Shannon Chamber is helping students and their parents, and teachers in St Caimin’s and St Patrick’s Comprehensive School in Shannon to plan their personal strategies by offering them the opportunity to attend a ‘Kickstart Your Personal Strategy’ webinar, free of charge.
The inspiration for this offer was the hosting of a similar webinar for chamber members, given by business and personal strategist Siobhain Danaher, who is also continuous improvement manager in the Dublin Airport Authority’s shared services operation in Limerick.
Explaining the rationale for this offer, Shannon Chamber CEO Helen Downes says: “This was such an inspirational webinar that we felt we simply had to make the advice available to the younger generation who have been through such a traumatic year and who have to make big decisions concerning their futures and their goals. We also felt it would be beneficial to include parents and teachers so that collectively they have access to the same information.”
“As Ms Danaher so aptly stated, we all have the power to be whoever we want to be in life, to have whatever we want, and to do whatever we want to do but the route we take to achieving this must be intrinsically linked to our developing a personal strategy, which we need to set our direction, give us focus and add balance to our lives. Direction enables us to lead an intentional life; to create our lives as opposed to reacting to it.
The webinar will give the students an appreciation of the six steps they need to take to develop a personal strategy, starting with having a personal vision for their lives, determining the key areas of importance to them, evaluating where they are and where they want to be in these key areas, creating balance to move forward, getting serious about their life goals and carrying out periodic rave reviews of their lives.
As Ms Danaher explains: “Personal vision is like a guiding star in our lives. It involves picturing where we want to be and then devising a plan to get there. It is the same concept that business uses. By focusing on continuous improvement, we can focus on what matters and eliminate any unnecessary distractions that prevent us from attaining our goals.
“The reason we need to undertake periodic reviews of our lives is that we can celebrate success, no matter how small, understand what creates this success, what challenges or obstacles got in the way, what created those challenges and obstacles, learn from the challenges and take action to turn them into success,” she adds.
Shannon Chamber is looking forward to seeing the benefits students will derive from this webinar.
“We hope it will enable them to chart out a path that suits their individual personalities and abilities and give them the confidence to work to their strengths in whatever path their lives will take them. It’s very rewarding to be able to offer something of value to secondary level students as they are the business community of the future and also, potentially Shannon Chamber members,” Ms Downes adds.
