| “To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it,
is the key to happiness.” |
| --Henry David Thoreau
Knowing and using your natural talents and motivators
basically means you understand how to get your desires
with the least amount of effort. Why? Because it comes
easily and naturally. While this statement may appear as
blasphemy to many of the "do-it-anyway" old guard (who
have no nose due to their relationship to a grindstone),
doing what you enjoy will bring the greatest
return...regardless!
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What is the Highlands Ability Battery (tHAB)?
The Highlands Ability Battery is a series of worksamples that measure and define a person’s natural abilities. This is not a "test" in the traditional sense of the word. You are asked to do something in each worksample. How easily you complete a worksample defines how “naturally” the underlying aptitude comes to you. Each worksample is timed to reflect your innate abilities and not your skills.
After you complete the Battery, you receive a 30+ page report describing your results. The individualized report describes each worksample and what it measures. Your score is linked to how easily you can perform a task that focuses on a particular ability.
After you have received your report, you go over the results in detail with us in a highly focused feedback consult. In a 2-hour feedback session, we discuss your abilities as they relate to your career and the work roles for which your ability profile ideally suits you. This process is the foundation for developing a long-term career strategy.
Natural abilities are like the strings of a violin or keys of a piano. Untouched, they exist without any impact on our minds or senses. Harnessed and controlled, they offer limitless possibilities for growth and development. Everyone is born with natural abilities. Natural abilities are not influenced by education or experience. By the age of fourteen the natural abilities of each individual have matured enough to be defined and measured.
Everyone can benefit from the Highlands Ability Battery. Whether you are a student seeking guidance for your studies, an adult who wants to enhance your career or an executive who wants to relieve work stress or change your career direction, the Highlands Ability Battery is the place to start. Successful employees use the Ability Battery to assess areas of strength, set goals and develop long-range career strategies. Corporate teams use the ability Battery to enhance their productivity in the marketplace.
No matter who you are or what stage of your career you are in, you can count on your ability profile to be a practical, objective way to provide you with direction and focus. Students will gain the knowledge that allows them to make practical decisions about educational choices and career options.
What is Personal Vision Development?
By the time an individual's abilities are measured and interpreted by the Highlands Ability Battery, other influences have helped to shape and define her as a unique human being who faces life's challenges in her own unique way. Highlands has developed a structure for relating the results of the Ability Battery to these other influences. In this way, we are able to see a picture of the Whole Person, especially as the other elements help us to understand and develop our abilities.
The Whole Person
|
“All are parts of one stupendous whole.” |
| Alexander Pope |
Highlands has identified eight critical factors which combine to make the Whole Person. These factors are represented as an interlocking wheel. The eight critical factors are:
Natural Abilities. These are identified and measured by the Highlands Ability Battery. A person is happiest and performs best when her natural abilities are employed to the fullest.
Skills. These are those function-driven tasks an individual has learned to do well. They develop over time through study, education, application and practice. To the extent an individual takes advantage of her innate abilities in developing a skill, the skill will be acquired more quickly, easily and fully.
Personal Style. Every individual has developed speech patterns, body language, social devices, and personality traits unique to
him. Because other individuals respond either more or less favorably to a person's personal style, it's important to identify its ingredients in each individual to enable that individual to relate better to other people.
Interests. Over the years, a person develops interests unique to her. When these are identified and recognized, the individual can be helped to combine these with her abilities to achieve a fuller and more integrated use of both.
Family of Origin. An individual’s background and family shape
his life and his work ethic. We encourage the individual to examine and to understand how
his family's history and her intra-family relationships have influenced her.
Values. An individual’s values (i.e., her scales for judging good and evil, wise and foolish, moral and immoral) define her reaction to people and events around her. When a sense of her values is combined with knowledge of the other factors in the whole person, the individual is helped to bring her plans and choices into sharper focus.
Goals. Every person has goals which control and drive her activities, both every day and over the foreseeable future. The individual may wish to modify these goals in light of her innate abilities. The results of the timeframe worksample may show, for example, that she may be happiest pursuing short-term goals.
