Express Learning Sessions

Assertiveness Essentials

Assertiveness is recognised as an invaluable communication skill in the workplace, and one that is relevant to everyone. Interaction between people attracts a variety of labels – influencing, selling, negotiating, counselling, coaching, mentoring, mediating, etc. But, whatever the label, it is underpinned by our ability to communicate clearly, honestly, openly and confidently, which is the very nature of assertiveness. This half-day rapid development workshop will help you to recognise what assertiveness is and why it matters and express yourself assertively using various tools and techniques to get maximum results.

Coaching Essentials

Coaching is the single most important method which managers can use to increase the ability and productivity of their staff. Unfortunately many managers don’t do nearly enough of it. Some avoid coaching because they are nervous of its consequences. Others simply don’t know how to go about it or do it badly. This express training programme can help solve these problems. Participants will learn to recognise the value of coaching as part of managing and develop an understanding of the key principles of coaching. This course is suitable for managers who are, or will be, coaching others and are looking to build their confidence and effectiveness in this essential skill.

Communicating in times of Change

For those employed by an organisation there is nothing worse than not knowing what is going on - especially in times of change. People both want and need to know what is happening. Otherwise, they will form their own conclusions and these are just as likely to be wrong as right. This session will be valuable for all managers and team leaders. It highlights how communication cannot simply be left to memos, emails, notice boards, house journals and videos, useful though all these may be for their own purposes. Face-to-face communication, good personal communication skills and a willingness to communicate are essential to get ideas accepted and jobs done. All the links in the communication chain must be equally strong. If some managers communicate openly and others badly or not at all, this will only feed uncertainty and confusion. This express learning session will help participants recognise the importance of effective and open communications during periods of change and learn some practical skills and techniques which can be put to work straight away.

Counselling Skills for Managers

Counselling is a vital skill for managers. When someone has a problem, it’s tempting either to ignore it or to take a prescriptive approach – to try to impose solutions rather than find the real cause of the problem and help the person find his or her way to resolve it. But a manager who can spot subordinates’ difficulties and help them before they become too serious can prevent unsatisfactory work and unnecessary loss of good people. Skilful counselling will also have positive benefits: the manager who reveals the organisation’s human face will be rewarded with enhanced motivation and increased loyalty from the team member concerned. This express learning session will help you to improve your ability to exercise this vital, but difficult, skill.

Customer Service Essentials: The Power of Behaviour

Some days we feel good, some days not so good, and this affects our behaviour – the way we interact with and are perceived by others. If our behaviour with our colleagues and customers is excellent, then there’s no problem. We behave well towards them and they reciprocate. It’s when our behaviour towards other people is less than helpful that problems can arise. We antagonise them and they antagonise us. This express learning session examines this area of human interaction and suggests some positive guidelines to ensure that all our relationships remain harmonious. It will help participants to clarify the assumptions they make and the beliefs they hold about behaviour, identify specific behaviours that help and hinder every interaction and develop an action plan to help them respond positively in future interactions.

CV Writing

The number of CV applications for each position has increased dramatically. Even if your skills and experience is a perfect match, your CV will need to stand above the competition. This workshop explores the latest styles in CV writing: what’s popular with employers, how to write a general purpose CV with impact and how to adapt a CV to a specific role. You will be given the opportunity to develop your own CV for relevant job roles; giving you the best chance of getting to the interview stage.

Decision Making Essentials

A highly interactive half-day session which uses experiential learning methods to help participants learn the essentials of decision making,-- a skill which is fundamental to achieving goals and generating results. The session highlights key elements in the decision-making process and gives teams practice at reaching consensus when faced with tricky decisions.

Delegation Essentials

Successful managers need the skills to delegate effectively – not only to help them achieve more but also to develop the full potential of their people. This express session will help you to overcome some of the common barriers that prevent delegation from happening and use it to create an empowered and motivated team. This course is suitable for those who have, or will have, the opportunity to delegate work to others and wish to increase their effectiveness in this essential skill.

Handling Demanding Callers

Dealing with customers over the phone, especially irate customers, is one of the most demanding jobs faced by anyone in an organisation. It is imperative that everyone who deals with customers over the phone understands how to effectively deal with angry customers. This training program will show participants how to effectively handle one of the most sensitive situations encountered in business – dealing with the difficult and demanding customer.

