How we can help you
- We can deliver a wide range of courses or workshops designed to immediately improve the skills and confidence of your staff
- We can facilitate your work groups or managment teams through periods of conflict or change
- We can design stimulating and productive training courses.
- We can support your in-house design teams by designing a full training course for them to run.
- We can observe in-house pilot sessions and turn them into fully documented trainer or delegate manuals or workbooks.
- We can help individuals with personal branding, career counselling, coaching, and counselling
Our approach
- Our courses and designs are business-focused, empowering, and productive.
- Our designs take into account the company ethos, aims and objectives, and writing style of the organisation for whom we are writing.
- Our writing style is visual, lively, and focused.
- Our training workshops are interactive and use accelerated learning techniques.
Format flexibility
We work in a variety of formats, including:
Virtual or face to face
Face to face courses can be up to three day formats
Virtual courses are usually run over a period of time in 90 minute segments
Facilitation with teams
These can be management, work groups or teams who are looking for solutions – we can facilitate their session from a neutral position and help clarify solutions.
Conventional courses
The duration of these courses depends on the topic, the required depth, and the number of delegates.
Workshops
For example, team-building events. These workshops are designed to explore and solve specific work-related issues.
Blended learning
To consolidate learning from e-learning sources.
Train the trainer
Any topic can be designed around a ‘train the trainer’ concept, enabling delegates to pass on their skills to others.
Details of some of the training sessions we run
A – Leading and managing people
A1 Stepping into management
This three-day programme gives delegates the skills, confidence and practical experience to lead and manage their teams more effectively. The course is a rich mixture of tutor input, practical team exercises, delegate self-assessments, and coaching sessions.
- Understand personal leadership disciplines, emotional maturity, self confidence, and empowerment.
- Grow self-confidence, utilising and practising their ability to solve problems, understand team dynamics, and implement team action.
- Develop capabilities to handle conflicts, behave more assertively, and apply the principles of situational leadership.
- Have practised a rigorous coaching technique, which incorporates a five-step problem solving methodology.
- Understand the key role delegates have in encouraging and developing their staff.
A2 A manager’s first 100 days
- Cascade well-defined goals, establishing ‘line of sight’ with corporate objectives.
- Know how to recognise and harness the power of hidden motivators.
- Feel more confident to delegate tasks.
- Be able to use a variety of coaching skills.
- How to recognise, and confront in a positive-way, under-performance.
A3 Coaching
- Distinguish between coaching and mentoring.
- Identify and analyse coaching needs.
- Plan and manage effective coaching sessions.
- Explore the key inter-personal skills required for effective coaching.
- How to give effective feedback – Ask don’t tell.
A4 Mentoring
- Recognise the benefits of mentoring to the individual, the line manager, the mentor and the organisation.
- Understand the skills and characteristics of an effective mentor.
- Be able to use a variety of tools and techniques to progress the mentoring relationship.
- Understand the eight stages of introducing mentoring to an organisation.
- Understand the mentoring life-cycle and how both parties contribute at different phases.
A5 Appraisals
- Understand the annual appraisal system.
- How to prepare for an appraisal – employee and appraiser.
- Agreeing meaningful objectives, especially how they will be measured.
- Feeling more confident to discuss ‘unwelcome’ feedback on performance.
- Effective questioning techniques, including encouraging the ‘quiet’ person to contribute.
A6 Mediation
- Approaches to managing and resolving conflict – the continuum.
- Understand what mediation is and when it can be effective.
- Types of mediation – facilitative vs. evaluative.
- Explore in detail the five phases of the mediation process.
- The skills of an effective mediator, including techniques for breaking deadlock.
A7 Consulting
- The eight stages of a consultancy assignment.
- Understand the importance of clear objectives before you start an assignment.
- Be able to establish a good relationship with the client, using the most appropriate consultancy style.
- Know how to diagnose the problem by fact finding and analysing data.
- Know how to generate options, make decisions, and plan.
A8 Absence Management
- Giving line managers the confidence and skills to confront frequent absentees.