Career Development Stage. Each individual confronts critical stages or transition in her life. Some of these are school or career related. These issues are sometimes self-created and sometimes caused by external forces (e.g., graduation, company downsizing). By defining and discussing the issues confronting the individual, we are able to help her through these transitions.
Why can knowing this information help me plan for my future education or
The Seven Biggest Myths about heading off to college?
Myth #1: I already know what I want to study in college. I don’t need to do any further exploration.
Fact: Until a student understands his innate abilities – how he learns and solves problems best any decision about what to study in college is premature.
Students feel enormous pressure: “What are you going to study?” “What do you want to be?” If the student answers, ‘I’m going to study medicine,’ all the pressure stops. Problem solved. But who knows if there is something else the student should consider that he just hasn’t thought of?
Example: Karen was set to study philosophy at a small liberal arts college. She was accepted on early admission. Then she completed the Highlands Battery and found out she had strong structural abilities. Interestingly, when she found out about these abilities, and did some research on what she could do with them, she discovered that she had always felt a deep seated but unexpressed love of architecture and design. She ended up at a large university where she could explore abstract fields such as philosophy, but also architecture and industrial design as well.
The point: By finding out about her abilities, she went to a college that would leave all her options open.
Myth #2: I have no clue about what I want to study in college, I’ll wait until I get there to figure that out.
‘There’s no way I can even think now about what I want to study in college or what I want do in life. There’s time enough for that.’
The results of this approach are fairly predictable. The student spends four years taking courses
with little sense of direction. More time is usually spent
buying a car than planning a career. At some point (4-5 years down the road), the student is going to face graduation. And students who have not been dealing with who they are and what they want to do in life probably aren’t going to be any further along than they were when they first entered college.
Fact: Even the most elite universities cannot look inside your heart and mind to know what you are passionate about, what has meaning for you. Only you can know that.
Our process is one that students can use to come up with 2-3 reasonable options. If a student goes to college with these reasonable options at hand, he will have sufficient focus to choose courses, majors, and summer jobs (or internships) that will actively allow him to take the ball down the field.
The point: Having no focus is just as bad as having a focus that is prematurely narrow.
Myth #3: I’ll just shoot for the best school I can get into.
This is a subtle variation of Myth #1. ‘So, Jimmy, what are you going to do?’ ‘I’m going to go to Harvard and I’m going to be a doctor!’ Now there’s a powerful one-two punch. Case closed. No anxiety here.
Fact: In the ‘real world’ – that place out there after college – people get ahead fastest, are most successful, and are happiest when they know clearly how to state what their highest and best contribution can be. The key ingredient in the ability to do this – knowing how you can contribute – is self-knowledge.
The point: If a student’s only goal is to get into the most prestigious university (or that slight variant – the college that
Mom or Dad went to) the student is overlooking the most important piece of the puzzle: him/herself.
Myth #4: My parents, teachers, and college counselor can guide me through this college selection process.
Fact: All the people in your life want what is best for you, of course. But they are not you. They can’t feel what you feel, or know what sort of courses will turn you on. Only you can know these things about yourself.
Example: Bill’s father thought he should be a dentist. Bill was a good student. Dentistry would be a well-paying, professional career with some stability, status and prestige. There was only one problem. He didn’t know it at the time, but Bill’s strongest abilities were not in science or spatial relations, two very important aspects of dentistry. He had other very real abilities, but not those. Because Bill was a responsible, hard-working young man, he listened to his father and enrolled in chemistry. He made good grades, but he was miserably unhappy. In his junior year, frustrated and lost, he left college.
The point: Advice is fine – but it helps only when the student has done the basic work of finding out about himself.
Myth #5: It’s too early to think about life after college.
Fact: The transition from high school to college is the first important Turning Point in our adult lives.
It is meant in some ways to be a transition – a place to make the jump from the security of the family, where adults take charge of things, to becoming an adult and taking care of yourself. To effectively make this transition, college has to be more than just a place away from the family. It has to be a place where a teenager can mature and grow.
