How do I qualify?

There are a few simple criteria that apply, for a clear straightforward explanation please call Tim, Marina or Edward on 0207 234 0480.

How much is available?

The money available is match funding. So for every £1 you spend, the fund will put in £1, all the way up to £1000 (i.e. £2000 – worth of training)

What training can the grant be used for?

The training can address any aspect of Leadership or Management as long as it can be described as ‘enhancing strategic or people leadership skills with the aim of fostering business growth.’

Phoenix offers several open courses (for details click here) that would be suitable for this grant, or we can provide a tailored solution just for you. Typical topics clients are covering include:

• Creating & Communicating Vision, Values & Organisational Culture
• Setting Ground Rules & Expectations for your People
• Developing an Effective Leadership & Management Style
• Planning & Developing High Performing Teams
• Feedback & Performance Management
• Situational Leadership
  

The fund is finite, so we recommend you get in touch as soon as possible. We’d be delighted to talk you through the opportunity.

The problem with delegation is that it can be a slow process, especially in the early stages.  There are always concerns that you will actually end up much busier because you will need to spend additional time coaching and training your colleagues.  However, developing your staff is a vital part of your job which takes courage, patience and skill and in the long run, it will create great benefits for you and your organisation. For example, it will create valuable time for you to concentrate on those areas that are really business critical, it will motivate your staff and help them to take responsibility and it will also satisfy you on a personal level, seeing your staff grow and develop.

A great way to delegate appropriately is by knowing your people; once you truly know your people, it will help you to identify what to delegate and to whom. Make a list of all the things you can & cannot delegate, then identify the skills your team already has and match them against the tasks you would like to delegate. This way will also help you to create an individual development plan, knowing what skills already exist and what else needs to be learnt to enable your staff to do a specific job. Make people aware of your own standards and what is expected of them but be aware that mistakes do happen – it’s only natural and your colleagues will still need your support. Let go and teach your people to take responsibility.

You can learn much more about delegation in our Essential Management Skills open course which will give you a greater insight into how to handle any potential challenges and if you need any informal advice on this subject, please get in touch with me and I will be happy to help.

Marina Wirkner
marina@phoenix-training.co.uk

There is little doubt that to develop & design a comprehensive programme is more time consuming than when working on a one off event. However, by spending genuine quality time in accurately understanding and identifying your training requirements you will almost always guarantee higher returns for the business.

To get a clear understanding of your company’s behavioural and cultural background and the challenges you are currently facing, we recommend that the Learning consultant actually spends most of their development time on site – “embedded” if you like – so that they are almost viewed as part of your organisation. This not only helps them to see at first hand where the challenges are, but also goes a long way to achieving participant buy in.  In our experience, participants are much more likely to respond positively to the training if they feel their input is valued and they are familiar with the trainer and his or her way of working.  If you’re going to pay for development work – make sure you can see or hear what you’re getting!

Once delivery begins, any effective ongoing programme should ensure a much more sustainable learning experience. We recommend that each module is delivered every 4-6 weeks, which allows enough time to put into practice what has been learnt back at work whilst still being close enough to keep the momentum and motivation going. We also encourage participants to keep a learning diary in between modules which helps them remain focused, as well as providing great points for review (successes and failures) at the next session.

Before committing to such a major investment, it’s always worth considering how will you actually support the programme internally? One way of doing this really effectively is by conducting a Senior Management Master Class before the programme actually begins.  This will not only provide this key group with an overview of the tools & techniques used on the programme but will also provide them with some clear guidelines on what they can do before, during and after each event to help their colleagues get the most out of it.  In our experience, doing it in this way makes a massive difference.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that we’ll also support you at every stage, ensuring that you get exactly the results you were aiming for.  It takes a bit more planning, but for the right type of organisation, a management or leadership development programme can deliver the most effective learning experience.