- Improving interviewing skills to identify the difference between short term and chronic illnesses.
- How to coach staff to reveal, then confront non-sickness related absences. E.g. Stress, finance, marital, personality clashes etc.
- Finding the underlying cause of absence. Should they be switched to another role or function?
- Giving line managers the attitude and skill to support staff with genuine problems to return to normal attendance.
B – Organisational effectiveness
B1 Customer service
- Refresh the importance of good customer service, and the key part it plays in your continued corporate survival.
- An immediate and measurable improvement in both customer and employee satisfaction.
- The importance of paying attention to what your customers think.
- How to develop and implement meaningful measures of customer satisfaction, including customer or supplier surveys.
- Managing the ‘moments of truth’ effectively.
B2 Making effective decisions
- A step-by-step practical and rational approach to making decisions.
- Remove the ‘fog factor’ from decision making.
- Proven tools and techniques for each step of the process.
- Methods for reaching consensus.
- Techniques for formulating agreed selection criteria.
B3 Accuracy – reducing errors at work
- Understand the real costs resulting from errors at work.
- Have explored their own strengths and vulnerable points relating to working error-free.
- Be aware of their own personal error patterns so they are alert to areas where they are most likely to make a mistake.
- Have an improved awareness of the customer-supplier chains within Baillie-Gifford and how they can be strengthened.
- Have increased concentration and attention to detail.
- Have found errors or inaccuracies in their own work they were previously unaware of.
B4 Time Management
- Understand the difference between urgency and importance, and the impact it has on setting priorities and scheduling tasks.
- Explore the difference between ‘progress’ and ‘maintenance’ tasks.
- Explore a variety range of time management techniques and practices.
- Learn how to set stretching goals and realistic priorities for self and team.
- Learn how to say ‘no’ without offending people.
B5 Creative thinking
- The ability to see familiar problems from a fresh perspective.
- A variety of tools and techniques which help to unblock long-standing operational issues.
- Overcoming barriers to creative thinking.
- Finding creative solutions to familiar problems.
- Using practical, easy tools and techniques on delegates’ real issues, eg ‘six thinking hats’ approach. ‘power post-it notes’ and ‘random entry’ methods.
B6 Facilitation skills
- Understand what facilitation is, and the four stages of facilitation.
- Understand the role and responsibilities of the facilitator when overcoming barriers to change.
- Develop listening, questioning and intervening skills and strategies.
- Promoting participative and analytical discussion.
- Developing a toolbox of effective tools and techniques.
B7 Root cause analysis
- Root cause analysis.
- Scoping the incident and collecting the information.
- Interviewing and witness statements.
- Mapping the information and analysis – separating relevant from non-relevant.
- Identifying improvements and root causes
B8 Investigation skills for HR teams
- Build your confidence to manage the investigation to a satisfactory conclusion.
- Have a method for evaluating different evidence types.
- Develop your interview and questioning techniques.
- Gain skills to help witnesses recall accurate testimony.
- Clarify report presentation, layout and structure.
B9 Selling skills
- How to turn initial contacts into firm appointments.
- Being able to quickly build rapport with new clients and influence them with integrity.
- How to explore needs and present solutions.
- The difference between features and benefits.
- Handling objections effectively, and closing the sale positively.
B10 Negotiating skills
- Thorough preparation, especially researching the opponent’s position.
- Use a four-step process to manage your negotiations.
- Be able to understand and anticipate other people’s reactions.
- Refresh awareness of the importance of non-verbal signals.
- Separate the people from the issues, focus on interests not positions, and understand what’s negotiable.
C – Working together
C1 Team working
- Understand the key role you have in encouraging and developing your team.
- Have explored the key elements essential for peak team performance.
- Learn how to harness the power of underlying personal motivators.
- Become more aware of the ‘informal’ roles you adopt – the Belbin team roles.
- Feel more confident to confront unhelpful behaviour in a positive way.
C2 Emotional intelligence
- A three-option method for addressing any stressful situation in Emotional Management.
- A toolbox of personal skills, including using routines, relaxation techniques, and a stress log system.