Too many students don’t make the jump successfully. There are more young adults 22-29 living at home with their parents than at any time since the Great Depression. Per a recent Newsweek article, 65% of college students are returning home after graduation and 44% are still home after a year. A recent AARP (November, 2006) article stated over 39 million young adults between the ages of 25 to 34 are currently living at home.
How do you make college an effective transition? Look beyond it. Form a plan about where you are going. Then you may be able to get there. The reason so many young people are dropping out and transferring is that they miss seeing a connection between college and life after college.
Example: Peter went to college with three thoughts about what he might want to do: be a journalist; be a lawyer; or go into politics (as a speechwriter). These may be related, but each is a distinct and broad category. All three were also related to Peter’s strongest natural abilities. In college, he systematically took courses and got internships in all three fields. By the end of college, he had eliminated journalism and politics, but had settled on law. He went to law school. Now he’s a lawyer. Of his group of 6 or 7 high school friends, he was the only one who graduated in 4 years.
The point: When students go to college with 2 or 3 clear ideas or career goals, they can significantly increase their chances of
- Enjoying college, and,
- Being successful in college.
Myth #6: It’s all up to my SAT/ACT score, GPA, essays & recommendations, & my athletic/leadership/artistic talents.
Fact: What you’ve accomplished, how well you do on standardized tests, and how well-rounded you are, are all important. But what is more basically important is who you are. Your school grades, SAT scores, or athletic performance can’t always tell you that. Nor do they carry the weight they once did due to inflated grades, SAT prepped higher scores and essays found on the internet. Fifty top colleges have made testing optional for entrance consideration.
Myth #7: If I take the right courses, do the right extra-curriculum and put the kind of stuff they want to read on my essays, I’ll do OK.
We can only quote Lourdes Ramirez, Associate Dean of Admissions at Harvard: “Of all the questions that parents and students ask me, the one that I absolutely refuse to answer is ‘what courses should I take to get into Harvard. You should take the courses you are interested in, that you know you want to take, that you love. The people we admit are those that communicate to us that they have some feeling and passion behind what they are doing. Not that what they are doing follows some formula that someone else has approved.”
We totally agree with this. And we feel that the normal school curriculum and the normal series of standardized tests do not help high school students or college students to find what their feelings and passions are. And yet there is almost nothing quite so important. When we’re talking about your career, we’re not talking about any job. We’re talking about your life.
It is possible to find out what your real talents are, what really turns you on, and what, ultimately, is going to make you feel it was all worth it.
Share your strengths, not your weaknesses.
(Words of Wisdom from a
Yogi Tea
box.)
Tell me more about the Future Directions Program
Decisions regarding college and beyond are perhaps the most complex, confusing and often costly decision that parents and students have to face.
What is the best option? A large university? A small liberal arts school? A technical institute? Major in business, art, history, engineering – or what?
These life molding decisions are often made with little else to go on than “gut” feeling, grades and standardized scores. Decisions this important should take many relevant factors into account. What a student needs to know when considering his or her options should include:
- How do I learn best?
- What work/school environment is right for me?
- What is my preferred problem-solving style?
- How do I organize information?
- What are my natural, innate abilities?
- At what have I been successful?
- What do I enjoy doing? What interests me?
- What do I feel would be worth doing in life?
- What goals do I have already?
The Highlands Future Directions Program helps students answer these questions so that they can make informed decisions about college and careers. They create a personal vision for themselves that can act as a flexible, practical blueprint to use in decision-making now and at the other Turning Points in their lives.
Students are likely to excel and find satisfaction in a course of study or job which taps both their abilities and interests. The systematic Highlands Future Directions approach enables students to explore positive options and to make practical decisions about the future based on specific information about themselves.
The first part of The Highlands Future Directions Program is taking The Highlands Ability Battery. The Highlands Future Directions Workshop is designed to help you gain a positive vision for the future using this and the Personal Vision topics. Expanding your options, Future Directions helps you make choices based not only on your natural talents, but on your interests, values, skills, family, and personality as well. The workshop helps you systematically integrate all these factors into your college and career search, and helps you develop a strategic planning tool for the rest of your life.
