COURSES FOR INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS

4a. TEAM BUILDING FOR SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS

This highly interactive course introduces participants to the core principles of team building and team work including effective communication skills, problem solving skills, the value of cooperation in teams and many others. Team Building course is both entertaining and educational and takes advantage of modern efficient teaching methods to maximise knowledge transfer.  

“A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skill of the others.”

Norman S. Hidle 

Course Description:

Great products and services are made and delivered by great teams. Working in a successful and happy team is extremely satisfying. The cooperative atmosphere, the ease of achieving big results and the sense of significance of belonging to a successful team is very appealing. Working as part of such optimal teams is the dream of any individual and organisation. 

This course focuses on transforming a group of people to a team of motivated individuals who work smoothly towards a common goal. 

In Team Building course delegates will learn about:

• Core qualities of a team and the secret to its efficiency
• Belbin Roles, their effect on maximising efficiency and conflict resolution
• Structural components of a team and their part in team’s success
• Effect of time and maturity on team leadership
• Team life-stages and how to manage each stage
• Collective problem solving, differences between cooperative and competitive problem solving

• Network Analysis, recognising and maximising the effect of networks
• Feedback process and praising techniques
• Coaching methods including peer-to-peer and management coaching
• Emotional intelligence and its effect on team’s efficiency and success
• Enhanced communication skills with emphasis on non-verbal communication and body language
• Team bonding techniques to increase trust and professionalism within teams

By the end of this course, delegates will learn how to communicate with each other to get better results, how to think beyond the little details and think of the main objective, how to support each other using emotional skills and coaching skills to provide feedback and increase trust and reliability throughout the team.

4b. Stress Less – Stress Management Course

Stress is a natural response that your body displays when you face an imminent threat. This is the so-called fight or flight response.

This is why, when you are stressed, you experience a number of symptoms, including a faster heartbeat, higher blood pressure, a feeling of having a knot in your stomach, and more. These changes exist so that you are better prepared to either run away quickly from a threat or to fight against it.

However, when the stress response is continuous, your body never has a chance to relax and recover. This leads to a state of chronic stress, which is extremely bad for your overall health (both physical and mental).

Our modern lifestyle is particularly conducive to the development of chronic stress because we tend to struggle in dealing with competing demands for our time and attention.

As a result, we never let go of worries and we might start worrying too much about things that happened in the past or may happen in the future. This can lead to a loss of perspective and stress and anxiety dominating our lives.

Finding ways to manage, reduce and relieve stress is, therefore important to keep chronic stress at bay.

Chronic stress can lead to (or exacerbate) serious health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune syndromes, depression, anxiety disorders, and more.

This is why being able to manage and reduce stress is so important for your health.

In addition, stress management helps you improve your relationships with others (as you will be more positive and less likely to want to escalate conflict) and it can benefit your career too.

In the workplace, stress management is important both for the individual members of staff and for an organization as a whole.

For you as an individual, being able to cope with stress at work will make you more productive and increase your chances of success and job satisfaction.

For a company, helping your employees to experience lower stress levels and deal with stress, will mean:

• Happier, more motivated, and more committed employees
• Higher productivity
• Better customer service and satisfaction
• Higher staff retention levels
• Fewer accidents and mistakes
• Lower absenteeism levels
• Staff working better in teams
• Better conflict management and resolution

The aim of this training course is to help participants deal with and manage stress, by using strategies to either reduce the causes of stress or relieve stress when it cannot be avoided.

At the end of the course, your participants should be able to:

✔ Discover what stress is, including its symptoms and how it can affect them.

✔  Identify the causes of stress.

✔ Use stress management strategies.

✔ Identify the causes of and manage stress in the workplace.

✔ Develop a stress management plan and make stress management a habit.

Individuals who will benefit from attending this type of workshop include:

Employees, at any level, needing to develop strategies for managing stress in the workplace.

