Training Groups in 2010

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

2009 saw the start of the our training groups – an opportunity for people to come together in order to develop personally and professionally through the medium of facilitated learning, shared experience and mutual growth. It has been an extraordinary year!

For 2010 the concept has been refined; retaining flexibility but within a more recognizable structure. We will continue to address those subjects and issues that are important to the group and each session can be supported by a goal-focused coaching session for those who want it. However, the monthly sessions will now follow a 4-month cycle with the first three months covering agreed topics with the fourth being used to review the learning from sessions 1-3 and complemented by action learning sets (please see below).

Never cast in stone, the subjects will be agreed by the group prior to each phase but in the absence of anything definitive at this stage, we would suggest the following schedule:

• Principles of Performance
• Knowing What You Want
• High Performance Relationships
• Review and Action Learning Sets*
• Persistence
• The Feel-Good Factor
• If You Think You Can – If You Think You Can’t … You’re Right
• Review and Action Learning Sets
• Effective Communication
• Getting What You Want
• Powerful Presenting
• Review and Action Sets

* So what are Action Learning sets well…

Action Learning Sets are a simple yet powerful tool for personal and professional development. They provide the opportunity to work on real problems and implement solutions – learning by doing. It’s a really powerful way for ‘people’ to learn from ‘people’.

What they give us is:

• Space for individual reflective learning
• Learning to take back to the workplace and translate into action
• Support and challenge from peers
• The chance to work smarter and find creative ways to bring about change
• A chance to test beliefs and assumptions and learn what works
• A safe environment to explore new ways of thinking and doing
• Personal, as well as professional, learning and development
• Insight into how others achieve different solutions
• A chance to progress new opportunities and develop new ideas

Knowing yourself………..

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Knowing Yourself

The last couple of years have been quite extraordinary for me.  Things have been stressful (they still are): things have changed significantly (they do that!) but the most important aspect of the whole experience is that I have had to do a lot of thinking.  I’ve been forced to consider a number of really important questions:

• What do I want (to achieve)?
• What are the things that are really important to me? … and why?
• What drives me … really?
• Why do I do what I do?

One of things that I have come to realise is that these questions are contextual – that is – they can be applied to any area of our lives.  The answers we get to each of the above questions will change depending on whether they are applied personally, (to ourselves or to our relationships) or professionally, to ourselves at work.  Exploring these questions as an individual, team or organisation can be equally beneficial.

In applying these questions to myself, I have come to understand Who I Am which has enabled me to focus on those things that I really enjoy and not worry so much about those things that detract from what I want out of life.

Practically every religious and spiritual teaching has as one of its core teachings: “Know Thyself” as it is recognised as being the root of personal fulfilment.  The significance applied to the concept of Emotional Intelligence recognises that high performance starts with Self Awareness …