About Developmental Optimization
A Developmental Perspective
Development involves change that is going somewhere -- it involves acquiring life knowledge and life skills but it also means changing and growing yourself as you move through different stages or parts of your life and into different roles, different responsibilities different careers, and different challenges.
Mike Boyes PhD
Mike Boyes is a Developmental Psychologist studying and working with children, adolescents, emerging adults and adults of all ages as they grow and develop. Mike has expanded his experience as a developmental psychologist with over 30 years teaching, doing research and engaging with development professionals as a faculty member at the University of Calgary, Psychology Department. Throughout that time and since retiring last spring he has worked with a broad range of people and organizations engaged in one way or another with assisting people in optimizing their growth and development through developmental knowledge and a wide array of psychometric measures and tools along with solid teaching and communication skills. He has helped individuals and organizations optimize learning and development in a number of general areas.
Child and Family Development
Development throughout life is a shared journey. Mike has worked with a broad range of programs, agencies, and organizations developing supports, intervention programs and developmental support resources for infants, children, adolescents, parents and families. These have included Early Intervention programs (including Home Visitation), parenting programs, school preparation programs, cultural awareness and grounding strategies, and adolescent student programs in both mainstream and aboriginal communities. In addition to program development Mike has also worked with agencies and programs to ensure that their stories are told in ways that address evaluation needs while ensuring that the cultural and practice principles of the program, organization, or their participants are respected.
Adolescent, Youth and Emerging Adult Development
Mike has worked for many years conducting research, developing understanding, and building and assessing training and interventions to support the transitions of adolescents and emerging adults from high school to their post-secondary developmental pathways (both college/university and into the work force) and to support the development of strong, resilient personal identities. Through Developmental Optimization Ltd. and in collaboration with both the Student and Career Performance Groups, Mike develops courses, workshops and developmental reflection modules aimed at assisting adolescents and emerging adults in planning and optimizing their post-secondary developmental journeys.
Psychmetric Tools and Driver Performance
Through his partnership with the Driver Performance Group, Mike has developed psychometric assessment tools and training modules and certification strategies designed to optimize the development and the performance of young novice drivers and to assist adult and fleet drivers in deploying mindful resources to their habitual driving behavior in order to raise their levels of typical driving performance from problematic and average toward superior and master levels of risk management and on-road performance.
Life Design, Identity Development, Career Preparation, and Workplace Performance
Identity Development and Life Design are critical to post-secondary life optimization. Mike works with high school, college, university students and other post-secondary life travelers helping them take up their life building tasks. Whether it is deciding what to do after high school, planning a developmentally positive gap-year, picking a college or university, a major or building and implementing an optimal life design plan Mike’s courses, workshops and keynote addresses focus on positive, confident, sustainable personal development.
With the Workplace Performance Group, Mike has developed psychometric insight tools and packages and learning models aimed at assisting people in developing their workplace skills including leadership, professionalism, supervision and teamwork and effectively preparing employees for and developing them into supervisory roles within their workplaces and organizations.
Mike’s main goal across all of these areas is to ensure that people of all ages and at all life and career stages have what they need in the way of Psychological-research proven knowledge, skills, social insights and mindful perspectives to optimize their organizational competencies and continued development and through that to optimize their workplace and life satisfaction and success.