Public service – face-to-face workshops

In an ideal world all our sessions would be delivered as full-day face-to-face workshops, allowing plenty of time for understanding new models, practising skills and techniques, benefiting from peer feedback, building relationships with colleagues, having time to raise specific issues with the expert trainer.

But we can’t always do that.

Sometimes there just isn’t the time or the budget.

So we’ve reviewed our most popular programmes for public service clients and come up with both half- and full-day versions. (Although with some obvious exceptions – ‘Management in a day!’ is still a full-day session and ‘Making the most of your time’ is only a half-day).

Bite-sized classroom sessions are also available, usually based on the outlines for our uniquely flexible webinars – the ‘flexinars’.

Full-day sessions

Honest conversations

A one-day workshop

Why is holding an honest conversation sometimes so difficult?

This unique programme will make it easier for you by giving you the opportunity to develop your skills and confidence to hold an honest conversation, in a safe environment. It will help you have conversations that deliver better outcomes even when they are challenging or difficult.

This workshop is for you if:

You find the conversations you need to have aren’t always easy and would like to solve this.
You need some help on how to do it because you recognise the value of clear and open communication at all levels.
You want to learn new approaches, ideas and techniques that help you be more effective at holding conversations, including tackling challenging behaviours with others.

Influencing skills

Influencing skills – positive and ethical

A one-day workshop

The ability to influence others is a life skill but also one that has never been so critically useful at work. This one-day workshop is for you if you want to apply models of behavioural change that work and enable you to influence positively and ethically.

This session will set you on the road to discover what you need to be able to think and do, that will help you take people with you. This involves learning some new personal and management tools and models you can tailor to the situation you are in and help you make sure you use the right skills and behaviours to influence well.

Management in a day!

A one-day workshop

Having the right set of skills, tools and techniques helps us to manage in a productive and beneficial way and supports our growth as a manager, as well as the development and performance of those in our team.

This is the ideal workshop for anyone who is new to managing, is ‘acting up’ or is an ‘accidental manager’ who hasn’t had any formal management training (still very common – you’re in good company!). It’s also a great refresher.

It offers a practical overview of what it takes to be a line manager and explores the roles and responsibilities involved. The aim is to equip you to do your job effectively and help you engage with your team with confidence whilst understanding which areas need development.

Motivation and engagement

A one-day workshop

Motivation is a key factor in effective people management and successful team performance. It involves engaging and inspiring your people and developing them in such ways as to improve their effectiveness and thus have a greater benefit to customers. It can also involve having tough conversations with those who do not seem to be motivated.

This one-day workshop will help managers explore what they need to do to create a motivating environment at work and learn some tools and ideas to inspire motivation at individual and team level. It will provide up-to-date, evidenced-based theories to explore and equip them with knowledge and skills for effective engagement. Participants bring their motivation challenges to the day, to use as case study material.

Performance management

A one-day workshop

This programme can be timed to be delivered to fit with your annual performance management cycle. It can be tailored accordingly. It can focus on starting /objective setting, reviewing mid-year or end-of-year assessing. Or it can be run at any point during the year, to give a general overview.

This is a very practical day, with time for peer group activities and discussion. It is participative, balanced with expert trainer input and exercises that help managers to ‘learn by doing’, using their own performance management processes and plans as the raw material. Peer practice and action planning are key parts of making the day a success.

Team identity

Team identity day – public service

A one-day workshop

All teams need to step back periodically and think about where they have been and where they are going. A newly formed team – or a recently restructured one, or one that’s ‘just a bit stuck’ – needs to focus first on the bigger picture before it can get down to the job of service delivery.

If there’s no shared sense of purpose – no vision, no mission – then it’s possible that energies are not being directed as well as they could be, that inefficiencies are arising, and that the team is drifting or failing.

In situations such as these, a team identity day can be invaluable, helping the team establish a sense of direction, of purpose, of identity.

Ways of Working – for managers

Ways of Working – for managers

A one-day workshop

Agile, hybrid, remote, virtual workplaces… the new Ways of Working that we’re all becoming familiar with are presenting a new challenge for our managers. As our expectations of work change so must we adapt to managing different Ways of Working. As managers we need to have the right skills, tools and techniques to successfully lead our teams in this new work environment.

This workshop explores the key aspects to successfully lead teams that have adopted different Ways of Working. It is a practical session, blending group discussions and exercises with expert trainer input. You will come away with a clear understanding of how to navigate the agile working world as a manager and an action plan to implement this effectively.

Half-day sessions

Agile management

Agile management – core skills

A half-day workshop

‘Agile working’ describes a world of work without fixed times and places to work from; freed up by a combination of smart technology, digital working practice, life/work balance and wellbeing approaches; and responsive to external demands from stakeholders such as customers and Government.

