October 2007 Newsletter

Judging by the number of enquiries we’ve been getting October is set to be a busy month for us all. Many clients are planning and arranging team and company training so this month’s communication aims to deliver juicy tips and advice to help you through this busy period.

We share our strategy for how to maximize attendance at your training events and minimize the no-show’s, our team work case study will give you some invaluable insights on the importance of great teamwork and communication, we offer you the opportunity to join us on one of our free taster events where you’ll learn useful skills to help you improve your relationships with challenging individuals, and finally take a look at our top tips for building successful teams.

Phew! -

How to maximize attendance at your training events.

Find out how to minimize the frustration of a poor turnout.

It’s a situation you may be all too familiar with. You’ve booked a series of workshops with your most esteemed and trusted training providers. You know that the training to be delivered is valuable to both individuals and the company as a whole. As far as you know everyone who is eligible to attend has been told where and when, dates have been secured well enough in advance to make sure team members have ample time to free up their busy schedules and attend the workshops.

After all that … you get a low turnout. You expected 15; you end up with 5, sometimes less. Favoured excuses include “I had an important client meeting” “I’m ill” “It wasn’t in my diary’ “Aliens tampered with my blackberry...’

Clearly many of the excuses offered will be genuine but it’s still very frustrating. You are not alone. Lots of our valued customers have told us they face this problem.

So, this month we thought we’d try and help by sharing some tips on how you can maximize attendance and minimize the no shows. Some of these will be things that you are already doing but there may be one or two you haven’t tried. If you have any tips you’d like to share, do drop us a line? We could pass them on to the rest of our clients.

Participants need to see and recognize the value in the training.
Any training booked needs to be seen as relevant and of value to staff. Our clients training plans are usually very clearly aligned to business strategy and this is something we often work closely with them on (click here to find out more or to book a consultation). However, individuals, in order to embrace the training on offer, need to understand the benefit to them personally. Discuss training requirements at 1–2-1’s and appraisals and it’s important that line managers are genuinely supportive of the training plans and are understanding when time needs to be taken away from business as usual to attend.

Ask senior managers and / or your MD to endorse the training
This can be very powerful and in our experience can really get bums on seats. Ask Senior Managers or Leaders to tell team members why they should attend. A well-worded email from an MD outlining the benefits and importance of the training can give a programme gravitas and ensure a good turnout.

Think about the date
Seems obvious but often missed when things are hectic. Make sure your training event doesn’t clash with any other big corporate or industry events. On the other hand if you know the team in question has a regular meeting every month this might be a good day to arrange the session.

Report back to stakeholders
Training is an investment and stakeholders want to be able to see a valuable return on this. There are many ways of measuring value gained. Using supplier driven post course questionnaires is just one. Find something that works for you and use it to show stakeholders the results. They know that a financial sum is near impossible to derive in most situations but any end result you can show will help strengthen commitment for what you are doing.

Remember when measuring the cost of a workshop to calculate the cost per attendee including internal costs as well as external supplier costs. And a low turnout means a high cost per head. Even more reason for Senior Management to support you in getting bums on seats.

Offer a choice of dates
Where possible and where numbers make this an option offer a choice of dates staggered over a reasonable time period so participants can book onto the course which most suits them.

Ease of booking
Make it as easy as possible and where budget allows offer as many methods as possible to book a place and confirm attendance on the workshop. Whether that is booking online via the intranet, emailing or telephone booking. Offering more than one way to sign up will make it easier to fill the places.

Communicate, communicate, communicate
Tell them, then tell them again, and then remind them! Run your own internal marketing campaign, use every method available to you. Posters on the back of the toilet door, regular email reminders, sms messages, write to them, use the internal magazine if you have one, tap into the internal communications messaging process, remind them at team meetings. Don’t fall into the lonely trap of thinking they ‘should’ come. Most people are too busy to recognise a good thing when it is offered to them.

Details, details, details.
Think of the details. OK it’s pretty obvious but there is no point running your event at your Manchester office if the majority of attendees are based in Scotland, and what’s the point in running your workshop at 8am for all divisions if half the team work on the night shift? Try to make it as easy as possible for participants to attend, and work around their schedules. If you need to book hotels for your staff book rooms close to the training venue and make sure participants know where they are going, provide maps and a contact number in case the venue is hard to find. Treat them as your customers.

Follow up with ‘no shows’
You may get some interesting feedback. Maybe they didn’t see the value in the training, couldn’t find the venue or the event clashed with something more important in their diary. Whatever the reason, what you learn will prove valuable to you when you are arranging your next series of workshops.

Get participant feedback so you can improve for the next time
Ask participants to rate everything from the venue to the training provider, location to the refreshments. Acting on the feedback and responding to individual requests will really help build trust in your team and ensure future events are as slick and as professional as possible.

Ask your training provider to support your communication campaign
Why not ask your training provider to pop into the team meeting for 20 mins to give participants a taster of what’s to come? Talk to us if you would like to arrange a meeting to help you plan and deliver on internal marketing. Together we can ensure you get maximum attendance for your next training programme.

For more information contact vanessa@you-unltd.co.uk or call her on +44(0)207 407 0044.

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Teamwork training can really help improve performance

Read our casestudy with MacSteel International and find out how.

Team work is a term that tends to get thrown around a lot and consequently can lose its meaning. However, most leaders agree that good team interaction and communication remains a fundamental component of any business.

