By Claire Harris and Lucy Ridge
‘Be the Change’, the second Changemaker Hub event was on Friday 20 November in Dickson village, Canberra. The Changemaker Career and Craft Hub provides an opportunity to be part of local community gatherings, including workshops and a Craft and Catch-up zone. These events are also part of DESIGN Canberra Festival and are supported by the City Renewal Authority.
This workshop was all about exploring how to be a changemaker; in our own lives for ourselves (such as in the case of making a career change) or to change the world.
Participants were invited to learn from and talk to:
- Megan Gilmour, brilliant entrepreneur and social innovator with The Art of Agency and MissingSchool
- Lisa Tozer, The Interview Coach and accredited Career Development Practitioner
- Lydia Teychenne, career changer herself, mum of two kids, Defence partner and Program Coordinator with Prince’s Trust Australia.
You can read their full bios on the Our Changemakers: Full Biographies page.
Megan Gilmour shared so many fantastic insights about implementing change and the Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan approach.
Before she ran the practical exercise with the WOOP handout, she emphasised that all of the achievements that she has secured over recent years came from small steps and lots of hard work. She talked about the inner strength that we all need to bring forward to create change in our lives.
“Change is an inside job,” she said.
“We need to change on the inside first, even if it’s just how we see the world.”
Megan talked about how positive thinking and dreaming about what we want can actually have the opposite affect of us achieving our goals because our brain tricks us into thinking we’ve already achieved it. She showed how having a clear system like WOOP helps to have already mapped out the likely impediments that are going to get in your way and how to get around them.
One brave soul shared their WOOP and their key priority? To find others to help them as they explore their career change idea. Megan was so impressed that she had shared this and emphasised that we do better when we implement change with others around us supporting us.
“Instead of asking ‘how can I do this?’, ask, ‘who can help me?'” Megan Gilmour.
I [Claire] did chuckle to myself when Megan said that we all implement a WOOP-style plan daily, as we figure out our menial tasks for the day like going to the grocery store. We figure out what we want to do, what needs to happen, how we are going to get around any obstacles and then we plan our time. It’s so helpful to have a reminder that we can achieve so much when we put our minds to it and also get the support we need around us.
Lydia Teychenne and Liza Tozer bounced off each other in a delightful and practical session. They covered how to communicate career stories, how to find that uniqueness about yourself and how to manage nerves when being interviewed or presenting.
Lisa Tozer spoke about finding your ‘special sauce’, tapping into what makes you good for the role and a great fit for the organisation. (This also applies to pitching for work as a business owner.) Lisa encouraged everyone to use a ‘sales lens’ to pitch themselves to the job, amplifying best attributes and points of difference.
She also used a menu analogy; the idea is to think of the interview as a celiac person looking at a big menu: serve yourself up as the dish they can eat! (I [Lucy] particularly liked this one; probably because I’m also a Chef!)
Lydia shared her experience with needing to translate her skills, strengths and ‘Why her’ for the job from 20 years in the arts to a completely new field. That’s why she worked with Lisa (and she also worked with another fantastic career development practitioner Amanda McCue Churchill Fellow – military partner employment).
It was very helpful to witness a real-time feedback session with one of the participants who is wanting to move from a trade to helping people in some way.
Practicing your interview skills before going into a meeting is important. Lisa’s points about interview stress being physiological and driven by our deepest fear — being cut from our tribe — made so much sense. I [Claire] found learning about how to reduce stress, not ‘freeze’ or go blank (happens to me all the time!) fascinating. I need to learn some of those posture and power poses!
There was so much conversation among the group afterwards too.
If you were there, share some thoughts and any resources you think we should know about!
And do check out the links:
After the workshop, many wandered over to the Craft and Catch-up zone to make a Brave Bot for kids at Calvary hospital. These Brave Bots are programmed with bravery… after being created on a domino 3D-printed using sustainable vege-plastic (by David from Game Candy at TROVE Canberra).
Come along to the next Changemaker Career and Craft Hub event on the 20 November. The workshops with the theme ‘Sustainability, food, life’ will start at 10am. So book your tickets here on TryBooking (part of DESIGN Canberra Festival).
And the Craft and Catch-up zone is open from 10:00am-12:30pm so drop by and make a Brave Bot.
Images provided by Claire Harris, Samantha Diplock and Julia Boyd.
