Project 52: Week 3 (12/18/23)

Welcome to Project 52: Week 3 (12/18/23) (and, here's a link to Week 2)

Introduction to the Career Strand of Tri Cosain

.. an open invitation to join us so that we might discern whether (and to what extent) these weekly micro-modules and accompanying exercises and reading materials worked to build courageous careers, develop formal and informal approaches to learning, and discern what matters most to us -- and WHY

Our prayer ...

"The practice of hospitality transforms all individuals involved, overcoming fear, indifference, and selfishness, creating mutual understanding and respect. More than this, though, for Christians, there is the belief that in practicing hospitality, in welcoming the stranger, we participate proleptically in an eschatological reality. This is the practice we are invited to perform as we await with longing and expectation of the homecoming ..."

The Gift of the Other: Levinas, Derrida, and the Theology of Hospitality

~Andrew Sheppherd (2024) with a foreword by Steven Bouma-Predger

Welcome to Project 52: Week 3

Tri Cosain career strand overview

In our Tri Cosain work, we invite our participants to weave together three strands of inquiry and practice - inspiration, learning, and career.

In our work to support careers inquiry at CTU, we expect that the career strand will be where we spend the most time with participants …… we aim to keep the other two strands clearly in view and integrated into our thinking and exploration.

In the career strand, we seek to offer participants an integrated, holistic, but highly time-efficient career services approach.

Why offer this program?

In our career services work, our ambitions are to …

• Support participants in attaining life success and fulfillment in ministry in the broadest terms, consistent with their values, goals, insights, and spiritual calling, primarily expressed through their career journeys
• Help participants see and realize the lifelong relevance of their education through the lens of a career
• Support the engagement of participants with the wider CTU community for the benefit and enrichment of all

How do we offer it?

• We build on the Tri Cosain principles - weaving inspiration, learning, and career together.
• We work with each participant in a highly individualized and responsive way.
• We recognize that CTU community members may be embracing new life directions, so we invite a gentle, exploratory approach based on curious inquiry, applying no pressure and avoiding premature decision-making
• We seek to use leverage wisely - building on work already done and tools available publicly, integrated with experienced guidance.
• We offer what we hope is a comprehensive roadmap and accompanying resources for the work … and … we encourage participants to “start anywhere and follow it everywhere.” (Myron Rogers).
• We seek to avoid being dogmatic or opinionated in our approach; we are open to new ideas. We aim to be entirely open to participants’ preferences and choices and to insights emerging in collaboration with other members of the CTU professional, ministerial, pastoral, and alumni community.

What beneficial outcomes do we hope for?

• Early participant engagement with career exploration and consideration, leading to more satisfying and abundant career experiences - ministerially, financially, and personally - over a lifetime
• Greater participant comfort that inspirational discernment, learning, and career considerations are being addressed together during the participant’s time at CTU and beyond
• A greater participant sense of the relevance of their education to their career and ministry, and vice versa, allowing the inspiration, learning, and career journeys to inform one another fully

Our career exploration “roadmap.”

Components of the roadmap

• Crystallizing personal inspiration (through the lens of a career focus)
• Designing a career vision, using such approaches as design thinking, narrative, prototyping, and experimenting
• Understanding the “market” for participant skills and capacities in a student’s areas of interest
• Defining and pursuing particular career opportunities - using Steve Dalton’s 2-Hour Job Search approach
• Networking and pursuing what we call “Conversations of Inquiry” to learn about careers and develop a personal career vision, strategy, and plans
• Developing a close circle of mentors/advisors/supporters - possibly including what has been called someone’s personal MasterMind group
• Planning an overall career exploration approach in a joined-up, inspired, and emergent way, using what we call Agile planning
• Developing a personal “brand” and beginning to “market” ourselves - sharing our insights, experience and capabilities with others
• Reaching an agreement to engage with opportunities the participant wants, including internships, work experience, ministry placements, full-time work, and career-focused higher or advanced education or training opportunities
• Connecting career journeys to learning journeys

As always, I'm available to support you -- and perhaps members of your organization, institution, or school -- in discovering, crystallizing, and bringing a sense of personal inspiration to life.

Please be invited to Week 3 of our year-long series of installments, introducing our framework perspective Tri Cosain, Irish Gaelic for three pathways: inspiration, learning, and career.

We are pleased to accompany you on this journey.

Monday, 18 December 2023

Gerald Doyle

Doyle's note: Over the course of the following year, I will be exploring the ideas of friendship, welcoming, belonging, dialogue, and hospitality and will share resources and reflections on these, especially in the context of building meaningful careers and developing ourselves into courageous and wise leaders.

This week, I've been reflecting on these words from Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (1930-2023), the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court:

• Whether acting in the legal, governmental, or private realm, one concerned and dedicated person can meaningful affect what some consider an uncaring world. So give freely of yourself always to your family, your friends, your community, and your country. The world will pay you back many times over.”
• We don't accomplish anything in this world alone... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads form one to another that creates something. ...
• Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time.

Tri Cosain materials are developed with my colleague and friend of 40+ years, Scott Downs.

Copyright Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle 2023

Residing in Chicago, Gerald Doyle provides ministry placement research and consulting for Career Services at the Catholic Theological Union and career services and coaching to students, families, and community members at Wolcott College Preparatory High School . He advises several edtech companies, including Upkey and GetSet Learning ; he has also joined TSI - Transforming Solutions, Inc. in their Higher Education and Career Services practice.

Scott? Downs, a former investment banker, management consultant, and entrepreneur, now works as an Agile coach, seeking to call forward great leaders and great organizations based on great cultures. He is a consultant with Expleo Group and is an associate of the TrustTemenos Leadership Academy.

Scott and Gerald are co-founders of Tri Cosain, a practice that weaves inspiration, learning, and career for leadership in life and work. Gerald and Scott co-authored 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work, Conversations of Inquiry, and several other volumes in the Tri Cosain series. Their work embraces equity, inclusion, diversity, and well-being as foundations for personal leadership.