Our Professional Development Workshops
Effective Performance Management
In order to achieve our goals in life & in business, we need to know what we want to achieve, where we are & how we are going to get there. Managing our progress & our performance en route is paramount to ensure we get there. In times of permanent white water, managing performance is ESSENTIAL to stay afloat & ensure your business emerges strong & buoyant. This practical & focused workshop is a life vest in these times, providing an in-depth understanding of performance management, what it has the potential to do for you, your staff & your business.
Course Outline
- Performance management & the Performance Management Cycle
- What does it have the potential to do?
- Benefits of managing performance – Why do it?
- What are your greatest challenges & stumbling blocks?
- How best to define “results” for your business – where are you heading, what does success look like for you & your business or organisation?
- What level of performance do you ultimately want & need as a business, & as a staff to get there?
- How best to measure performance
- Defining key competencies within your organisation
Duration
Half day option: 3.5 hours
Results Focused Performance Interviews
Being on track, staying on track, achieving milestones & often forging new territory are all great motivators for people in achieving their goals. As leaders & managers we play an integral role in motivating, inspiring & engaging our staff to not only set challenging goals but to stay on course & continually fine-tune their performance. We motivate, inspire & empower our staff to achieve results through ongoing interactive communication & through the Results Focused Performance Interview.
To stay focused, passionate & motivated to achieve results in these uncertain times, staff need clear transparent management expectations, jointly set performance goals, commitment & support to achieve these goals & practical, constructive feedback on their performance along the way. All key components of the Results Focused Performance Interview.
Course Outline
- Understanding the Performance Management Cycle & the role of the performance interview within it.
- How best to appraise & review performance
- Creating the right atmosphere & developing rapport
- Setting SMART performance objectives with ease
- Effective communication skills to empower change & progress
- Giving & receiving constructive feedback on performance
- Appreciating with praise
- Coping skills, overcoming objections
- Requesting a change in behaviour
- Having those courageous conversations relating to performance
- Dos & Don’ts of performance interviews
Duration
Half day option: 3.5 hours
Recruiting the Right Person for your Business
People are the most important asset of any business. Ensuring you recruit the right people has never been so critical to your business’s overall viability & ongoing success. Smart employers & managers know that finding the right person for the right job means the recruitment & selection process is one of the key success factors in the business & must be watertight.
Getting it right first time is key.
The aime of this interactive workshop is to outline the practicalities of recruiting & selecting the right quality staff with the least disruption to your business or organisation & at the least cost.
Course Outline
- Understanding the recruitment-selection process from woe to go
- Key steps in planning for & making an effective recruitment
- Current trends in the recruitment market
- Who am I looking for & what do I want them to do?
- The importance of & how to prepare job descriptions
- Key techniques in preparing person specifications
- Selection criteria – what are my measures?
- Selection approaches & handling applications
- Recruitment tools available
- The most effective recruitment & selection process for your organization
- Attracting the right people
- Relevant legislation, professional & ethical standards & codes of practice
- Developing systematic selection interviewing & decision-making techniques
- Establishing good working practices – to avoid discrimination
Duration
Half day option: 3.5 hours
Full day option: 7.5 hours
Effective Interviewing Skills & Techniques
This dynamic & interactive workshop will increase your confidence & effectiveness in the interview process through specific interview skills, tools & techniques to ensure you select the RIGHT person for your business.
Being in the drivers seat & knowing how to stay in the drivers seat throughout the interview is a valuable skill for all effective interviewers. Knowing the right questions to ask at the right time to gather the right information is crucial to an effective recruitment outcome. Back this up with thorough reference checking & testing & you & your business will see amazing results.
Course Outline
- The purpose of the interview - why interview?
- Types of interviews
- The role of the interviewer(s) & the interviewee
- Preparing for the interview
- During the interview - effective interviewing techniques
- Exploring the candidate’s potential
- Different types of question
- Destructive interviewing techniques – losing good people
- After the interview – assessment –decision time
- Common interview pitfalls & biases
- The power & subtlety of body language
- The art of reference checking
Duration
Half day option: 3.5 hours
Full day option: 7.5 hours
Presentation Skills
Enhance your skills & ability to communicate & educate, through the design & delivery of effective & impactful presentations. Build your confidence in delivering brilliant presentations & in engaging with your audience to ensure they understand & connect with your message. This highly interactive workshop gives you, as a presenter, the opportunity to practice your presentation skills, design & deliver a series of presentations in front of others with confidence & to build your skills & knowledge of connecting with your audience.