Influencing Essentials

The ability to influence people effectively and so convince them of the merit of your way of thinking is a fundamental skill that every professional should have. All managers know how hard it can be to make views heard, despite having persuasive points to make. Leadership in modern successful organisations is primarily about persuading and Influencing, and not about telling people what to do, or giving orders. Influencing takes skill, and the skills can be defined, practised and developed. This training programme explains the key techniques required to project your ideas and influence the way people think. This course is suitable and relevant for anyone whose success depends on their ability to win the agreement and cooperation of others.

Interviewee Preparation Programme

To be invited to an interview is to achieve a major objective of your job hunting campaign. At the time of the interview, sound preparation fosters a calm self-confidence which can set the scene for success. This workshop will introduce you to the various aspects of the interview process and provide you with some solid techniques to perform effectively, even in the trickiest of interviews. It will help you to conduct essential preparation before the interview, perform effectively during the interview and even compensate for a poorly skilled interviewer by handling ineffective questions.

Making Meetings Matter: Attending

We need meetings. When they work properly they make our organisations run smoother and our teams more effective. Of course when meetings go badly it’s a different story. Making meetings go well isn’t just the chair’s job. All those taking part must prepare properly, turn up on time, make a positive contribution, avoid destructive behaviour and know how to cope with it when we encounter it in other people. This express learning session will help you to identify problems within meetings you attend, recognise how to make better contributions to meetings and know how to deal effectively with destructive behaviour from others.

Management and Motivation

Managers in every organisation – no matter what the product, service or their position – has to achieve results with and through the efforts of other people. To work effectively you need to develop insight into what motivates individuals and teams to maximise their performance. With this insight you can then manage your interaction with others to ensure that they work with a sense of commitment rather than merely complying with the minimum needed to get by. This training course introduces participants to the key features of motivation in jargon-free-terms.

Managing Conflict Essentials

Conflict is a fundamental part of human relationships so we should not expect a conflict free workplace. This course is designed to give people a basic understanding of conflict and introduce the skills to be able to manage it effectively to prevent it spilling over and becoming destructive and harmful. By identifying alternative conflict styles, it helps people reframe and defuse conflict, creating more productive results. The course is suitable for line managers, team members or anyone who would like to handle conflict quickly and effectively.

Managing Stress Essentials

Research shows that employee stress levels are on the increase. These days it seems that everyone is under pressure at work. No matter what their job or wherever they are in the organisation, individuals have increased responsibility to meet targets, get results and provide excellent service to customers or clients. Add to this a large workload and the need to juggle work and home life, and it’s no surprise that all this pressure can get too much and result in stress. This course will help participants to develop an understanding of the principle issues concerning stress and prevent stress by changing their thinking when under pressure. The course is targeted at anyone who wants to prevent, reduce and manage their stress effectively.

Managing with Style

The choice of appropriate management style forms the basis of almost every management action. Whether it be communicating, interviewing, appraising, supervising, negotiating, motivating, chairing meetings and so on, success will depend a great deal upon the selection of the right style for the manager, the occasion and the people involved. This training course will stimulate your thinking about your individual style of management in various situations and the extent to which these styles are appropriate within the climate and culture of the organisation.

Minute Taking Essentials

Make minute taking a complete breeze. Using a few simple yet brilliantly effective techniques, you can be in total control, get to the heart of the meeting and have the confidence to know that you’ve got everything covered. A minute taker has a key role in ensuring meetings are productive. You want to be confident and competent in this role. Throughout the course, the trainer will take you through a step-by-step approach to producing effective minutes – giving templates to help you produce structured agendas and take notes effectively. Practical exercises will help you build confidence and put ideas into practice. This course is designed for those who need the confidence and skills to produce accurate minutes.