Future Directions is a highly structured Workshop. It includes special exercises developed by Highlands over many years to help you learn about yourself, articulate what you learn, and integrate it all into a Personal Vision. You can use this information to:
- Choose a college major or course of study that complements your strengths
- Understand and utilize your natural learning style
- Identify what you need and expect from your educational program
- Talk about and market your abilities, strengths and needs to admission committees and future employers
- Choose activities, internships and work experiences that relate positively to you and your goals.
- Give you the answers to that most basic of questions: “Where am I going in my life?”
There is also a shorter version titled the Future
Directions Workshop.
What is the Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential (MAPP)?
The Motivational Appraisal for Personal Potential helps you discover what truly motivates you in a variety of different environments. When you apply your strengths and talents in areas you are motivated to work in, you will find your career can be more like a hobby than work.
Also, once the assessment is taken we can then create a job match report for your unique results against our database of O*Net jobs from the U.S. Department of Labor. This database consists of more than 1,000 job titles. This can assist in career and educational planning.
Based on years of development and success, MAPP provides a unique online assessment that seeks to guide, motivate and empower people to achieve their greatest educational and career potential.
More than 4.5 million people have taken the MAPP assessment. MAPP has gone through extensive validity and reliability studies and is used by jobseekers, companies, schools, workforce centers and coaches.
The MAPP assessment will help you identify your strengths and motivations toward work. MAPP also outlines your learning style, communication style, and management style and leadership preferences.
The information provided in the full MAPP reports can help you build confidence, achieve personal fulfillment and successfully market yourself.
The goal of MAPP is to empower you with detailed information about ‘who’ you are and what ‘makes you tick’. It’s always helpful to better understand what we like and dislike. MAPP can help you organize your job search so you can maximize your strengths and minimize the time spent on the tasks you do not enjoy.
We receive email from people every day about how they used MAPP to guide their career search, justify their wants and needs to a family member, communicate more effectively with their boss, and much more.
MAPP has been used for writing resumes, preparing for interviews, annual performance reviews, choosing work projects, building teams, personal and professional coaching and in many other areas.
When you take the MAPP assessment there are no right or wrong answers- this is just one look at who you are and what excites you. Motivation is something that we cannot help, it is those tasks that we do and enjoy effortlessly, without even thinking about them.
When you align your natural motivations and talents with the work you do, you will enjoy what you do and excel at it.
The assessment consists of 71 triads of three statements. You must select the statement you MOST agree with and the statement you LEAST agree with, leaving one blank. This process takes approximately 20 minutes. Take the MAPP and you can view your results immediately online.
Why is the combination of tHAB and MAPP assessments so
significant?
From our perspective combining these state of the art assessments paints a full picture of
an individual's natural strengths, talents and motivators. Both assessments have years of research regarding their reliability and validity. We have found no other assessments that are as complete and compelling. They are also very insightful due to their focus on college and career direction matching governmental job descriptions
which includes qualification requirements, projected employment demand and salary ranges.
What is the Love and Logic Parenting™ Workshop?
Love and Logic is a philosophy that has been taught over 30 years of raising and teaching children that allows adults to be happier, empowered, and more skilled in their interactions. While this may seem an approach that would be more appropriate at younger ages we have found in our working with parents over the years the philosophy and techniques work well at all ages.
Love allows children to grow through their mistakes. Logic allows children to live with the consequences of their choices. Love and Logic is a way of working with children that puts parents back in control of their emotions, teaches children to be responsible, and prepares young adults to live in the real world, with its many choices and consequences.
Love and Logic offers adults an alternative way to communicate with their children. The Love and Logic techniques produce immediate results because the techniques are simple, practical, and easy to learn. The concepts behind Love and Logic place a heavy emphasis on respect and dignity and at the same time allows parents to grasp simple approaches instead of learning difficult counseling procedures.
Love and Logic books, CD’s and DVD’s are available and encouraged. This material is well presented and easily understood and can be implemented immediately for all age levels.
Since the Love and Logic approaches and techniques are easily understood the workshop lays the groundwork for powerful communication both at home and during our group conference calls.
| “Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.” |
| --Henry David Thoreau |
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