Course Outline:
- Designing an effective & engaging presentation
- Using visual aids including PowerPoint, flipcharts & whiteboards
- Using notes
- Knowing your material
- Connecting with your audience
- Using your voice effectively
- Body language
- Dealing with nerves
Duration
Full day option: 7.5 hours
Cross Cultural Communication in a Changing World
As our community grows & becomes more diverse, our workplaces are also changing. Communication between individuals from various cultural backgrounds has become vital to enhancing personal & professional relationships in the workplace. Cultural misunderstandings & misperceptions have a direct impact on staff performance & productivity.
This workshop is designed to meet the needs of a culturally diverse workplace & you will benefit business owners, managers & staff at all levels. The emphasis is on becoming aware of the role our cultural backgrounds play in influencing our values, perceptions, & behaviour, communication differences & developing the necessary skills to ensure clear cross-cultural communication & understanding.
Course Outline
- The value for us all taking the time to “get it right”
- The importance of effective communication for building personal & professional business relationships
- The role our culture plays in influencing our values, perceptions & behaviours
- The impact of cultural barriers & how to break these down “Differences” that create misunderstanding
- Communication skills to build mutual understanding between cultures
Duration
Half day option: 4 hours
Train the Trainer
This full-day workshop is designed for people who have an organisational role with an element of staff training or orientating responsibility. Through a series of progressive interactive techniques & practices, you can become more confident & competent at your role as a trainer.
Experience the fulfilment of creating a positive & motivating learning environment where attitudes, behaviours & abilities can be transformed. Learning is not only easier but more timely, long lasting & profound resulting in time & cost effectiveness for your organisation’s bottom line.
Course Outline
- The difference between training, coaching & mentoring
- The key principles of adult learning
- Appreciating how individual’s learn best – learning styles & training techniques that work best for each
- Assessing your workplace training needs
- Setting measurable training goals & objectives
- The steps to preparing & delivering an effective training session
- Presentation skills & training aids
- Creating a positive & effective learning experience
- Communication skills for effective learning
- Effectively deal with difficult participant behaviours.
- Effectively evaluating training
Duration
Full day option: 7.5 hours
Employment Agreements Made Easy
As an employer, you have a legal obligation under the Employment Relations Act 2000, the Holidays Act 2003 & their amendments to have signed employment agreements with all your staff.
This informative half-day workshop is designed for those at the coalface - employers new in business, new to employing staff &/or new to employment agreements. This step-by-step approach to creating employment agreements & understanding what they need to contain by law, what is advisable to include & what you may chose to include as a result of the business you are in, is written in plain English with the hands-on business owner in mind.
Course Outline
- Understanding your rights & obligations as an employer to employment agreements
- “Acting in good faith” – what this ultimately means for both you & your employees
- What needs to be in all employment agreements i.e. mandatory clauses?
- What’s a good idea to have in your employment agreements i.e. recommended clauses?
- Clauses that may be relevant & specific to your business & staff
- Tools available to make putting employment agreements together easy
Duration
Half day option: 3.5 hours
Employment Law in Plain English
As an employer, you have a legal obligation under New Zealand employment legislation to not only act in “good faith” but to be aware of & meet your obligations as an employer. This half-day workshop aims to take the jargon out of the language; say it in plain English so it is transparent, useful & non-daunting. This informative workshop is designed for those at the coalface - employers new in business, new to employing staff &/or new to employment law.
Course Outline
- Defining an employee - Who is an employee & who is not?
- Understanding your rights & obligations as an employer to current employment law
- Understanding the objectives of the current employment legislation
- Types of employee status
- Clarifying the disciplinary process including instant dismissals
- Understanding of personal grievances & the process to follow if you find yourself involved in one
- Roles of the mediation service, employment relations authority & employment court
Duration
Half day option: 3.5 hours
Employers Toolbox
Would you like to sharpen up your human resources tools within your business but not sure how? This informative half-day workshop will present small business owners with effective employment & human resource tools to help you understand what are the essential things to have in place when having staff on board.
