NEWEST ARTICLES

3 Facts about Professional Orientation

People Management

When my colleague Slava Pankratov and I launched our yearly educational program, at first we were going to make individual education plans for each student. So we resorted to Slava’s second degree in practical psychology, chose two very detailed tests (one of them consisting of 580 questions) and started asking each student to take them, and also write essays about their stories, goals, and plans. In a couple of months, we launched professional orientation as a separate service, entirely digging ourselves in the students’ questionnaires and essays. Within three months we managed to process over 500 feedbacks that made us[…]

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4 Reasons Why People Don’t Do Something

Motivation

So it happened that my father-in-law and mother-in-law are Doctors of Education. Which leads to the fact that willy-nilly you start comprehending various useful techniques One day, after some academic council, my father-in-law asked me: “Alex, what do you think, why do people not do something?” Honestly, his question caught me cold. I started fantasizing: well, the reason may be some interfering circumstances, traits of character, lack of experience… No, no, no, he said. It’s not like that. If people do not do something, there are only four reasons. That’s when my arsenal of management tools increased by one more[…]

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5 Symptoms of Being Ill As a Professional

Career

The problem with career and professional growth is that nothing hurts. It is a terrible and mean disease: everything is OK, nothing hurts, you get paid, some current issues are being resolved, and you are slowly climbing up the steps of the Maslow pyramid to the level where food and comfort are no longer the main tasks in life. The vacation is arranged, the mortgage is being paid, your children go to a good nursery/school… or you have skilfully convinced yourself that this level is enough for you. And your progress gradually flattens out, the tasks, responsibilities, and therefore revenues[…]

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How to Listen to Nasty Criticism: 4 Useful Questions for every Day

Career

Do you like it when people speak ill of you? We don’t, absolutely. However, we have to admit that such criticism is often the most useful one. It’s like a proper treatment, which should be nasty. So you won’t get sick. Why is unpleasant criticism useful, what prevents us from hearing it, and how to communicate with nasty people – let’s talk about it. Everything that we talk about in this article is not just a copy-paste of some very clever book. It’s not even a copy-paste of a few very clever books. This is the summary of lessons we’ve[…]

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On learned helplessness

Career

One has to agree that it’s stupid to discuss the sublime with someone hungry or suffering. It is strange to offer philosophic ideas to a man who walks barefoot and his feet hurt. It’s a common knowledge that during wars and financial crises it’s not easy to deliver employees’ constructive confrontation or long-term motivation ideas through joint work on their professional goals. It looks counter-intuitive, but that is exactly what gives outstanding results, in our opinion. Is it OK to think about education right now? The answer is not as obvious as it sounds. We thoroughly studied the idea, simple[…]

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