Education Vs. Experience: Balancing your toolkit

Episode #21 // Formal and informal education plays a critical role in any leader's development. Having said that, we need to be realistic about the role that education plays in our career paths and ensure that our experience and achievements are commensurate with our qualifications. Not all education is equal!

When I talk about education, I'm going to completely ignore the realm of specific competency certifications. So that's things like undergraduate disciplines (law, architecture, commerce etc.) and professional certifications or tickets required by tradespeople to certify their competencies.

So I start this episode talking about why education is so important, and the different types of education I’ll be referring to. I’ll then cover off:

• The 70-20-10 principle, which I’m sure you’ve heard of before but it’s a good reminder to check your percentages
• The role that education plays in your career
• Why not all MBA’s are equal and some reasons why I think it’s worth doing
• An analogy that'll help you to think through the relative value of your experience in education to work at where you need to go from here (this is one of my favourites and should make it crystal clear for you!)
• For those of you who are interested, I finish this episode by sharing an overview of the educational choices that I've made throughout my career, including why I made them, and what I think the result was
• Some of my ‘everyday’ education recommendations - an overview of the things I read and make sure I do as a discipline, to increase both my hard and soft skills
• My answer to one of our most commonly received questions, “Should I do an MBA?”

This episode should give you a really good understanding of where you’re at, and get your brain working on where you want to go and the types of education you think you’re missing in your toolkit.

Em and I created a great little quiz that should help you figure out which professional development option is best for you this year, so spend 30 seconds doing it here at www.yourceomentor.com/quiz and find out what your education path could look like this year.

To further support this, if you’ve got a program or course that you’d like your organisation to pay for, but you’re not sure how to discuss it with your boss, we created a really simple business case to help you put it together, including a full email script! You can download the free business case here at www.yourceomentor.com/businesscase

I’d love to hear if this has helped you choose an education path, and what your thoughts are on education vs. experience from your personal journey, so please send me an email to hello@yourceomentor.com with your thoughts!

Your boss wants more with less. Your team wants less, full stop. You're stuck in the middle.

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