Selamat datang and welcome to my latest blog post!

I was in Indonesia a few weeks ago and it was a most amazing experience; for a country with over 200 million people, and over 3000 islands, the pace is fast and city life is brimming with energy.  Despite this, the people I met were incredibly friendly and respectful, making me feel totally at ease.

My colleague Andrea and I were invited by Education NZ to run workshops with over 200 Indonesian high school guidance counsellors in Jakarta and Surabaya. We were given less than 6 weeks notice for this, so my planning beforehand was fuelled by adrenaline and a healthy dash of stress.

I focussed my workshops around career development and broke it up into distinct modules:

1. The steps of career planning – I introduced the counsellors to this simple framework so they could understand the different (and fluid stages) a student goes through in exploring career ideas.
2. RIASEC card tool – I developed a simple set of cards focussed on John Holland’s theory.
3. The future of work – I alluded to Lynda Gratton’s work and gave an update on future career trends.

Here were my key observations and learnings from my time in Indonesia…

• Students in Indonesia are similar to students in NZ.  Be it Gen Y or Gen Z, our global students are faced with very similar circumstances.  #getwiththetimes
• Indonesian guidance counsellors provide BOTH personal/pastoral care, and career guidance.  Typically they are the only person in the school who performs that job.  Wow.

• The Indonesian Government has recently decided to fund a provision of career information for schools.  No further details are available yet. 
• The counsellors are so passionate about helping their students.  I’m not surprised the energy felt great during the workshops.
• Formal career development training is non-existent in Indonesia.  Whilst many had a psychology or education background, they had minimal understanding of pure career theory.
• Narrative approaches are appreciated.  I spent the beginning of my workshop showing images of my family and sharing my career story.  Several reciprocated and shared theirs with the group too.
• Working with an interpreter is fun, but exhausting!  It was a real art to clip my sentences and to keep the dialogue flowing.
• On day 1 we were given gentle feedback about our dress (we were dressed a bit too informally) but received a great solution for day 2 – wearing the traditional Bakti outfits conveyed utmost respect to the counsellors.
• I ran an icebreaker whereby they had to follow a sequence of physical moves (clicking fingers, clapping etc).  They picked it up straight away and it made me wonder if Kiwis are naturally less co-ordinated… tee hee!
• The Wifi is fast.
• The counsellors love taking photos.  I think I now wear a permanent smile.

I am grateful for my time in Indonesia and learnt a lot about working in a different context.  It challenged my perceptions and also made me realise that we have much to gain from embracing cross-cultural experiences.