Training hard and soft skills combined

I’ve just come back from running a 3-day programme in partnership with some consultants from Enviros.

This is quite an unusual mix in terms of subject matter, training content, and approach. Essentially, we are delivering a programme to assist people in a regulatory role in developing their skills for better long term outcomes with those they regulate - it’s a really challenging balance they have to strike!

The way we have chosen to achieve this mix is through a variety of inputs covering hard technical skills with soft influencing perspective, all woven around a business simulation which presents 3 “case studies” taken from real world situations. This simulation is then supported with actors playing the roles of key stakeholders.

To make this work, we’ve invested a great deal in building our team:

• We all need to fully understand the strategic drivers facing the client and the complexities facing employees as they try to implement this strategy.
• We all need to understand the underpinning theory of the programme whether it falls into our field of expertise or not.
• We need to learn to flex our style of training so we present a consistent and credible face to the people on the programme.

A programme such as this presents unique challenges. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much I’ve learned from my co-presenters and the challenge of working together, and how much I’ve enjoyed it.

More importantly, we appear to be getting good results and further sign-up.

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A new graduate induction event

We’ve just run the first new graduate induction programme for PwC and are really pleased to say it gone well. These are big groups with 60+ participants each time and a further 30+ people form the business involved. Because we have created a dynamic project based “business simulation” format, it is no small feat to get this to run smoothly. It requires a lot of commitment form the client too, as they have to get stakeholders engaged and ensure they get to the right place at the right time on the day.

Back from Brasil

I’ve just returned from Brasil where I’ve been leading a trek in the mountains for people raising money for a charity. It’s been a great experience. I do it for fun really: It combines my own interest and experience in travel and the outdoors, with my experience of working with groups, and the satisfaction of introducing people to new things and learning.

Meanwhile in the office, everyone has been busy. We’ve landed some new work with existing clients and we have proposals in for my new work with both new and existing clients.

The business simulation we developed went really well, and we feel this is easily transportable to other clients and target groups and could be augmented with additional observation and feedback, and psychometrics.

Also new, and all happening while I was away, is our new 360 degree feedback tool. We now have the facility to deliver bespoke 360 degree feedback online and we ran this for a client a couple of weeks ago. The output was useful, and we’re also very please with the presentation of the material - online and in hard copy.

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