Core Skills Programmes
Everyone’s training needs differ. If you or your team are taking valuable time out to improve your skills, it’s essential you’re investing in training that will make a difference.
To help you put together a day’s training that resonates with attendees and has positive results for individual, team and business success, we’ve come up with 24 mix and match Core Skills sessions - whether you’re looking for Personal Development to improve Management and Leadership skills, Resilience and Wellbeing training or a bitesize Finance workshop.
Choose from any of our Core Skills sessions to make up the day that most meaningful for you. Each session is usually 90 minutes long, so if you want a lunchtime learning workshop, two sessions to make up a half day or four sessions for a full-day’s training, the choice is yours.
Core Skills for Leaders
Personal Development Core Skills
Resilience and Wellbeing Core Skills
Core Skills for Leaders
Mastering the Art of Effective Interviews
Attracting and hiring talent is an essential skill of any line manager. Being confident to make consistently good hiring decisions is essential, and managers have an obligation to conduct every interview in a way that values diversity and removes bias from the selection and decision-making processes.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 mins
- Groups and Teams
- Virtual or in-person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone involved with or responsibility for interviewing and hiring.
Course Outline
In this session we highlight the traps hiring managers can inadvertently fall into, including insufficient planning, asking irrelevant questions, misunderstanding the legalities around recruitment, making decisions too quickly, and evaluating candidates subjectively and inconsistently.
Learning objectives
- Understand and use a structured end-to-end process for preparing and conducting effective interviews.
- Learn how to assess based on ability using competency-based questions that allow you to objectively assess your candidates’ skills, knowledge and experience.
- The common biases and how to spot and remove them from your hiring and decision-making process.
- The importance of giving a positive impression of your organisation whenever a candidate walks through your doors.
Giving Better Feedback
If you never get feedback, how do you know whether you’re doing well or need to tweak a few things? Great feedback is an investment, and it should be seen as positive, whether it’s motivational or developmental.
This module focuses on the 'Radical Candor' framework for giving feedback, and provides you with the skills to feel more comfortable and confident when giving and receiving feedback.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Groups and Team
- Virtual or in-person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone managing teams or in a position to give feedback about performance.
Course Overview
We look in detail at the true purpose of feedback and define some golden rules, before applying them to a structured process and practising your delivery in a safe and supportive environment. You will leave with a clear plan and a commitment to delivering some real-world feedback.
Learning Objectives
- Learn the do’s and don’ts of giving and receiving feedback.
- Plan effectively for feedback conversations using the Radical Candour model.
- How to structure effective and constructive feedback using the model applied to real life scenarios and situations.
Guiding Growth: Coaching & Mentoring Essentials
Format / Timing
- 90 mins
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Line managers or team leaders responsible for the development of their team
Learning Objectives
- Understand the difference between mentoring and coaching.
- Know what coaching is and the ‘recipe’ for effective coaching.
- Learn the benefits of coaching in contrast to other development approaches.
- Establish when coaching is the most appropriate method of development.
- Develop awareness of personal strengths and opportunities to develop your coaching skills.
- Describe how to use the GROW model to conduct a coaching session.
Delegation Dynamics: Empowering Teams for Success
Delegation plays a key part in both motivation and development, giving people the opportunity to learn new skills or increase their knowledge at the same time as fulfilling an important task. Although delegation is a critical leadership tool, it is often underused because leaders frequently fear letting go, feel they don’t have the time or worry about losing control.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or In person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone managing teams or in a position to delegate.
Learning Objectives
- Recognise how delegation can benefit you and your team.
- Overcome the barriers that can sometimes stop you from delegating.
- Hold effective delegation briefing and debriefing conversations.
- Implement a process of delegation that gets the results you want.
Empower and Own: Cultivating Accountability
Accountability at work is about every person in the workforce – no matter their seniority - taking responsibility for their behaviour, decisions, and performance. Creating a thriving culture of accountability in the workplace turns average teams into high-performing ones and builds stronger trust and relationships.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone who leads or manages people or projects.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the benefits of an accountable team.
- Know how to evaluate a personal accountability mindset and what it means to you, your performance, and team.
- Establish the most commonly encountered challenges to accountability and identify strategies to overcome them.
Mastering Performance Management
This session looks at the different stages of the performance management cycle in detail, considering how managers should flex and act at each stage to support high performance. You will learn how to evaluate potential gaps between expected and actual performance, and use proven techniques to effectively address and close any gaps you identify.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone with responsibility for managing performance.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the link between effective performance management and business results.