- The tools you need to be emotionally intelligent in your workplace.
- How to manage impulses, communicate with others effectively, manage change well, solve problems, and use humour to build rapport in tense situations.
- He to have empathy, remain optimistic even in the face of adversity, and be able to educate and persuade in a sales situation, and resolve customer complaints in a customer service role.
C3 Continuous improvement
- Know how to demonstrate the importance of continuous improvement for survival.
- How to perform a business skills audit of overall business operation, to broaden individual skills and enhance overall team performance.
- To show that creativity and fun can exist in a productive working situation.
- How to measure performance in areas hitherto considered incapable of being measured.
- Become an effective facilitator, using a step by step approach which can be applied in any industry or profession.
Mending a broken team
C4 Dealing with conflict
- Recognise that conflict is going to happen and deal with it when it arises – preferably sooner rather than later.
- Handling conflict in a positive and motivational manner, gaining you respect and support.
- Recognising that conflict is usually a symptom of deeper emotions – so search for the underlying causes.
- Practical steps to resolve conflict.
C5 Chairing or holding effective meetings
- More for less. Fewer meetings, shorter durations, and better outcomes.
- Become an effective chairperson – better preparation, managing the variety of inputs, to achieve focused and timely decisions.
- Enhancing personal skills – asking the right questions, encouraging others, and working through difficult conflicts.
- Using modern technology to achieve the best results.
C6 Networking
- Greater realisation of the value of networking to you and your business.
- Ability to enter a room of strangers confidently and open a conversation.
- Understanding of the factors which can dramatically improve your success at networking.
- Ability to give a concise, focused, one-minute statement of what you can offer.
- Develop the key interpersonal skills involved, and know how to build an effective network.
- Feel confident to ask your way to success.
C7 Assertiveness
- Rights and responsibilities of assertive behaviour.
- Practice using skills and processes which develop assertiveness.
- Explore a four step process for taking control of your life.
- The OK corral.
- Assertiveness styles questionnaire.
One to one sessions that we offer
Practical personal development
Life coaching
Life coaching takes you on a journey of self-discovery that will transform the way you live your life. Covering every aspect of your life, it’s an exploration into previously untapped resources deep inside you that will enable you move forward or change direction with confidence.
Goal setting
Many people allow life to overtake them and ‘go with the flow’. However if the flow is not taking you in the direction you want to go then goal setting can help plan and achieve the future you want. I use a number of techniques including drawing and creative imagery. The results, if you really want it, can totally change your life.
Career counselling
My sessions range from ‘I have no idea what I want to do but I know what I don’t want to do’ to ‘I know what I want to do but don’t know how to get there’. Sessions cover whatever you want them to, from how to find the job for you; CV writing; job search methods and interview skills.
Counselling
NHS Definition
“A talking therapy that involves a trained therapist listening to you and helping you find ways to deal with emotional issues.”
There are therefore a number of aspects to counselling. For example, it is important that the process is about helping you to find ways to deal with your problems, rather than giving advice or telling you what to do.
I work with individuals who are experiencing personal difficulties, to help them overcome their problems and to make positive changes to their lives using a variety of talk therapies.
The nature of problems I encountered varies and could include: stress; anxiety; the need to manage harmful emotions and behaviours, or difficulties with coping with traumatic experience and events. I work with people wanting to leave abusive relationships and coercive control and release traumas from their past.
Releasing destructive relationships
I use a technique for breaking the emotional connection to negative, harmful or inhibiting relationships using visualisation and NLP. I have been successful in facilitate life changing experiences for many clients. With this technique I don’t need to know the details of the relationships you want to release, which can help some clients feel more relaxed, as they may not want to disclose any specifics relating to their situation.
Colour Therapy
Used in conjunction with other therapies to help with emotional healing. Colour has an impact on our life, emotions and feelings of empowerment. I use colour in visualisation; changing colours to help change the state of a work or home environment; suggest the colours of food which help mood and healing, and the colours of clothing to make you feel more positive or influence in work situations.