Leaders and team managers who struggle to cope with a stressful job role and/or who need to know more about stress and strategies to deal with it, both for their own and their team members’ benefit.

Any individual who would like to manage and relieve stress, to be happier, and lead a more satisfying life.

4c. Introduction to Mindfulness

What Are the Benefits of Mindfulness Training?

Mindfulness is a mental state that is aimed at living the present moment. It involves a variety of techniques to achieve this state, including meditation.

There have been numerous academic studies highlighting the benefits of mindfulness. By helping us to live in the moment, mindfulness is said to improve:

• Mental health
• Physical health
• General well-being
• Resilience
• Well-being in the workplace (thus improving communication, reducing stress and reducing turnover and burnout)

Therefore, an ‘Introduction to Mindfulness’ training session can be very useful for a variety of people. It is suitable for corporate staff, academics, students, self-employed people and any individual who would like to improve their quality of life.

Introduction to Mindfulness is a relaxed and fun course for participants but is one also that participants usually find rewarding. Quite often participants inquire about further training options, following this course.

At the end of the course, participants should be able to:

✔  Discuss the concept of mindfulness and how this can be used to improve how we live.

✔  Apply techniques to de-stress and return to simple values that matter.

✔  Put certain mindfulness techniques into practice.

✔  Act in such ways that will help them to be better at dealing with others.

✔  Improve all aspects of one’s life including at work, family time, and leisure time.

✔  Be more focused and appreciate the simple things in life.

Topics That Will Be Covered Include:

What is Mindfulness?

• Explanations of what mindfulness involves (including focus, appreciation of the present moment, detachment
• self-acceptance, and compassion)
• Example activities to highlight how mindfulness changes perception
• Basic attention-focusing exercises
• Mindful attitudes and thoughts

What Is Mindfulness Useful for and How Do You Practice It?

• Why mindfulness is important and how it can change your life
• Breathing and body scan activities
• Using mindfulness to manage stress
• Why mindfulness can help overcome avoidance and procrastination
• Improve organizational skills using mindfulness principles
• Increasing appreciation
• Letting go of negativity
• Improve relations with others
• The raisin exercise and other mindfulness activities

Planning Forward

• Using a mindfulness questionnaire to assess how mindfulness can be useful for you
• Mindfulness tips for everyday life
• Developing your own mindfulness plan

4d. Managing A Multi-Generational Workforce

The aim of these training course materials is to help participants develop intergenerational inclusion at work; understand the benefits of generational diversity in the workplace and manage, motivate and engage different generations in the workplace.

Why Is Generational Diversity Important?

Diversity and inclusion is an area in which companies are becoming more and more interested. Diversity includes age and generational diversity, since today, more than ever, a wide range of generations who work together.

So, there is likely to be an increasing demand to teach leaders strategies for managing a multigenerational workforce.

Caring about generational diversity at work is important for various reasons.

• Catering for the current workforce: People are retiring later than ever, due to the average population living longer and keeping healthier later in life than in the past. As a result, some people work well into their 70s and 80s and work side by side with people from different generations (up to 5 generations can be working together).
• Productivity and staff engagement: As different generations work together, this can lead to friction due to misunderstandings and different preferences in terms of things such as communication styles. Thus, it is important to make sure that people from different ages can work together well and that everyone feels included, to ensure good productivity.
• Learning opportunities and mentoring: Having different generations that work together in harmony can also lead to more learning opportunities as people with a variety of skills and experience levels learn from each other.
• Creativity, innovation, and problem-solving: people from different age ranges provide different perspectives, thus increasing the variety of ideas that they can generate when working together.
• More targeted marketing and better customer experience: having diversity and inclusion in the workplace, including generational diversity, helps to better understand a wider range of customers as your workforce reflects the variety of your customers.

