Training
All our courses, even our accredited course are tailored to the specific requirements of the client. We offer a practical and focused approach using down to earth methods that get the job done with the minimum of fuss and maximum involvement and enjoyment. We strive to ensure that every voice is heard, and the outputs are those of the participants, not the consultants. Our approach is practical, focused, and cost-effective, leading to real and sustainable change.
Though most of our courses are half or full day participative workshops, we are able to do smaller bitesize options for some. All courses can be delivered at clients premises, external venues, in the evenings or at weekends. Some are also available in a blended learning format of small workshops and self-study workbooks and some can be delivered by individual coaching with self-study workbooks to ensure maximum benefit and minimum disruption.
We have a flexible pricing structure dependent on organisation size and location, with discounts for existing clients or those who bulk buy courses.
Here are details of a few of our most popular courses, but we have a long list of other courses we can deliver or design for you, so if you don’t see what you need here, give us a call:
Leading for Growth- Improving performance and productivity by developing from within
It is more important than ever for organisations to invest in their staff, especially the leaders, so they can compete in the global market, or provide essential services with restricted resources.
Our 4 part programme helps develop the leadership skills which will be required to meet the future needs of an organisation:
- Planting the seed (what needs to grow) – skills gap analysis
- Showering with sunshine (fertilising the minds of managers) – facilitated workshops
- Reaping the harvest (making the difference on the ground) – implementing an action plan
- Storing the crop (weighing up the result) – review and replan(t)ing
This programme can be delivered using facilitated workshops and coaching to management teams, or individual coaching for 3 to 5 specific managers.
Capitalising on chaos – A business plan for a VUCA world
Academics say we live in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, just look out of the window!
Our four-stage process can help you develop leadership capacity to:
- Make better predictions
- Define a range of responses
- Simplify strategy
- Clarify contingencies
Preparing you and your organisation for the years ahead.
This programme can be delivered using facilitated workshops and coaching to management teams, or individual coaching for 3 to 5 specific managers.
Making Decisions
We make decisions every day both in private and at work. This course looks at gathering information to generate options, types of decisions required and the use of decision making models and techniques to make valid decisions. It also looks at decision making in relation to goals which specify the quality or quantity of the desired results.
Communication Skills
Communication is essential for leading and motivating, allocating and monitoring tasks, and keeping the team together. This course explores the importance of communication at all levels of the organisation. Whether face to face or using increasingly flexible technology, it is always the sender’s responsibility to ensure that their message is presented appropriately, and to ensure that it is understood. The course looks at overcoming barriers, selecting appropriate communication methods and checking reception and understanding.
Continuous Development
We never stop learning or developing, they key is to focus that development to meet the objectives we have to or want to achieve. This course looks at the different ways you can develop yourself or your team including, training courses, coaching, mentoring and self-learning. It looks at how to decide which option works best in different situations and how to evaluate the effectiveness of development activities. Finally it looks at developing individual development action plans.
Managing Conflict
Conflict can occur in any organisation, the key is to deal with it quickly and appropriately. This course describes the stages in the development of conflict and explains the effects of conflict on individual and team performance at work. It includes recognised techniques a manager could use to minimise and resolve conflict in the workplace and how a manager could create harmony at work and engender a positive atmosphere in order to minimise the adverse effects of conflict.
Building the Team
This course explores the characteristics of effective teams and the factors which managers and supervisors need to focus on to ensure that the team functions efficiently. The course helps managers to identify how well their team is working, and to discuss and consider strategies to build on strengths and reduce the impact of weaknesses. We also look at the stages of an established model of group formation and how to maintain trust at work.
Team Resilience
With Mental Toughness training, we help people to cope with pressure and achieve peak performance. Well now for something completely different – Team Resilience: a way of applying the concepts of mental toughness to teams in transition! Whether it be through restructure, redundancies, or growth, teams are finding that they have a new set of members with some playing different roles from those that they adopted before. Mental toughness principles can help teams make that shift from the known to the unknown, and deal with baggage and resistance, especially when things need to change quickly.
This course looks at how the 4 C’s of mental toughness impact on individuals and the team as a whole and how you can use them to build a strong functioning team.
Time Management
This course explores the pressures and demands on the leader’s time from the team, the organisation, and themselves! It will help leaders to identify how their time is used, what pressures are placed upon them, how to defend themselves against time wasters, and how they can make best use of the time available to them. We also look at how to use effective time management to prioritise and achieve objectives, how to set SMART objectives, setting priorities to achieve objectives and avoiding time bandits.
Setting and Monitoring Objectives
We all have tasks or objectives to complete; the key is to do them efficiently and well. This course looks at how to set SMART objectives and use them to prioritise actions as well as the importance of planning the team’s work to achieve objectives and techniques for deciding the most appropriate individual to undertake the activity. It also looks at ways to monitor the objectives and evaluate them to assess if they have been achieved.
