"I hear and I forget...I see and I remember...I do and I understand"
Confucius

Teachers Tackle Millennium Bug

On 11 Feb 2009, PE and School Sports Teachers from 3 local authorities in Wales attended their annual conference. If-development was asked to provide a workshop covering the facilitation of outdoor or adventure activities. Sticking to our beliefs that we all learn more by doing, we challenged the teachers to tackle "The Millennium Bug". This fantastic problem solving task requires teamwork, creativity and physical energy. Teachers competed against each other in 3 teams. We then facilitated a debriefing discussion, demonstrating how such a task could be used to develop learning in many different areas. However, we pushed the concept further by stopping the discussion at key points and challenged the audience to see if they had spotted a key action or behaviour by our facilitator. The feedback was very positive, with over 70% of the 54 people giving the workshop the highest possible rating on their feedback sheets. Comments such as those below gave us a warm glow inside!!
'AA was outstanding - more of this would be beneficial'
" Well done, thoroughly enjoyed the day and gained much from it "
"All deliverers were very approachable and really enthusiastic which motivated us greatly "

We have been in touch with some teachers since the day and helped them by lending them some of our other activities and even going to help them deliver one or two - just for fun.

NHS Leaders get an SDI !

With the Xmas party season over, we kicked off the new year by running a module in the leadership programme for senior managers within the NHS. The topic was "Communication". Using storytelling, sculpture and paintings, the team produced a vision for how they wanted communication to work in their organisations. We used some creativity tools to help generate ideas for HOW to implement this vision. We then explored individual responsibility for relationship awareness using the SDI diagnostic. SDI = Strengths Deployment Inventory. This tool helps individuals to understand their motivational value system - their drivers - when things are going well and when they are not going well. Once these are shared with each other, we can learn to adapt our communication to suit the drivers of our colleagues. In this way, we improve our relationship with them and reduce conflict. The output is a team profile presented in graphical format on a poster which can be pinned up in the workplace as a reminder.

For more information on the SDI please contact us or check out the Personal Strengths Publishing web site.

The third manager reaches the top of the 10m pole. The fourth will be on their way soon.

Carillion Enterprise Launch Reaches New Heights

Carillion Enterprise launched their bespoke Leadership programme with us in December 2008. Nine managers and Training Manager, Jennifer Clare, joined two of our team for an exciting two days at Hilston Park in the Monmouthshire countryside. During the event, each manager was asked to lead the candidates through one of a series of problem solving tasks. The climax of the event was a series of comfort zone challenges conducted on Hilston's high ropes course. The team said that activities at the top of the 10m pole will live long in the memory. More than just launching with a bang, this event was about building trust within the team of delegates and with the programme coaches. We will ask the CE team to come out of their comfort zone in different ways on the programme. They will need the support, guidance and feedback of their colleagues if they are to get the most out of this development opportunity. The bespoke programme includes elements which allow the managers to achieve an ILM accredited Certificate in Leadership. They are a fantastic group of people and we cannot wait to start the programme. They even turned the evening trip to the 'local' pub into an adventure!

Telemachus
consulting with
Mentor

Carillion Enterprise Mentors

In Greek mythology , Mentor was a friend of Odysseus . When Odysseus left for the Trojan War he placed Mentor in charge of his son, Telemachus. He is reputed to have said "Teach him all you know".

Carillion Enterprise will kick off their leadership programme this month. Nine managers will take part in a bespoke development programme. We recommended to CE that additional mentoring support for the candidates would improve their learning and the programme payback. CE agreed and we prepared a workshop for all prospective mentors. This lively and interactive workshop included some coaching practice and some relationship management theory using the Strength Deployment Inventory diagnostic tool. The senior managers threw their heart and soul into the workshop. We also gave them an overview of some of the concepts we will cover during the programme so that they are familiar with the terminology we will use. The second workshop is due in January 09. We are looking forward to it already.

if..

The Neuroscientist, The Frog & The Flamenco

“Challenge, energise us, give us some of the latest thinking on change and make it fun. You've got and hour and a half”.

This was the challenge laid down for us by Dipayan Roy, Head of People, Organisation and Development at Sony UK . This was made more exciting by the fact that the audience would be the HR team themselves. These are not only experts in the field of people development but people we have worked with on leadership programmes, team development workshops, coaching programmes and other events. So whatever we did had to be completely original as well as meet their very high standards. Our solution – a series of 20 minute slots that tapped into different parts of the brain. We started with a professional musician playing different pieces of classical guitar music, prompting discussion about the impact of environment on emotions and hence performance. We covered some of Katherine Benziger's work on falsification of type and PASS – told through a fairytale called “The Social Neuroscientist & The Frog”. Other activities included some practical tests to explore the link between our left and right brains which caused some hilarity. The finale was back to our musician who helped us all learn different parts of a flamenco rhythm which came together as a whole. A final discussion brought out the learning and application to their roles. Challenge met. Feedback great. Looking forward to next year (we think!)

Lead On! Mr Obeng

The whole team from if-development went along to the “Lead On 2008” conference on 13 Nov 2008. We met friends, colleagues and some rivals at this, the fourth annual conference. This time attention was focused on the problem of how leaders and managers can operate best in what are described by leading contemporary economists as ‘uncertain times '. You can find more information on the conference here. The highlight by far was the opening address by Eddie Obeng the founder of Pentacle The Virtual Business School. Check him out at the Pentacle site here.

The Chartered Management Institute, the Institute of Directors , The Chartered Institute of Marketing, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Institute of Leadership and Management and Wales Management Council, all joined forces to deliver the conference.

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Safety First! at Environment Agency Wales

If-development were recently asked to add a creative touch to the annual conference of safety representatives and managers at Environment Agency Wales. The event was held in Ludlow in October 2008 and brought representatives and managers from all over Wales , including EA Wales' Director, Chris Mills. Two of our facilitators took the team through “The Sweetie Game”, “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire Safety Rep” and some other fun activities to encourage discussion and a sense of play. Following this they showed the group of 40 people some simple creativity tools that generate 5 times as many ideas as traditional brainstorming. Working in groups, they identified hundreds of ways to improve the involvement of people in the Health and Safety drive at Environment Agency Wales. By the end of the day the team had a list of 5 key projects with allocated owners and implementation teams – and smiles on their faces. Peter Dobson, the organiser from EA Wales sent us this email: “ Thank you for a great day, everybody enjoyed it. I had some great feedback from the Director Chris Mills, and Area Manager Keith Ashcroft” and included this as an example of the feedback he had received from other delegates.

"Peter - I really quite enjoyed the day and found it a refreshing change from some events we attend. The whole day had a "vibrant" feel which I'm sure was helped by the relaxed atmosphere? I thought the speakers were good and facilitators excellent. Use them again if we can!! I hope that we can have more regular meetings to make sure that the good work is progressed on..."

For more information on our facilitated team workshops please contact us

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Link to the IPO web site