Individuals who will benefit from attending this type of workshop include:

• Team leaders who manage a multigenerational team.
• High-level managers to understand the strategic importance of managing generational differences in the workplace.
• Any manager or leader who needs to become aware of the characteristics of different generations in the workplace.
• Entrepreneurs who run their own companies and deal with staff and customers from different generations.
• As the training course materials are editable, you can also adapt them to teach team members the benefits of a multi-generational workforce and how to get along with colleagues from different generations.

Topics That Will Be Covered Include:

Characteristics of Different Generations and the Benefits of a Multigenerational Workforce

• What we mean by generations
• The five generations in the workplace (Traditionalists or Silent Generation; Baby Boomers; Generation X; Millennials and Generation Z)
• The characteristics of each generation and the historic events that influenced them and their values
• The benefits of a multi-generational workforce

Possible Areas of Friction Between Generations

• Characteristics of different generations in the workplace in terms of preferred leadership style; job loyalty and retention; work-life balance; motivation; communication styles and channels; giving and receiving feedback; preferred working hours and decision-making processes.
• Dispelling Myths about generations
• Assumptions and Areas of Friction
• Stereotypes and Misconceptions

Resolving Differences Between Generations

• Generational strengths and what each generation can learn from the others
• The things that all generations have in common, in terms of values and needs in the workplace
• What every generation appreciates in a leader
• How to manage the generation gap in the workplace
• Tips for managing a multigenerational workforce
• Activities about intergenerational communication and recruitment and retention of a multigenerational workforce
• Action plan for managing generational differences in the workplace

At the end of the course, your participants should be able to:

✔  Identify the characteristics of different generations.

✔  Analyze the possible areas of friction between generations at work.

✔ Develop strategies to resolve the differences between generations and foster cooperation at work.

4e. Rewrite Your Story: Life Planning & Goal Setting

What Are the Benefits of Learning How to Set Goals and Plan Your Future?

Many of us feel overwhelmed at some point in life and in need of re-focusing, in order to get our life back on track and pursue what we really want.

It is very easy to let your life pass by and never find the time or mental clarity to really assess what is important to you.

Thus, participating in this course helps participants understand how to plan for their future, it can be very useful for them. This course gives participants a foundation and guidance on how to set goals and take charge of their life.

Who Is Our Rewrite Your Story Life Planning and Goal Setting Course for?

• People who are looking to reassess their priorities in life and are maybe looking to change their career path.
• Individuals who are thinking of becoming self-employed but who need to manage their time and resources better.
• Employees, at every level, in need of finding a better work-life balance.

For employees, it can help them to better prioritize at work and to also achieve a better work-life balance. After all, a happier workforce, with a better work-life balance, tends to be more productive and stay with their employer for longer.

Topics That Will Be Covered to Include:

Analyzing What Drives You in Life

• Dreams brainstorming.
• Finding out what makes you happy.
• Thinking about what, in life, matters the most to you.

Narrowing Your Focus

• The wheel of life. How to create a balanced life plan which takes into consideration different aspects of life, such as health, family, personal development, career, and more.
• Creating a vision statement for each aspect of your life (what your ideal life would look like).
• Narrowing down and prioritizing your dreams for better focus.

Goals Setting

• Setting SMART and SMARTER goals.
• SWOT analysis.
• Setting different types of goals.

Devising a Plan

• Develop a clear focused plan.
• Breaking down goals into tasks.
• Actioning tasks as part of your daily activities.

Action and Motivation

• Overcoming procrastination.
• Understanding what helps you keep focused.

Checking, Reviewing, and Updating Your Plans

• When to have regular reviews.
• Difference between daily, weekly, and quarterly or yearly reviews.
• What you need to review.
• Learning from your successes and failures and adapting your plans accordingly.

At the end of the course, your participants should be able to:

✔  Analyze what drives and motivates them in life.

✔  Focus on areas of their life that they want to develop.

✔  Set powerful goals.

✔  Devise a plan to achieve their goals.

✔  Identify strategies to put their plan into action.

✔ Monitor, review, and revise their plan.