- Learn about the different stages in the performance management cycle.
- Use a 4-step technique to assess performance and monitor progress against goals.
- Recognise when to give performance feedback and how to do so effectively.
Objective and Goal Setting Essentials
Objectives outline the exact steps that you will take to achieve your goals. They are measurable, quantifiable and precise. Objectives allow you to align with the team or organisations success, to measure your success and track progress towards your goals.
Setting clear and relevant objectives is a vital part of the leadership role. Objectives provide your team with clarity, helping them to focus and prioritise on what needs to be done and what is expected of them. Quality objectives help to measure peoples’ contribution and achievement, accurately and effectively.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone who leads or manages people or projects.
Learning Objectives
- Learn how team and individual objectives contribute to organisational goals.
- Know the importance that goals and objectives provide in connecting your team to their's and the organisation's purpose, promoting better engagement at work.
- Develop techniques to help you write SMART objectives and encourage your team to do the same.
- Learn how to conduct an objectives setting meeting with a member of your team.
Motivating Teams for Success
How do some people and teams make hard work look easy? How do some teams recover from setbacks quicker and support each other through challenging times? The answer is motivation.
Understanding the psychology behind motivation unlocks the magic formula that helps achieve individual, team and organisational goals.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone with line management responsibility for leading teams.
Learning Objectives
- Learn about the true meaning of motivation at work and explain key theoretical concepts.
- How to identify common motivators and demotivators in the workplace.
- Tools to identify the specific motivators of your individual team members.
- Learn how to create an action plan with tactics to increase motivation across your team.
Management 101: The Essentials
Aspiring managers or new to role managers will need to learn about the difference between management and leadership, gain insight into different management styles, and work through useful models that will set them on the road to success.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Suitable for aspiring managers or new to role managers.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the difference between management and leadership.
- Learn techniques to motivate, manage and lead your team and individuals to meet their objectives.
- Learn how to delegate tasks effectively.
- Recognise when to give performance feedback and how to do so effectively using a performance evaluation model.
- Develop techniques to track and assess performance and monitor progress against goals.
- Develop techniques to build an effective team with excellent communication.
Leading from Afar: Managing Remote or Virtual Teams
Covid accelerated the move from office to hybrid or remote working. The move has many advantages but ensuring there is a strong team dynamic is essential to deliver the highest level of productivity, performance, retention and employee engagement. This course supports managers to adjust their style of leadership to motivate and manage their team's performance.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone with responsibility for managing and leading remote or hybrid colleagues.
Course Outline
This session focuses on what today’s leaders need to relearn to effectively lead in a world where hybrid working has become the norm and an expectation.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the benefits and challenges of hybrid working.
- Learn communication and leadership techniques essential for hybrid workers.
- Know how to create a team culture that bonds a virtual team.
- Recognise and mitigate bias associated with hybrid working.
- Tactics that can help support team connectedness and inclusion.
- Learn how to measure and monitor performance as a remote leader.
Creating your Distinct Persona: Personal Branding Workshop
Having a clear Personal Brand defines what you want to be known for, in terms of the skills, values and qualities you bring to any team or organisation.
When people describe you, your Personal Brand will give consistency and an easily recognisable view of what value you add and where.
Your Personal Brand will help you gain clarity about what is important to you and therefore how to work towards your own goals and ambitions.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone with responsibility for manager and leading remote or hybrid colleagues.
Course Outline
This bite sized module focuses on how to develop your own personal brand. By reviewing your values, identifying your current leadership style and being aware of what’s important to you in your life and career, you will come away from the session with a clear plan for developing and realising your Personal Brand.
Learning Objectives
- Review your values and understand what is important to you in your life and career.
- Identify your current leadership style and how you adapt your style for different situations.
- Understand what you admire about different leaders and the attributes you want to be known for? Evaluate your current behaviour and skills to agree actions for change.
- Set out your goals and how your personal brand will support delivery of your milestones.
Personal Development Core Skills
Empower Your Negotiation Skills
We negotiate in our everyday life, often without realising it! Negotiations are a way of reaching an agreement about anything from a deal on a new car or holiday, when your teenager comes home late, to the terms of a new employment contract. Our training focuses on core negotiation skills, applied to different negotiation scenarios and provides tools and guidance to help you have negotiate more effectively.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone new to negotiating.
Course Outline
We focus on the key skills and practices used by skilful negotiators, using a comprehensive framework that covers the entire process. From how to prepare for a negotiation to concluding an agreement to accomplish a positive result for both sides. We will also use the skills and tools covered in the course applied to a real upcoming negotiation that you have planned, so you can apply the techniques in a safe and supportive environment.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the essential skills that skilled negotiators use.
