Staff Development & Performance Management: Introduction
As a staff member of the School of Education, you are one of our most valuable resources. In fact, the entire Staff Development & Performance Management Team is working on your behalf to provide:
- Leadership for School-sponsored professional development initiatives.
- Guidance to the School’s Human Resources Officer as it relates to the staff review process and staff needs.
- Support for the individual development needs of School of Education staff.
- Recognition of the excellence and abilities of our staff.
This is accomplished in a variety of ways, including:
- Listening to staff and helping to address their professional needs
- Arranging workshops on topics of relevance to the SoE staff
- Providing information sharing opportunities
- Staff Brownbags
- Supervisor Training
- Recommending skill enhancement and personal effectiveness training offered through other venues at the University
- Assisting, through financial support, individual development requests
- Supporting the University of Michigan’s Staff Development Philosophy
Next: Offerings
We sometimes think of the well-adjusted person as having very few problems, while, in fact, just the opposite is true… the healthy person is a person faced with many difficulties. He has a lot of problems, many of which he has deliberately chosen with the sure knowledge that in working toward their solution, he will become more the person he would like to be. Part of the art of choosing difficulties is to select those that are indeed just manageable. If the difficulties chosen are too easy, life is boring; if they are too hard, life is defeating. The trick is to choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what he would like to become at a level of difficulty close to the edge of his competence. When one achieves this fine tuning of his life, he will know zest and joy and deep fulfillment.”
The Art of Getting into Trouble
(Hobbs, 1971, p. 164-165