Mike Brearley, ex – England cricket captain and now President of the Pyscho-analysts society, talking about leadership.  The actual title was “Leadership – Theory and Practice” I focused straight away on the prospect of an “almost childhood hero” talking about leading my real childhood heroes into cricketing battle against the Australians in the 1980’s.  Brearley was/is regarded as one of the most intelligent and astute cricket captains of all time,  using what are broadly termed “man management” skills to get the best out of his team of hugely talented but hugely diverse characters and personalities.  Sports like Cricket and Rugby often produce teams made  up of a wide variety of personalities and social background.  (I am sure there are other examples but those two sports stand out for me as the prime examples.)  Cricket captains also have to contend with managing players who have to go out and perform fundamentally on their own but as part of a team.  So pulling them all together is a massive challenge, as well as having to deal with the tactical aspects of the game.

My colleague and I turned up on the night, anticipating Brearley describing how he managed to get the best out of Botham, Boycott, Willis, Dilley et al and win the Ashes in amazing circumstances in 1981.  A lecture containing cricket anecdotes that could be passed on in a superior manner at our local club or even better at Lords, so we could be overheard sounding knowledgeable.  (Maybe I am just speaking for myself).  I think maybe twenty per cent were in our camp.  Obvious cricket fans, waiting for one of the most successful captains to tell us how to do it!

As we found a spare couple of seats, I remembered the whole title of the event – The Freud Memorial Lecture, Michael Brearley, Leadership – Theory and Practice.  Not Mike Brearley talks cricket!  The depth of the occasion struck me.  We were going to be listening to a genuine expert, not just in cricket, but in Psychology.  He is a psycho-analyst, not just an ex cricket captain.  Brearley spoke for about forty five minutes, mentioned cricket about five times, but mentioned Jung and Freud about fifty five times.  It wasn’t what I expected but it was extremely interesting, fascinating and challenging.  I work with managers and leaders almost every week, I consider myself to know about management and leadership, but what came out of the lecture for me was that I know very little beyond the practical issues involved.  What Brearley alerted me to was the depth of the subject and all the issues that lie behind the day to day “stuff” that revolves around management and leadership issues.   He talked widely about narcissistic leaders and the reasons for their decisions, he discussed decision making amongst managers and “self image”.  He explored “sophisticated bullying tactics” and how leaders try to cope.  He also discussed how leaders don’t simply lead, as in the dictionary definition (from the front) but position themselves all around and amongst the team. One element of the discussion focused on “born leaders” and there was some research, from Canada I believe, that examined traits in children and how they related to their future roles.  The trait most associated with children who went on to be the leaders was generosity and not what you might expect, i.e. confidence or positivity.  That would certainly be one conversation that I would bring to the training room to help managers and leaders think about what is really required to be successful.

All of these subjects were hung off the back drop of Jung and Freud’s theories and ideas, which added the depth and interest and the challenge.  I left feeling much more knowledgeable and “expert” not as I had expected being able to recount cricket stories but by being able to link leadership and management theory and practice by understanding and quoting Brearly’s expertise and knowledge.

This was no doubt partly due to the fact that we couldn’t really offer our clients anything along these lines, but more so due to my belief that this type of training was the very antithesis of everything that makes Phoenix special.

Our focus has always been on delivering practical, results based training where the emphasis is on what gets done differently once participants return to work, not on how many credits they have been awarded or what type of certificate they will receive.  In my experience, too much training is simply commissioned on the basis of what form of recognition the participants get.  Traditionally, this is meant to provide some form of motivation but if the training is not up to scratch, then no matter what they receive at the end, participant levels of engagement will still sink very quickly.

Having said all that, we have often wished for some kind of independent recognition for the quality of our delivery and content and who better to provide this than the Institute of Leadership & Management – the world’s best known accrediting body.

Through their endorsed award scheme, the ILM have provided us with the ideal solution.  Phoenix have been able to retain all the best aspects of our programmes’ content and delivery, whilst adding an assessment section that ensures the participants put into practice everything that they have learnt on the course.  In many ways, the additional assessment has really strengthened our offering and it fits perfectly with our results focussed training.  Now participants and their colleagues will see exactly how the learning has been used, as it has to be documented on a regular basis over a six week period.  A 500 word case study is also required which again will indicate the participants’ understanding of the content and how best to use it.