As an employer, you need to be able to tick all you HR boxes to run your business according to latest legislation & ultimately provide security & peace of mind for yourself, your staff & your business.
Course Outline
- Recruiting & selecting the right person for your business
- Effective interview tips & techniques
- The employment agreement
- Designing a job description
- Policies & procedures – what you need your staff to know
- The induction process
- Managing performance effectively to ensure results
- Conducting a performance appraisal or interview
- Understanding the disciplinary process
Duration
Half day option: 3.5 hours
Giving & Receiving Feedback
Feedback is the cornerstone to almost every communication process. From tracking performance, to managing goals, to motivating, inspiring & engaging our staff, our ability to
give & solicit feedback is CRUCIAL. Ongoing feedback allows for a clearer understanding & further development of relationships – both personal & professional. It
also provides valuable information for ourselves & our staff to enhance self-awareness, grow & develop within our various roles. Effective feedback is the beginning of
continuous improvement for each of us.
This empowering & interactive workshop explores how to confidently & constructively give feedback in an effective manner & how to receive feedback yourself. It provides the tools & skills to effectively give & receive constructive & unambiguous feedback in the workplace in order to motivate, inspire & engage others & to further enhance their performance both personally & professionally.
Course Outline
- Defining feedback – key components of truly effective feedback
- Understanding the impact of feedback – what it has the power to do
- Principles underpinning the effective giving & receiving of feedback
- Common feelings about & obstacles to giving & receiving feedback
- How effective am I at giving & receiving feedback?
- Creating an open supportive feedback environment
- Essential communication skills for effective feedback
- Tips for giving positive feedback effectively & maximizing it’s impact
- Effectively giving feedback for improvement
- Giving & receiving feedback with peers, subordinates & superiors
- Fine-tuning our assertiveness
- Requesting a change in behaviour
Duration
Half day option: 3.5 hours
The Power of Positive Thinking
Positive thinking is a mental attitude that expects good & favourable results. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health & a successful outcome of every situation & action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds. Become aware of your mind talk & rewire into the positive with a lifetime kit of tools & resources.
Positive thinking is infectious & leads to a 'can do' attitude within an individual, a team & an organisation. The workshop allows indiviudals to consider the personal & professional consequences of negative thinking & learn tools & techniques to develop positive practices that can be achieved in the flick of a mental switch.
This invigorating & creative workshop is designed for those who seek further opportunities for personal awareness & growth & are drawn to the flow of positive energy & the potential within.
"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
Course Outline
- Awareness of our default modes of thinking
- How to identify negative thinking & behaviour habits
- Strategies & tools to rewire the minds negative to the positive default
- Thinking systems for success - planning the positive future
- Visualisation techniques to transform personal & business situations
- Goal setting & action plans to achieve positive outcomes in the workplace &/or your personal lives.
Duration
Half day option: 3.5 hours
Full day option: 7.5 hours
Keying into your Passion
This workshop will empower you to connect your passions to your goals, teach you how to utilise your passion to motivate & achieve. It is all about being in the flow, being present & having purpose no matter what the task or situation.
Every day life places many demands & expectations upon us. To be able to achieve & remain happy & fulfilled while being grounded in the present you need to put time into yourself & reconnect to your passion for life.
This invigorating & creative workshop is designed for those who seek further opportunities for personal awareness & growth & are drawn to the flow of positive energy & the potential within.
Course Outline
- Become aware of what really motivates you. Through a series of exercises & stories discover what may have become buried.
- Clarify your vision & set goals based around having more passion in your life.
- Commit to action plans on how to reach your goals with renewed motivation to achieve.
Duration
Half day option: 3.5 hours
Full day option: 7.5 hours
Putting Your Best Foot Forward
Are you reconsidering your career? Looking for that ideal job? Or has your employment situation changed to the changing economic climate? Whatever your motivation this professional workshop is packed full of valuable tips & techniques, tools & templates to present yourself in the job market with confidence, commitment & ease. Expertly delivered by Human Resource professionals to maximise your potential & opportunity in “Putting your best foot forward” in a changing & competitive market.