Delegation and Empowerment
Through delegation a leader can ensure that the right jobs get done by the right people, workload is fairly distributed, and individual strengths and areas for development are recognised and addressed. This course looks at the basics of allocating work amongst team members, and also help to avoid some of the pitfalls that new leaders sometimes find challenging.
Motivating to Perform
If you don’t know the score it is hard to stay interested in the game. By the same token, if people don’t get feedback on how they are performing it can be difficult for them to sustain the effort required to contribute effectively at work. This course covers the key principles of motivating people at work, and also looks at organisational performance management and appraisal systems.
Managing Performance
This course is for potential or new managers, supervisors, or team leaders, or others who want to refresh their knowledge of how to tackle performance or other problems in their team. The workshop addresses the difficulties of isolating and analysing individual performance problems. We cover simple ways to identify and analyse problems, creating and selecting options, and choosing practical solutions, the difference between fact and opinion, and monitoring and review techniques.
Problem Solving
This course looks at techniques for analysing and solving practical problems at work. Several models and techniques will be offered to make this easier and clarify issues. It includes the importance of gathering sufficient information to analyse and solve a problem as well as anticipating the consequences of subsequent actions.
Managing Change
The pace of change in organisations is increasing dramatically. Failure to change means failure to survive. A combination of approaches is needed; environmental analysis leading to practical and measurable improvements to process and technique; supported by measures to overcome resistance and engage the workforce. The course looks at capacity for leading change, the principles of change management, common pitfalls and how to avoid them, why change fails, phases of change and tools for leading change.
The Mentoring or Coaching Relationship
More and more people are recognising the value of mentoring or coaching in developing employees to achieve their full potential. These courses look at the nature and role of mentoring or coaching and what development outcomes can be met through them. It looks at the importance of building a mentoring or coaching relationship and how to agree outcomes. It also looks at barriers to mentoring or coaching and ways to overcome them as well as appropriate and inappropriate behaviour.
Absence Management
This course is aimed at managers and supervisors with responsibility for employees who will from time to time be absent from work. Sometimes that absence is health related, at other times it is not. It will look at causes of absence and preventative measures which can be taken to reduce absence. The course is very participative to provide a practical guide to monitoring and controlling all types of absence.
Stress Management
We cannot guarantee that this course will leave you stress free, but it may give you some extra options, fresh perspectives, and new tools for your tool-kit! It is aimed at employees who may be feeling pressure at work or elsewhere in their lives. We look at the signs and symptoms of stress, coping under pressure and responding effectively when the going gets tough. It concludes by giving delegates the opportunity to identify changes that they could make to their coping strategies over the next six months.
Instructor Training
One of a manager’s most important functions is the development and training of the team. We can help new and existing managers develop the necessary skills to train their staff. We cover all aspects of the process from identifying needs, through development of materials and delivery of instruction, presentations, and group activities, to evaluation. We can also offer a full 2 to 3 day Train the Trainer programme for those more involved in the training process to ensure consistency and quality training within your organisation.
Practical People Management
It can be difficult to balance the need to set and maintain standards of behaviour required by the organisation with the individual rights of employees. We look at difficult situations such as absence and poor performance, as well as broader principles such as rights and responsibilities, dignity at work, harassment and bullying. The course can help managers resolve performance and attendance problems, understand and apply relevant corporate policies and follow best practice in ensuring a tolerant and supportive workplace for all employees.
Polished presentations – Getting your message across
Presenting to others is one of the most challenging yet important tasks facing professionals and managers. In an increasingly competitive and fast-moving world, first impressions are more important than ever, and the ability to get your message over effectively and convincingly is essential in order to win, secure, and sustain business relationships.
In a practical and interactive session, we run through simple and practical techniques for getting your message across effectively and with just enough bells and whistles to do it right and make you stand out for all the right reasons, to clients, colleagues, employees, and investors.
Work Team Health Checks and Repair Clinics
Day by day, with all the pressures on them, work teams tend to focus on WHAT they have to do – task. But for peak team performance, they must also consider HOW they work together- process.
We can take you away to “neutral ground” or a good thinking environment to learn a little about how teams can work at peak performance, and then work out how to apply that to your team.
Depending on you needs, we can help you review your performance, create a strategy or vision, discuss and resolve tensions, plan for the future, or prepare for change – but you always leave with an action plan. We do this using team role questionnaires, behavioural analysis, discussions and group activities, even racing model cars and outdoor activities if you want.
We can also help you explores the characteristics of effective teams and the factors which managers and supervisors need to focus on to ensure that the team functions efficiently. We address the issues and problems of building and leading teams, from adding a new member to the team, through team development to team repair and restructuring.
We will look at the pros and cons of different ways of allocating tasks and responsibilities, and how different approaches lend themselves to different situations. Finally, we consider the tricky issues of motivation and reward.