What did we do for Macsteel?

Recently our very own Archie Mundegar visited the steel trading company MacSteel International and delivered our teamwork training. MacSteel had gone through a lot of change in the previous year with a new MD, Stephen Facey, and changes to the overall set up. The teamwork training offered an opportunity to improve communication across the organisation, look at how individual behaviour can affect team play and unearth some of the real issues found in any team no matter how successful they are. 

How did we do it?
What is teamwork? – Taking stock
Building on participant’s own personal experiences we began by asking participants how they feel their team is doing now and how they would like it to be performing in the future.

Setting personal intention
As with all our workshops, we invited participants to think about their "intention" and what it is they really want to get out of the session. By encouraging personal engagement we could deliver individual benefit to attendees as personal intention ensures that participants take responsibility for their learning.

Truth or lies?
We then go on to explore how teams can work together to problem solve in a truth or lies exercise. Here, participants try to guess which out of three stories told by their fellow participants is real and who is false. This is done in small groups and always turns out to be a real eye opener.

Delivery techniques
Tasks are structured to encourage people to place themselves within their team, understand themselves and those around them, and learn how they can make an active contribution to their team working more effectively.

Understanding People
We look into how different types of people communicate and how to understand each one. Participants assess their own communication styles in different contexts and ask themselves which styles they find most difficult to deal with.

Conflict and understanding
We explore the different situations where conflict can arise in the workplace and at what stage it becomes visible. Participants are asked what type of negative behaviour promotes conflict in their experience, and are helped to make choices that render different results.

Maps of the world
Next we examine what our core perceptions are of the world around us, and whether or not this can be defined as one solid reality. By exploring how we can work with others with conflicting ‘maps’ we learn how to work better within a team.

We end the session by asking participants what has stood out for them in their learning so far, and what they want personally from this point forward.

Interaction
The emphasis is on interactive learning; getting participants to work as a team on tasks and reflect on their own experiences and their experiences of working with other team members.

Buddies
Finally we arranged peer coaching pairs. Participants partner with a "buddy" who they arranged to meet 4 weeks after the workshop. Setting up this simple support structure with a pre arranged meeting time to ask questions and swap experiences promotes action, holds individuals accountable to each other and helps to embed the learning.

If you would like to talk to us about teamwork training for your teams contact: john@you-unltd.co.uk or call him on +44(0)20 7407 0044

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Managing challenging people at work.

Join us for a free taster and learn how to "Herd Cats". Essential strategies for improving relationships with tricky personalities.

Rather than simply tell you about our great training we like to show you.

Our Herding Cats event will give you a 90 min taster of what we do every day. You'll meet some of the you:unlimited team, mingle with other training and HR practitioners who are also considering using us and discuss any specific training needs you may have.

If you haven’t worked with us before this engaging and energetic workshop will give you a taster of our training style and will also equip you with proven tried and tested techniques to help you improve communication with important and challenging individuals.

The team were fab and the training was excellent. I have come away very positive and ready to tackle those “big cats”!” Lorraine Shirley, Training Manager, OneBiIl Telecom.

Join us
Our “Herding Cats” taster session will be running in central London from 9am – 11am on Wednesday 21st November. We’d love you to join us. Spaces are limited, so if you are a Manager or HR & Training professional with responsibility for booking training contact john@you-unltd.co.uk or call him on +44(0)20 7407 0044 and we’ll book spaces for you and / or a colleague.
Meow.

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Building successful teams

– take a look at our top tips.

For all of you who are desperate to know NOW how to build up a great team in your workplace, these top tips will keep you going.

1. Place yourself. It is a common mistake when dealing with team situations to look only at the team and not at oneself. Try placing yourself in the group and take a fresh perspective on how your behaviour can affect your team.
2. Reality check. 
We all create our own map of the real world around us and naturally assume our own map is the correct one. In a team environment it is important to find out what others think instead of simply letting them know the way you see it. This results in more flexibility, greater choices and better end results … for you and for them.
3. Communicate. 
People all have different ways of communicating, and something that one person interprets one way may be completely different from another perspective. Have a think about the different ways that members of your team communicate and how you can contribute to minimising situations of misunderstanding.
4. Define Roles. 
It seems obvious but roles in the work place can often blur, causing work to be left undone in assumption that it was some one else’s responsibility. Make sure your team are sure of their exact roles and try to avoid overlaps of authority.
5. Expect.
It is important that you have clearly stated your expectations for the team’s performance and anticipated outcomes. Make sure everyone is clear on what is expected of them.
6. Spend time. 
One on one time may be difficult to prioritise in a busy work environment, but is fundamental to team member’s feeling of inclusion and motivation, which will ultimately affect their work.
7. Socialise.
Easily said but rarely done as a whole team. But don’t kid yourself. Relationships matter. Try and get your team together on social activities more than the standard once a year for the Christmas party, it will translate into a happier working environment.
8. Show appreciation. 
Make sure your team are rewarded for their efforts; even if it is just a few words of praise it makes all the difference.
9. Reflect.
Create a SWOT report - Team Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Find time to sit down with your team and asses where the SWOTs lie, then try to resolve at least one opportunity or threat. Is this really less important than one of the other items that you cover at a team meeting?
10. Be successful. 
Finally, take a moment to think about the key characteristics of your team’s success and how these can be maximised.

To find out more about team work training for your organisation contact john@you-unltd.co.uk or call +44(0)207 407 0044.

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