- Clarify the difference between transactional and collaborative negotiation.
- Explain the four- step process for successful negotiations.
- Describe what a BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) is and how it is used to achieve success in a negotiation.
- Confidently conduct a negotiation through to conclusion and prepare for a real-life negotiation that you will conduct following the course.
Communicate with Purpose
Even though 89% of people believe that effective communication is extremely important, 8 out of 10 people rate their own business' communication as either average or poor.
Within a busy workplace, teams need to be able to communicate with purpose, but are often derailed because of false assumptions, lack of clarity and vague terms of reference, all of which conspire to derail effective collaboration. The Better Communication workshop focuses on getting the right messages across right, first time.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
90-minute short module or half day extended session.
Who Should Attend?
The course is suitable for anyone. It can be used for improving communication skills, learning the basics and foundations of effective communication or used as a refresher for those who consider themselves strong communicators and want to ensure they are still familiar with good practices.
Course Outline
We help individuals and teams understand the different communication styles and needs, focussing on how to have better conversations, reduce conflict and enhance collaboration.
Our Better Communication workshop ensures delegates gain an enhanced awareness of the different communication styles, situations when our communication can be misread and how best to adapt to meet others’ needs. We provide tools to help improve communication within teams whether face to face, written or virtual, helping delegates to feel confident to adapt to others needs and meet their own.
Learning Objectives
- Understand your personal communication style – using a questionnaire to identify your preferred styles and how to recognise.
- Adapt your communication style to better connect.
- Communication techniques – verbal and nonverbal communication skills
- Learn how to communicate to avoid conflict.
- For teams: Develop a communication charter – what we stand by when it comes to better team communication to support collaboration and teamwork.
Developing a Growth Mindset
Research proves that there are two main mindsets we can navigate life with: growth and fixed. Our mindset has the power to affect how we think, feel, act and react to different situations, working for or against us.
People who have a growth mindset have less stress, they stop worrying about being perfect, and believe that challenges are an opportunity to learn and grow. As a result, they focus their energy on actually learning and improving!
To be successful, to overcome challenges and thrive under pressure, you must start by believing that you can.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 mins
- On-line or in person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone interested in improving their performance.
Course Outline
In this session we will show you the tools and techniques to foster a growth mindset, with tactics to help you in the most demanding of situations.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the features and characteristics of a growth and a fixed mindset.
- Know the benefits of having a growth mindset.
- Learn techniques to switch to a growth mindset by challenging fixed and limiting beliefs.
- Acquire tools to help you to respond to challenging situations at work with a growth mindset.
Time Management Essentials
Do you make the most of your time or are you always rushing or late? Do you use to-do lists? And do you know what tasks and activities to focus on at any given time? Our modern world places higher demands on us, professionally and in our personal lives. This can lead to more deadlines, greater workload and competing priorities – which can in turn, lead us to feel overwhelmed and lacking focus.
We will provide proven tools and techniques to help you better manage your time so that you can improve both your efficiency (getting things done) and your effectiveness (getting things done right).
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 mins
- On-line or in person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone interested in improving their time management skills.
Course Outline
You will learn how to use three approaches to more effective time management:
- Planning - defining your purpose and your goals;
- Prioritising - deciding what to do and when; and
- Negotiating and Delegating - agreeing parameters with other people.
With practical exercises we will help you try and apply proven time management techniques, to help you better manage your time.
Learning Objectives
- Get clarity on your purpose and set meaningful goals to help you to achieve it.
- Prioritise your daily tasks using a structured and methodical technique.
- Manage your interruptions better to prevent them from disrupting you from your key tasks.
- Acquire tools and techniques to manage interruptions and distractions.
- Get strategies to negotiate your time commitments more effectively using a positive ‘no’ or ‘not now.
Resilience and Wellbeing Core Skills
Wellness Unlocked: How to Cultivate Wellbeing at Work
In the fast-paced world of modern business, employee wellbeing is no longer just a buzzword; it's a critical factor for success. As a manager/team leader, your role is pivotal in fostering a culture of wellness within your organization. Driving this positive change means having the tools to identify warning signs and take proactive steps towards a resilient and harmonious workplace.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Managers and team leaders interested in supporting the wellbeing of their team.