On successful completion of both the course and the assessment, participants are indeed awarded an ILM certificate however, for most participants this is only a subsidiary benefit.  The real prize is becoming a better manager and leader and being able to demonstrate this to their colleagues.

Phoenix currently deliver ILM Endorsed open courses in Essential Management Skills & Inspirational Leadership and are about to offer endorsed modular programmes in both Management & Leadership Skills.  Our unique approach, style of delivery and focus on results will remain as strong as ever, but with the ILM’s Endorsement our products are now even more attractive to a wide range of clients & participants across the world.

I will always believe that good training should be about improving performance and delivering results, but if you can achieve this and also provide participants with some kind of appropriate recognition then perhaps we have an ideal solution.

Written by Oliver Osmond – Sales Director

Image by Hamed Saber via Flickr

One of the first things that I was taught on becoming a leader, and a message that I have heard throughout my career as a leader and people manager, is the need to lead people from the front.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently and I believe that if you take this literally you will only find trouble.

So what does leading from the front actually mean?  Does it mean blazing a trail with everyone else following, or something different?

If your definition of leading from the front is the first one, I’d urge you to try it and see what actually happens.  If you were to really physically lead from the front, just have a think about what you’d actually see.  Your view would only be of what is in front of you.

Now, lots of people say that is a good thing, and ‘vision’ is one of the words that people often refer to when they talk about leading from the front.  However, in order to have ‘vision’ you need to be able to see the full picture and you can’t do that from the front; but you can see the full picture if you start leading from the back.

Leading from the back you can see the road ahead, but crucially you can also see the team and most importantly the individuals within it.  John Adair states that in order to be a successful leader you need to be able to ‘achieve the task’, ‘build the team’ and ‘develop the individual’.  Adair also states that you need to be able to identify which of these areas you need to focus on at any given time.

Remembering that starting to lead from the back rather than always leading from the back is a vitally important differentiation.  Sometimes you will still need to be at the front forging the way ahead or protecting your team.

“Your job as a leader is to develop people to a point where you are no longer required” is the number one Golden Rule of Leadership. It’s easy to see that being at the front all the time will minimise the opportunities for people within the team to develop and grow, and subsequently you will always be required.

So what does leading from the front really mean?

“If you want people to demonstrate a behaviour, go there first!” is another Golden Rule of Leadership that is a truer reflection of leading from the front.  Role modelling the behaviours that you need your people to demonstrate as they work to achieve the task is the right way to lead from the front.

The behaviours you demonstrate set the tone, the pace and desire of your team. If any of those are not currently there, you need to look in the mirror first.

So, if you want to really lead from the front, lead with your behaviour rather than taking the lead all the time.

Martin le Comte – Head of Learning

Our broad experience has taught us much, but today I’d like to focus on one key area – Buying Training.

Many organisations make the mistake of buying training as a reactive response to a perceived problem – i.e. arranging sales training if the figures have dropped off, or management training if staff morale is low. The problem with such reactive training is that it tends to be generic or (to coin an awful HR phrase), ‘sheep dip’ in nature, the kind of training that tackles the symptoms and not the cause. Typically this approach to training results in a short-term lift but changes nothing in the long term, effectively offering very little return on investment, and in the worst case, actually disengaging staff and hindering their development.

With that in mind here are four things to think about when arranging training:

1: What are you trying to achieve?

Before arranging any training, it is vital to have an understanding of what you want to achieve, and why. Put simply, the training must be designed to address the requirements of the participants. Sending sales people who struggle to close deals on a ‘closing skills’ course, may appear to be logical at first sight, but what if the underlying reason for their difficulty lies elsewhere – for example in poor questioning skills, or in the way they are managed? So talk to your staff, and talk to training providers, be open to new ideas and be ready to have your assumption challenged.

2: Train the right people!

You’d be amazed how often our trainers hear the phrase ‘my manager needs to go on this course.’ When thinking about training, you need to make sure that you are focusing on the right people. For example, if a sales team are underperforming, then it may mean that they need some help, but what about the sales manager? Is the team’s performance down to them? Perhaps the manager lacks the skills to motivate and support their staff effectively. If this is the case, then all the sales training in the world will not address the root cause. The same goes for middle managers, ask yourself, can any of their issues be traced upwards? What behaviours do the senior management team display, and are any of the negatives trickling down. Senior people can find it hard to admit that they’d like some support, but there’s nothing remedial about good training, personal development can only be positive.

