Labor Day weekend in the United States has come and gone. While the sun still shines in many places, most people have put summer behind them and gotten back to the grind of “real life.”

With overflowing inboxes, looming project deadlines, and the holiday season in the near future, how do you fall back into a professional development routine?

I’m in the middle of my second (and last!) summer of my MBA candidacy. After work every weekday and on Saturdays, I commute 40 miles to class. There I learn about finance, accounting, and leadership – all topics critical to my future career success.

But, as I get into my car and drive in the exact opposite direction of the beach in the pursuit of perpetual learning, I feel a little sad. Even with my goal defined, my forward momentum falters as I think about the missed opportunity to lounge in a cabana instead.

And while I face an extreme version of summer school, everyone struggles with their personal professional development during peak vacation season. So, what can we do to keep learning, even when the summer sun calls our names? I turned to the InSync Team for advice, and, as always, their wisdom proved illuminating and practical.

Coaching involves two very important parties:

• The coach
• The coachee

The relationship and interaction between these two individuals impacts the overall success of the process. Recently, the InSync team shared what skills make coaches effective: thoughtful questioning techniques, foundational models, and a personalized approach.

Professional development doesn’t get more personalized than one-on-one coaching.

According to the International Coaching Federation, professional coaching is a “thought-provoking and creative process that inspires [people] to maximize their personal and professional potential.” This definition reinforces two key ideas:

• Coaching encourages creative thinking. Through the process, coaches encourage participants to think outside of the proverbial box in order to identify improved ways of doing things.
• Coaching requires personal assessment. Coaches don’t necessarily tell participants what’s wrong with their methodologies. Instead, they offer opportunities for pointed personal contemplation about their current approaches and areas of potential growth.

Virtually There Session Recap

Many factors influence your professional success – hard work, opportunity, your network, and quite frankly, a bit of luck.

But what if there is an unseen factor that shapes your future and progress? Diversity training expert Christine Miles knows from experience this is true. During her engaging Virtually There event, Christine astutely advised that bias plays a significant part in our advancement.

If we can’t see bias – our own and that of others – how do we combat it or use it to our advantage? Christine shared her proven process for going beyond diversity and towards awareness for better business results (watch the entire Virtually There replay here).

Virtually There Recap

Did you know that you have stories constantly running through your subconscious mind? It’s true! Without realizing it, you frame every interaction through narrative, creating underlying bias. Good, bad, or indifferent, your bias influences how you navigate the world.

This fundamental brain biology impacts professional relationships, too. Before every conversation or task, you anticipate how it will unfold.

Virtually There Recap

Think about your day-to-day role. Do you host meetings? Facilitate training? Give presentations? Whether you run these events or not, they represent an important part of our professional lives. Often, we see these events as time wasters, rather than important investments of our focus.

As learning professionals, team members, and managers, we strive to engage and involve our audiences so that they can remember the information we share with them. We hope to take them beyond listening and towards true learning. With the right approach, we can achieve that lofty goal.

Brain-based learning expert Sharon Bowman shared her presentation model and guided our Virtually There participants through a process for getting the brain to pay attention.

How do we become the best that we can be? Countless self-help books sit on Amazon’s digital shelves hoping to answer this question. And while, oftentimes, the pursuit of our "best-ness" feels like a personal endeavor, it naturally and logically impacts our professional performance.

The secret to success according to Ginny Palmieri, author of Unspoken: Finding Your Voice and Living Your Authentic Life, involves an authentic presence in and out of the office. Her interview with Phylise Banner for the Modern Learning on the Air podcast outlines the processes and approaches you can take to move your career in the right direction.