Course Outline
This 90-minute session considers the impact of wellbeing on businesses and individuals, identifying the warning signs that wellbeing may be out of balance and how to build the ingredients of ‘good work’ into your management practice. You will then explore how to help your teams build the social, physical and psychological resources they need to maintain a healthy state of body and mind.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the definition of wellbeing and the impact on organisations and individuals.
- Learn how to use a range of tools to identify wellbeing issues.
- Develop techniques to manage your team’s social, physical and psychological resources.
- Put together a plan to create the conditions for ‘good work‘ and healthy balance.
Resilience Rising: Empowering Teams for Wellbeing
Employers who invest time in wellbeing at work benefit from more productive, committed, and loyal staff, higher employee retention and lower absenteeism. There is a positive association between wellbeing, job satisfaction and an employee’s job performance.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Managers and team leaders interested in supporting the wellbeing of their team.
Course Outline
The workshop will equip you with some immediately applicable techniques for helping the people in your team to build their levels of resilience. This includes guided reflection and coaching exercises that you can use with individuals, and learning how to develop a sense of purpose and a feeling of psychological safety for the team as a whole.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the relationship between pressure and performance and the difference between stress and wellbeing.
- Know the impact of wellbeing to organisational and team performance and the importance of recovery.
- Know how to create the conditions for ‘good work‘ and balance.
- Use resilience techniques to guide others to reflect positively on adverse experiences.
- Develop a sense of purpose for your team.
- Foster psychological safety within your team
- Use coaching questions to guide people through a challenging situation.
Embracing Mindfulness: Foundations of Mindful Work
In this session we introduce the principles of mindfulness and explain how mindful working can help boost efficiency, performance and work satisfaction. We’ll combine mindfulness techniques from Eastern Philosophy with time management techniques from Western psychology. The practices we teach on this course will help delegates feel less ‘busy’ and more productive. Delegates will leave with tips and techniques for greater focus and greater satisfaction at work.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Managers, team leaders and team members interested in finding out how wellbeing and mindful working can improve their work and personal wellbeing.
Course Overview
You’ll learn what mindfulness is and how it can be applied at work. You’ll understand when you’re most productive at work, how to minimise and manage interruptions and apply simple effective techniques for goal setting, planning and prioritising tasks.
Learning Objectives
- What is mindfulness?
- Learn how to practice simple mindfulness techniques during the working day for greater focus and productivity.
- Being in a mindful state at work – how to identify your Flow moments.
- Manage interruptions for greater productivity.
- Learn how to be mindful about what you work on.
- Shape your job objectives.
- Learn The Eisenhower/Time Management Matrix.
- Identify low-value tasks using Birkinshaw and Cohen’s technique.
Embrace Your Brilliance: How to Celebrate Your Strengths
Personal strengths (or natural talents) are patterns of behaviour, thoughts and feelings that energise people and support progress towards optimal performance. In this seminar we explain how to identify your strengths, how an apparent ‘weakness’ may actually be a strength in overdrive and how strengths can be applied in new and innovative ways at work. The benefits are greater work satisfaction and higher sustainable performance.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Anyone who wants to identify and utilise their strengths for higher performance and greater satisfaction at work.
Course Outline
This course will build your confidence in how to recognise and use your strengths more effectively to deliver your personal and professional goals.
Course Contents
- What are strengths?
- How to identify your own strengths
- The difference between allowable weaknesses and limiting weaknesses
- How to spot a strength in overdrive
- How to control the controllable when your strengths go into overdrive
- Identify new and innovative ways to apply your strengths
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course delegates will be able to
- Describe what a strength and the difference between strengths and skills.
- Identify your own strengths using a profiling tool.
- Describe the concept of allowable weaknesses and limiting weaknesses.
- Identify your strengths in overdrive.
- Apply strengths in new situations at work to boost engagement and work satisfaction.
Finance Core Skills
Bitesize Finance Workshops
A full day Finance Course can feel daunting, so our bite size sessions can pick up specific finance areas to give teams the confidence and skills to navigate and understand the core elements as well as the incentive to want to learn more.
Get in TouchFormat / Timing
- 90 minutes
- Virtual or in person
Who Should Attend?
Any team or individuals who wish to improve their financial awareness and knowledge. They could also fit within a management or leadership development programme.
Course Outline
Our 90-minute sessions can cover any of the main finance topics including:
- The key financial statements and what they do
- The benefits and uses of budgets and forecasts
- Understanding and setting KPI’s
- Business Cases and financial techniques to compare performance
- Signs of distress and how to manage them
About Us
We believe strong partnerships are key to success, and we work hard to understand your growth goals to build bespoke mentoring, coaching and development packages, based on your needs.
Learn More