Tuesday, 23rd March 2021
Speakers: Dr Stewart Desson, Lumina Learning and Lucy Standing, Brave Starts
For this, our first virtual session of 2021, the theme was career coaching. We had two different perspectives: Dr Stewart Desson, Lumina Learning, invited us to explore an individual’s Big Five Traits using a digital tool called Lumina Coach which he developed as part of the Lumina offering, specifically to help individuals take their learning and exploration beyond a workshop to be more hands-on with their own career development. Lucy Standing, from Brave Starts, assisted Stewart in the first part of the seminar to explore Lumina Coach using her own report and, in the second half of the seminar, took us on a journey through her considerable research of the career psychometric landscape. This gave a unique opportunity to look at the assumptions behind the tools, how useful they are and where the gaps exist in supporting adults to make informed career choices. A full review of this seminar will be available soon.

Dr Stewart Desson, FCIPD
CEO and Founder, Lumina Learning
Digital Coaching with Lumina Spark
Stewart is an experienced Business Psychologist, CEO and founder of Lumina Learning, and the author of the innovative Lumina Spark psychometric. He has a PhD in Business Psychology and is a Chartered Fellow with the CIPD. His PhD has shown that ‘adaptive’ and ‘maladaptive’ traits can be measured at both ends of the Big Five polarities. He created the hugely successful Lumina Spark psychometric which is used with clients across the globe. He is particularly focused on looking at how personality can help and hinder people’s application and effectiveness in terms of career development, innovation, leadership, engagement and dealing with pressure. In the first session of our seminar Stewart showed us how a digital and dynamic exploration of an individual’s Big Five traits supports an effective coaching dialogue. The theory behind measuring ‘adaptive’ and ‘maladaptive’ traits within the Lumina Spark module was explained followed by a live demonstration of the digital ‘Spark Coach’ instrument using Lucy Standing’s own Lumina Coach reports, giving plenty of opportunity for discussion.

Lucy Standing, CPsychol., AFBPS
Founder of Brave Starts
The Career Test Market and Career Changer
Lucy Standing is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS). In 2015, she was elected Vice Chair of the Association for Business Psychology (ABP). Lucy is the Founder of Brave Starts CIC, a not for profit focused on helping people in the latter stages of their career change jobs and move into roles which will help them lead fuller working lives. Prior to this, Lucy worked in the consultancy, investment banking and strategy consulting sectors. She has also owned and sold a hotel business. In our second session of the morning Lucy took us through her research into a selection of career psychometrics available online. As she identified, newspaper articles, white papers, government think tanks – not to mention books such as the 100 year life, talk about the importance of people living and working longer. As people age their values change, people want to work and they are interested in what support they can obtain from the career test market. Lucy shared her review of the ‘career test market’ from the viewpoint of a ‘career changer’ and shared thoughts, but more importantly recommendations for future test development.
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