Course Outline
- Sharing our experiences in the job market over the years
- Trends in recruitment & selection in today’s changing market
- Creating a Career Map to know where you are heading & to keep you on track
- Getting to know yourself – Use of Myers Briggs profiling (MBTI) – an internationally renown psychometric assessment tool designed to identify your key strengths, development areas, operating style & most suited operating/working environment to ensure you put your best foot forward.
- Sourcing job opportunities
- The art of networking
- Tips to presenting yourself in 60 seconds
- Developing your “60 second pitch”
- Putting together a CV that gets you the interview
- The art of successful interviewing
- Making a lasting first impression
- The power of body language
- Types of interview questions – what are they asking?
- The most frequently asked interview questions – what the interviewer is looking for in your response.
- Tips for following up after the interview
Duration
Full day option: 8 hours (A light lunch, morning & afternoon teas is provided)
NB: MBTI to be completed online pre workshop
Understanding Change & Leading Others Through Change
Change is the new status-quo, & success at work requires agility, talent & the ability to learn from -- rather than fear – failure.
“We're in an environment that's permanent whitewater. It's not a steady -- it's not a change, steady-state change kind of environment, where you catch your breath between. It's a permanent whitewater."
Robert Gunther, Author of “Your Job Survival Guide. A Manual for Thriving on Change”
Permanent whitewater is the state of continual change we are currently experiencing which is coming at us in all directions. How to meet these changes & ride them with success are a measure of our personal, team & organisational agility. As managers, leaders, business owners & employers, it is imperative we understand change & how best to lead others through change in order to build our own agility, the agility & responsiveness of our team to change & that of the entire organisation.
Course Outline
- Understanding change & the stages of change
- Understand how we respond to change & where we are in the change cycle
- The age of permanent white water
- Defining agility in times of change
- Building organisational, team & personal agility
- Dealing with ambiguity
- Strategies to move through the stages of change
- Your role as communicator & leader of change
- Adding value to your team’s agility by leading others through change
- Navigation tools to reach a destination inline with your organisation’s vision.
Duration
Full day option: 7.5 hours
Leadership Through Change
It is often said, the only constant is change. While change is nothing new, it is fair to say we are now in a state of continual change where change is coming at us in all directions. The “Reality” – permanent whitewater. It’s the depth, the speed & the turbulence of this whitewater that is both challenging & exciting. As leaders in your business, group or organisation, it is VITAL to not only successfully stay afloat in the whitewater but to excel at riding the peaks & maximising the troughs, to thrive on being agile & responsive to the whitewater & developing this agility in your crew.
“Ships are safe in harbour, but that’s not what they are built for.”
William Shedd
This timely & powerful workshop will enhance your understanding & awareness of leadership in these changing times & instil confidence & competence at leading others through the “big stuff”.
Course Outline
- The role of a leader – past, present & future
- Appreciating & defining the “permanent whitewater”
- What more do others need from a leader in turbulent times?
- Leadership versus management
- Characteristics & attributes of an effective leader
- Key skills of a truly effective & agile leader
- The 4 key leadership styles
- Situational leadership in times of change
- Understanding our own personal leadership style & preferences
- Understanding our own personal leadership strengths & development areas
Duration
Full day option: 7.5 hours
Building strength based teams
High performing teams finetune & elevate their effectiveness by working to their maximum combined strengths. Each individual within a strengths based team knows their key strengths, key contributions to the team, what drives them & what doesn’t. Tapping into these strengths collectively is CRUCIAL for survival, sanity & success in these fast, dynamic & ever-changing times.
This powerful 1-day workshop invites leaders & their teams to discover individual strengths & explore ways to utilize these strengths effectively in the team for maximum performance results.
COURSE OUTLINE:
- Defining a team
- Understanding the concept “Strength Based Teams”
- Key elements of a high performing strengths based team
- Types of organisational teams in today’s changing environment
- Stages of team development
- 9 key roles within high performing strength based teams
- Identifying your role & natural contribution to a team using Belbin’s Team Type Inventory
- Creating an empowering team environment that identifies & works to each individual’s strengths.
- Empowering agility & responsiveness within the team
- Team decision making in changing times
- Managing team conflict
DURATION:
Full day option: 7.5 hours