Who’s on your professional advisory team?

Who do you turn to for advice and guidance? How do you know if you are on the right track professionally? We all need to look at what we do from different perspectives. Finding and nurturing a team of professional advisors with differing views can ensure professional success.

In the business world it’s common to find a group of business professionals to help you stay on top of your game. But in the world of education it’s not always done.

Sure the curriculum gets updated every few years, but how do you know what’s really going on in the world outside of academia? We are preparing the next generation of employees and the future leaders of the world, but if we focus only on the curriculum, how can we be sure the end result is the correct one?

Before assembling a team of advisors, decide what you are doing. Create a mission statement for your job, a vision, and a set of goals. Your advisors are going to offer advice and help keep you on track to professional success.

It’s an informal group. You never have to bring the whole advisory team together, and they don’t even have to know that they are part of a team. As far as they know it’s just the two of you talking about what you do.

Businesses often include a long-time customer as an advisor. You could talk to former students, or parents. Talk to employers about their recent hires and see if you as an educator can help them as they help you.

Employers in your field of education can help you refine the curriculum and ensure that you are truly preparing students for future careers.

It takes a diverse group of individuals each looking at the situation from multiple perspectives.

Each of these advisors should want you and your program to succeed. Hopefully the team of advisors will benefit from the relationship as much as you do.

Well, that’s the way that I see it. Let me know what you are thinking, and stop by again soon for more of my ramblings.