Latest Posts
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Learn your own way
Summer in the Northern hemisphere means 2 things. Firstly, the possibility that the British Isles may actually see a few weeks of sunshine, and secondly, the start of the long holidays for many of our hoozyu users.
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Making the most of the mid-year milestone
It hit me rather unexpectedly this week that it is already mid-July.
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Love what you do
Let’s look at two, apparently conflicting, thoughts from two giants of business (sadly, neither of whom was ever nominated for the Miss Manners prize for social etiquette):
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What do you expect?
If there is one thing that will change the way you relate to others AND which will increase your personal effectiveness, it is learning to identify expectations.
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How to make a bad situation much worse
Here at hoozyu we describe Stress Behaviour as a counter-productive attempt to get your Needs met.
But what does that really mean? -
Danger: Reactor
One of the fun things about being human, is discovering that you don’t always know why you do certain things.
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No Talent Required
As you may have picked up, hoozyu is about helping people to understand themselves, identify their potential and make great choices as they approach life and career. Talent is a key construct we discuss.
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If it ain't broke, fix it anyway
It’s difficult to remember a time when I haven’t been the kind of person who tries to fix everything. I use the term ‘fix’ loosely because when I was younger I would often take things apart and have absolutely no idea how to put them back together. Usually electronic devices like radios and old computers that had stopped working, or would soon stop working as the screwdriver began twisting in my fingers, and plastic casings were prised apart.
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Making Mechanical Sense
Something funny happened to me when I was 16, that only made sense to me, years later. In my mid-year maths exam, after the scores were scaled up, I scored 10.25% (I can hear you laughing, but that wasn’t meant to be the funny bit). This was the year when Maths was mostly Calculus: integrate this, differentiate that. It was all Greek to me - except that my Greek was actually pretty good compared to my Maths.
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Being scientific about people
Scientific is my second highest hoozyu motivation (95). Its been a great discovery understanding how this impacts my life and how it’s lead and influenced me from my teens!
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What does your hoozyu mean to you?
When I first went through the process that underlies hoozyu (the Birkman Method Questionnaire), it had a fairly dramatic effect on me. I suddenly saw the past twenty years of my life in a whole new light. Not an entirely comfortable moment, but boy, did it make a difference, which continues to this day.
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A Better Question
Upon completing your education and setting out into the world of work, it can be difficult to get beyond the burning question of “What am I going to do?” For some people it becomes a kind of mantra amidst the rising panic and pressure to find a job. “What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do?…”
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Three Keys to Navigating your Career Voyage - Successfully! (or without running onto the rocks)
The pressure to know exactly what you are going to do with your life begins about 30 seconds after you are born (actually in some cases, your father may have started asking you this question when you were just a bump). In fact Great Aunt Mabel will probably still be asking you “what are you going to do when you grow up?” on your 40th birthday.
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How I keep myself energised
I’m always curious when it comes to looking at people’s Areas of Interest section. Going through mine allowed me to spot and put words on what I really needed and what would have the most impact on my resilience at work or in my daily life.
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Claire talks High Literary
First off, I just want to clarify: Literary is actually not my highest score on Areas of Interest. It’s not even my second highest!
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Do not adjust your set…
…is a phrase probably only familiar to the ancient amongst us. Back in the days of analogue TV (in Black and White), sometimes the broadcasting station would run into problems screening a programme – a cable burnt out in the live studio, or the 70mm film jumped the sprockets on the projector or something. To prevent a whole nation rising from their sofas and thumping the wooden TV or twirling the tuning dial until it fell off (or worse, retuned to the one other available station), they would turn a spare camera to a card on which was written, “Please do not adjust your set…” If you were lucky, you also got Jacques Loussier playing Bach’s Air on the G String. Or possibly a bumble bee playing Rimsky-Korsakoff.
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SatNav for Parents (and Teachers)
Imagine you are in a plane, flying to New York from Paris. You have been in the air for some hours when a voice comes on over the PA system. “Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. I think we are getting pretty close to New York now, I’ve definitely seen clouds like this near New York before and that turbulence 5 minutes ago is to my mind pretty typical of flying over Long Island, so we’re going to lose some altitude, get beneath the clouds and see if we can see the Statue of Liberty. Please do tell your stewardess if you see anything you recognise…” Mass panic ensues.
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Don't drink from bitter wells
I seem to be seeing a lot of posts just recently on various platforms, essentially warning young people against the danger of thinking they can actually follow their dreams. The message is essentially “get over your dreams, you need money to live so you need to work hard in a job you probably will never love, so get over it / get over yourself”.
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What one thing most changes a young person’s life?
I have been listening to a number of people recently who have had a very difficult start in life. One who had been in social care throughout her teens had been moved over 50 times during those years, between children’s homes, foster care and so on. Another who had been in care for longer had been moved over 70 times. When asked how they got through, in every case I have heard, there was one adult who had connected with the young person at some point in their journey and who had kept in touch. That one relationship with an interested adult became the anchor by which a troubled young person managed at last to get to some kind of safe harbour and a more stable life.
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Talented? Me? You?
Something that deeply impacts both employers and employees is low expectation; the sense that “I will have to settle for you” or (in the case of the employee) “I will have to settle for this job”. Employers don’t expect they could ever find the people they really need; employees are only too glad to get a job, even if it fits them like a (nine-fingered, ant-filled, one-not-very-careful-lady-orangutan-owner) glove. I would like to suggest that this is a) extremely sub-optimal and b) entirely unnecessary. There is no shortage of the right talent; what is missing the means to identify talent and match it with opportunity.
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Change your stars
The expression “change your stars” was the theme of one of the late Heath Ledger’s happier romps, “A Knight’s Tale” (I would rather meet William Thatcher/Ulrich von Leichenstein than The Joker, any day of the week). William, a poor London boy, has to take on an alias as a Knight and jousts his way to the top of the Lists (as it were). The ultimate crisis occurs back in London, and his (now blind) father, who first told him he could change his stars, is there as William, finally competing under his own identity and against all the odds, vanquishes his noble enemy. “He has changed his stars…” cries his father.
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Why hoozyu will change your life
hoozyu will change your life. That’s why one of the most common things we see is someone ordering a hoozyu… and then coming back within a couple of hours and ordering some more for friends / siblings / significant other.
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How to help your teenager to plan their career
It is that time of year again in much of the Northern Hemisphere: exams, graduations, next course and then… what? Year by year, your child moves inevitably towards the end of the educational conveyor belt. What happens when they reach the end? You don’t want to hear just a dull “clunk” as they tip over the edge.