Hi Suzanne and everyone,
Suzanne Sauvi wrote:
> I've been asked to develop a JOB SHADOWING program. After asking around,
> no one seems to know what it really means and in what context it should be
> used.
I guess that means YOU get to define it! :)
> Any experience or ideas on this?
I've seen it with a government agency's Executive Leadership program. The
idea of the program was most definately developmental in nature. Among
many other activities, the participants shadowed a higher level executive
for one week and wrote a "learning paper" about their experience. With
this activity, they were exposed to other areas of the agency, which was
also of stovepipish (<---technical term) nature.
An interesting note on this was that the participant got to "research"
and choose the person they wanted to shadow. In other words, since they
had to choose, they had to go out and find someone who they may not have
previously known...in a large organization it is hard to choose someone to
shadow if you don't already know them. This caused, as I like to call it,
"bonus plan" learning because the participant ended up learning more about
the organization in the process of choosing a shadowee.
Another activity in the same program was for participants to work at
another agency (in your case, another museum or part of the museum) for a
4-month period to learn more about other agencies. Combined with many
other activities, this year-long program was very successful.
It sounds like a neat project! Good luck.
Nancy Polend
nanjr@erols.com
--Nancy Polend <nanjr@erols.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>