Mentoring

Global Career Projects

Professionals in international education tend to be very busy these days. They work with many cultures and value systems. They work in many a “temporary initiative in a unique context undertaken to create value”. Whether called courses, training, or curriculum design, each such initiative is what the Project Management Institute (PMI) defines as a “project.”

From them, educators can gain some practical project know-how.  Once they do, many aim to leverage that know-how in dream initiatives for themselves. When they apply project know-how and deadlines to their dreams, those dreams become “global career projects” – temporary initiatives to create value for their own personal and professional lives, long term. 

What sorts of global career projects do they now favor?

  • Get a (Better) Job

  • Leverage AI Appropriately

  • Enhance Professional Network

  • Facilitate Design of Syllabi, Courses, Curricula

  • Publish Research

  • Collaborate in New Organization/Sector/Culture

Cogent Language offers mentoring on global career projects for educators. We aim to create long term value from the unique context of each individual professional.  We mentor based squarely on that context: no talking head videos, no pre-built syllabi, no cookie-cutter training.  Instead, we start where educators are and discover projects that can boost their global careers. They can then launch these projects to achieve long term career impact and get coaching from us in them. 

Vibe

For any of your global career projects, you’ll need cogent language. Cogent language is clear and persuasive. It can be created in talk, but it can not be planned in advance. Rather, it must be co-created with others, in real time. Like jazz.

And like our career projects mentoring programs- Discovery , Coaching, and Launch. These are all about you – for exploration, and design, for problem-setting and problem-solving, for your cogent language, and for youe career going forward.

We have no set play list. No trainer trying to reproduce existing knowledge – on time and on schedule. No pre-built syllabi, templates, and certificates. No boxes for you to check ,or to fit into. No routine meetings with routine outputs. Instead, in our Discovery session, we begin to co-create and propose unique career projects with you.

Busy international educators are not projects or pieces of software. And so our mentoring is not like software engineering or project management. It is more like jazz, simutaneous interpretation, Socratic dialectic, or AI vibe coding: outputs are defined and co-created in real time, by the rigor and imagination we bring to our sessions. These sessions are really all about you. So, yes – there will be surprises. In our mentoring programs, there can be plenty of them, and plenty of inspiration, plenty of outputs, and plenty of career impact going forward.

Milestones

Our mentoring is collaborative and centered flexibly on the education professional. That said, there are some useful milestones for collaboration.  In a first discovery session, we begin to explore ideals and values and to identify potential career projects. In the next few sessions, education pros typically select and confirm two or three career projects as their own. These they launch and have coaching on in subsequent sessions.   

In those sessions, most educators we mentor continuously complete a variety of milestones that they plan. They construct a key artifact, or they add a tool to their toolbox, or they establish a helpful habit. 

As an example, in a “Get a (Better) Job” career project, they may construct a Job Opening Aggregator (JOA), including an AI prompt engineered as a tool, and establish a systemic job search as a habit. This habit then continuously improves the quality of their JOA, of their opportunities to interview, of the organizations interviewing, and of the positions they ultimately obtain.  

Over time, such habits can build professional practices, practices in which an international educator becomes more productive, more comfortable, and more professional.

Outcomes

In the course of their career projects, international educators can and do build key artifacts. Some of these are products that they take away as process assets for work in current and future organizations. In the past year, the international education pros we mentor have built website designs, functional sites, AI agents, insightful customer segmentations, value propositions, dynamic walk-thru and interview role-plays, as well as winning sales pitches. 

It is true that these educators and Cogent Language often create such artifacts together. When this happens, ownership is assigned to the international education professional.

Most important, by leveraging their practices and process assets, the leducation pros that we mentor typically achieve one or more global career objectives, either during the mentoring or soon after. In the last year, these have included career pivots, new positions in training, and the successful launch of a new business. 

It is not necessary to take our word on these outputs and outcomes. See what some of our education pros (and veteran partners) are saying here. 

Invitation

Are you an ambitious international educator? Would you like a bigger picture of your career? A more global view of possibilities?  A new vibe – some jazz, some rap, or some music of the spheres? How about some deadlines for your dreams? Along with better tools and practices? And someone walking by your side, backing you up as you grow?

Ok then – let me try out for that position! I am an ambitious international educator too, with 40 years of experience in coaching. So, why not? Let’s get together for a free initial session: Career Projects Discovery. It is just a talk –  friendly, caring, and confidential. But also, deliberate, wide-ranging, global. We go over your teaching, projects, ideals, and your career so far. In exchange, I will offer advice about it all – that is, some potential “global career projects” for you. And/or some insights into those that you have already chosen. 

This Discovery session is mutual: both of us are also trying out a role in a bigger career projects program: Launch, Coaching, or Impact.

No worries! I can fail in this Discovery session audition, but you can not. In any case, you take away a preview, by an experienced coach and mentor of global projects that could really boost your career.