speed of Change available in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, and London this spring and Calgary in September. These one-day sessions are especially designed for management teams to attend as a team. CLICK HERE for more information and to register.

New Coming Events Section on Our Web Site

Our business is almost exclusively customized internal sessions for specific Clients. I’ve typically done very few public events that have open attendance. However, over the next six months I do have a higher level of Canadian presentations and workshops with open attendance. So we’ve added a Coming Events section to our web site. CLICK HERE to access it.