3: Make the training relevant!

Sadly we often meet clients who have previously suffered poor training. Sometimes this is down to weak delivery, but often the cause is simpler – the training was not participant relevant. If participants cannot see how to link what they are learning back to their own roles, then at best they may find the training interesting, but not particularly useful, and at worst they may be bored and irritated. In order to be effective, training must be made relevant on a personal level. In practice this means effective pre-course consultancy – ensuring the provider understand participant requirements as well as organisational ones. By keeping group sizes small you can ensure that participants are able to fully engage with the trainer, and understand how to apply what they are learning to their workplace.

4: The importance of support.

Before embarking on any training, whether it be a one day course or a full blown programme, we’d recommend that you think very carefully about how you plan to support the training. Effective support is absolutely key to the success of any training event; without support it is almost impossible to embed learning and sustain any long term improvement in performance. Staff should come back from any training event feeling excited, motivated and eager to put new ideas and skills to the test. Invariably not everything new they try will work first time, they may meet resistance from colleagues, lack the confidence to make changes, or just struggle to transfer classroom learnt skills to the reality of the workplace. If there are no systems in place to support newly trained staff, then the vast majority of them will lapse back in to old habits, effectively rendering the training worthless. On the other hand, well supported staff will maintain momentum and continue to improve and develop. There are many ways of providing support, but in our experience there are two broad methods which prove particularly effective when combined:

Firstly, ensure that management are fully aware of what the training entailed. This may mean just reading the course agenda, arranging a debrief with the provider, with the stakeholders, or just pending time speaking with their staff about the training. Only by understanding what the training entailed can managers hope to provide valuable support. There’s nothing more damaging to training effectiveness than a manager who appears disinterested, or simply expects their staff to improve post-training, without offering to support them!

Secondly, ensure that staff take responsibility for their own development. At Phoenix we ask participants to complete a personal action plan. This doesn’t have to be anything major, just a commitment to trying out some new ideas or making a few changes on the back of the training. Ideally these plans should be shared with line managers and followed up on – if the participant has met their goals then this is an opportunity for praise (and a great indicator of success), if they are struggling then it’s an opportunity to provide further support and encourage development.

James Ashburnham, Client Manager, Phoenix Training

1. Be authentic! People may listen to you talk, but they always watch the walk too!
2. Leading from the front is a myth; effective leaders lead from the front, middle & the back, dependent on the situation & what their people actually need.
3. Wherever possible give your people all the information; if you don’t they will fill the gaps with misinformation.
4. Leadership is about doing the right thing. When you do the right thing more often than not, you will do the thing right.
5. The organisation will often provide the ‘what‘ that the team needs to achieve, but it is leaders who provide the direction on ‘how‘ the team achieves it.

Authentic Leadership

Well, here it goes my first attempt at a blog.

Don’t get me wrong I love technology, I love the internet, l love my iPod, I even love my laptop even though it’s no Mac Air Book, I’m just not very good with it, let’s just say it doesn’t come naturally!

So forgive me if I’m no professional blogger but what I will do is share with you my experiences as a learning consultant, the things I notice, the different things I pick up and the things people say that make a ‘real’ difference.

So let me start by sharing with you what I’ve been up to over the last couple of weeks.

I have been working with a client on developing and delivering a leadership programme and have been co-delivering the first three of a four modular pilot programme that will be running over the next four to five months.

The framework that we chose to use is Kouzes and Posner, underpinned by five key leadership principles:

• Model the Way
• Inspire a Shared Vision
• Challenge the Process
• Encourage the Heart
• Enable others to Act

I have to admit before I started working with them on this piece of work, Kouzes and Posner were new to me. There are so many leadership frameworks out there, sometimes its difficult to know which one to use. In my humble opinion, in essence they all have the same simple key message: effective leadership is about the people rather than the process! Simple, huh?