Performance Matters: Criticism

Encourage. Motivate. Mentor. Support. Praise. Coach. Train. Develop. These are all words which describe good modern managers’ responsibilities towards members of their teams and, because they all sound like positive, uplifting activities, there is little difficulty persuading most managers that they are, in principle at least, ‘a good thing’. ‘Criticise’, on the other hand, is a word with precisely the opposite ring to it. Nobody likes being criticised and very many managers, perhaps because of their experiences of being on the receiving end, avoid criticising their staff when they can and do it badly when they cannot. And yet, how are people to learn from their mistakes if someone does not point them out and help them to improve? It is not as if errors disappear and performance gets better by magic. On the contrary, when managers see a problem, look the other way and hope for the best, the chances are the next mistake will be bigger than the last. It is a little like ignoring the first signs of toothache. Criticism is an essential part of every manager’s job and we do those who work for us a disservice if we avoid it. Of course, once we recognise that giving constructive criticism helps people to improve, we need techniques to make sure we do it properly. This express learning session will provide these.

Performance Matters: Praise

There is one method of motivation which is powerful, effective and absolutely free. It is praise. We all like a pat on the back when we have done a good job. It makes us feel good about ourselves, about the person who has taken the trouble to recognise what we have done and about the organisation for which we work. When we give and receive praise everybody wins. So why do so many managers fail to use this simple tool? Well, some people feel embarrassed about saying ‘thank you’. Others think that the person on the receiving end will be embarrassed. Some managers believe that the only way to get respect from their teams is to act tough – the ‘praise is for softies’ school of thought. Some simply forget to give praise and others don’t know how to do it. This express learning session tackles this issue in two ways, first by stressing the importance and benefits of using praise to motivate others and second by providing those taking part with a set of simple techniques – the seven golden rules of praise – to enable them to do it properly.

Performance Matters: Underperformance

If you’re a manager, dealing with poor performance can be your most dreaded task. Learn practical techniques to help team members improve performance. At the heart of this training programme is a clear three-stage technique with each stage having a number of clear learning points all of which are easy to grasp and implement. The skills learned will not only keep managers focused on observable performance rather than attitude, but will provide a critical structure to keep defensive side-tracks from derailing the improvement process. This training workshop enables managers to take the conflict out of performance problems and turn poor performance around. This course is suitable for those who manage other people and are looking to build their confidence and effectiveness in tackling performance problems.

Presentation Essentials

We’ve all sat through presentations that have left us shell-shocked, bored or baffled. A poorly delivered presentation can leave us feeling confused, and the presenter feeling dejected. A well thought through presentation can fill the presenter with confidence that they’ve got the message across in an interesting and engaging way. This express training session looks at the fundamentals of good presentation skills: structure, slides and delivery.

Report Writing Essentials

Most people in business know their own minds and opinions and can contribute to conversations, meetings and debates without too much difficulty. Some people are highly articulate and can express themselves so that other people know exactly what they mean. When it comes to putting their thoughts in writing, however, these same people can often hit trouble. The ability to think logically and sequentially suddenly deserts them. Asking them to produce a written report can prompt a reaction which is similar to that which occurs when they’re asked to present to a large group of people. It seems a daunting task. There are a number of key principles which, if followed, can guide even a novice through from a wary beginning to a confident conclusion. This training course explains these guidelines and will help participants to produce reports of excellent quality. This course is designed for individuals who need to produce effective reports and would like an overview of the process and the skills to do so.

Selection Interviews that work: Behavioural Interviewing

An unskilled interviewer or a poorly conducted interview may achieve results which are no better than if candidates had been selected at random from a list of names. The repercussions that result from interviewing badly can be damaging to everyone: the organisation, the rest of the workforce and the new employee. But successful and effective selection interviewing is a professional skill which can be learned like any other. This express learning session will show you how to dramatically increase the reliability of selection interviews by using behavioural interviewing techniques.

Talent Management: How to retain your best people

‘People are our most important resource’. It’s trite. It’s a cliché. But it’s true. Organisations cannot succeed, or even survive, without the right people – those with the right skills, knowledge, experience and attitude. That’s why successful organisations put so much time and effort into recruitment. But attracting the right people is just the first step. You have to keep them. That means maintaining their enthusiasm for their work, challenging without overwhelming them, recognising their contribution, allowing them to develop and use their talents to the full. Do that successfully and you will stop your best people from leaving. This training programme will show you how.

Time Management Essentials

Since we all have the same amount of time available to us, our ability to manage our time is the one thing that will make a real difference. Managing time better can be a dramatic step to improve performance and work life. This express training session covers the key stages of getting organised and allows participants to immediately apply the learning using their own ‘to-do’ list. The course is suitable for any professional who wants to ‘step up’ their productivity through better use of their time.