Well yes and no;  the theory of Kouzes and Posner and most of these leadership models and theories is easy, it’s the effective application of them that makes them challenging. How do you effectively measure for example Model the Way?

Many of these frameworks give you the ‘what’ but not, and probably most importantly, the ‘how‘. The biggest challenge when delivering leadership development or training programmes, and ironically the thing that makes the biggest impact, is communicating the ‘how’ to your participants.

How often do people in leadership roles talk about the tasks and duties that they need to carry out to meet their performance targets? The things that I commonly hear are “I need to conduct this individuals’ performance or development review” or “find time to complete their one to one”. Often it is not because they want to do it but because they have to do it to tick a box to say it has been completed. Using Kouzes and Posner’s framework how can leaders possibly ‘Encourage the Heart’ when many businesses and organisations and we as facilitators and consultants, make leadership into a process?

If leadership is about the people and not about the process how can you get that important message across in a session or to the people that you lead on a daily basis?

The answer to that question is never going to be a process. Yes, there are some great leadership tools that you can add and develop over time, but building a great toolkit of knowledge will never make you a great leader.  It would be easy to just pick the perceived great leaders from history and say “just do as they did and you’ll be great” although I’m not sure that I agree. How relevant are the great leaders from history in our everyday lives in offices, schools, colleges and factories? If we are to base our leadership skills and abilities on the greatest leaders in history, we will often find ourselves coming up short and potentially lose the will to keep developing. In any case I’ll wager that history records their achievements far more vehemently than any failures or bad experiences they may have had, Winston Churchill anyone?

Great inspirational leaders are there in our everyday lives in all of the places that I’ve just mentioned. I always ask myself what is it that these people demonstrate that makes such a difference. My best friend Elizabeth has a great word for it, the word that she uses is ‘authentic’. Great leaders are authentic, what they say and do come from both the head and the heart. They are brave and often need to make difficult decisions that others may not like, but the driver behind those decisions is simple ‘do the right thing’ rather than ‘do the thing right’. So easy to say but so difficult to do, how often have you wanted or needed to give someone some feedback about a behaviour or action and felt something stopping you? I’ll be honest I fail that challenge almost every day in some way or another.

Ever been in restaurant where the service and food has been terrible and when the waitress asks you if everything is ok, you say “lovely thank you” and even leave a tip! Authentic leadership doesn’t mean being rude it just means being genuine, if someone asks you a question, be accurate in your response, otherwise how will they get the information they really need? Here is another example that we’ve been discussing over the last couple of weeks -  how often has a manager or leader asked you how you were and before even thinking about your response you’ve said ‘fine, thanks’ even though that is far from the truth. Worse still have you ever asked the same question of someone else and been relieved when they said ‘fine’ or felt uncomfortable if they are brave enough to tell you they are not fine? Worst of all have you ever asked that same question and carried on walking  before they’ve finished responding.

Let’s really think about the questions that we ask our people and why we are asking them and be ‘authentic’ when we do.

Ask your people about what they are working on, what is gong well and what isn’t and most importantly why? Ask them about what they’ve already tried and what they need from you? What and where do they need to develop further? Ask for feedback on you and how you lead them as an individual, what do you do that works for them and what doesn’t?

Being authentic isn’t a ‘what’, it’s about ‘how’ you are and choose to be. You can’t teach someone to be ‘authentic’, how could anyone else really know who the ‘authentic’ you is? Think about how much more we’d know about the people that we lead and what they need from you if they knew that you were truly interested, just remember the teacher who had the biggest positive impact on you, I’ll bet they demonstrated real interest in you. Just think of the impact to be had on the individuals you lead when they know that sitting opposite you in their weekly or monthly one to one wasn’t just a process but something that was all about them and their development.

If you don’t do this already, and please be authentic when you ask yourself that question, just try it and see what happens. It may take some time for people to truly open up and buy in because we all get used to and comfortable with the process, but in regards to Kouzes and Posner I’m certain that they would be great demonstrations of Encourage the Heart, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to act and Model the way. And maybe with a fair wind behind you and a bit of luck and determination “Inspire a Shared Vision” too.

Try it and let me know how you get on…

Martin