This half-day workshop will help you embed and manage effective flexible and remote working. You will explore the challenges of managing performance to outcomes, building trust and managing engagement and communication. And you’ll assess how well you model an agile style to help with challenges such as workload management and remote presenteeism.

Agile teams – core skills

A half-day workshop

It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? But how can you make it work in practice?

This half-day workshop will help you adapt to the new ways of working, ensuring that you enjoy the benefits without paying the price in terms of additional stress.

Chairing skills

Chairing skills – a ‘master class’

A half-day workshop

Meetings are a traditional and essential component of local government. They serve as a forum for discussion and agreement, planning and monitoring, communication and leadership and decision making. Used appropriately, meetings can challenge, inspire, illuminate and inform.

Effective chairing is important because it can provide clear leadership and direction, ensure that debates are focused and balanced, enable decisions to be reached and ensure that resources are used to best effect.

But chairing them is a skill you need to work at. Here’s the perfect opportunity.

Honest conversations

A half-day workshop

Why can holding an honest conversation sometimes be so difficult? This unique programme will make it easier for you by giving you the opportunity, in a safe environment, to develop your skills and confidence to hold an honest conversation.

It will help you begin to hold conversations that deliver better outcomes even when they are challenging or difficult. This workshop is for you if:

You find the conversations you need to have aren’t always easy and you would like to deal with this.
You need some help on how to do it because you recognise the value of clear and open communication at all levels.
You want to learn new approaches and ideas that help you be better at holding conversations, including tackling challenging behaviours with others.

Influencing skills

Influencing skills – positive and ethical

A half-day workshop

The ability to influence others is a life skill but also one that has never been so critically useful at work. This half-day workshop is for you if you want to apply models of behavioural change that work and enable you to influence positively and ethically.

The session will set you on the road to discover what you need to be able to think and do, that will help you take people with you. This involves learning a personal technique and a management model you can tailor to the situation you are in and help you make sure you use the right skills and behaviours to influence well.

Motivation and engagement

A half-day workshop

This workshop packs in a host of important up-to-date thinking and evidenced practice and aims to help managers understand how to spot the signs of motivation (or lack of it) and how to build engagement at work. It clarifies the critical difference between true motivators and maintenance factors, which do not de-motivate, but are important to managing motivation and engagement in a team.

There is an option after the scheduled mid-session break to have two topics or go for an overview with tips and guidance, depending on your needs. A short learning guide with some templates supports the learning.

Performance management

A half-day workshop

This workshop deals with the practical aspects of managing performance at work for people managers. It does not cover the systems and processes and administrative aspects of the role – you need the full-day version for that. It’s therefore important that participants’ expectations are managed and that they know where to access the administrative processes and support outside of the workshop.

Political environment

A half-day workshop

The local government political management process works best when elected members and officers understand their respective responsibilities and have good communication systems in place, with good working relationships.

This workshop will help you navigate your Council’s decision-making processes more effectively and get to grips with who is responsible for what. You will better understand where you fit in, your roles and responsibilities and how to influence elected member relationships.

You will increase your knowledge and understanding and be able to think about how you manage within a political environment.

Resilience and wellbeing

A half-day workshop

Learning to be resilient remains vitally important for our wellbeing as we emerge from the pandemic and as remote and more flexible ways of working are set to continue. In times of uncertainty it is more essential than ever that we look after ourselves and safeguard our wellbeing and emotional fitness.

This workshop aims to help anybody who would like to strengthen their resilience or would just like to tap into some ways of managing their wellbeing more effectively at work. Techniques are based upon up-to-date, evidence-based approaches that will enable you to learn a range of ways to optimise your personal resilience.

You will identify what you need to do differently to maintain your wellbeing and prioritise your personal resilience in your working environment. You can discover ways to deal with challenges, such as negative emotions and feelings of overwhelm to help your mental fitness.

Time – making the most of it

Time – making the most of it

A half-day workshop

This workshop takes a fresh approach to how we use our time and challenges the belief that we don’t always have enough time.

It’s participative and interactive and includes peer group discussion and ideas sharing. It aims to enable participants to organise and use their time more effectively by applying the different ideas, tools and thinking to their own situations.

Practical tools and ideas are shared, to deal with thieves of time from a different perspective. The session ends with a ‘time hack’ that encourages participants to work together to find solutions to time challenges at work.

Flexibility

All the sessions can be tailored to your precise requirements, of course, so please compare the different session outlines for any given topic and have a word with us to discuss exactly what you want your session to cover.

The learning experience

These sessions have been designed, and are usually delivered, by Amanda Dudman, leader of our public service practice. She brings the knowledge, understanding and expertise on the subject matter to the session whilst learners bring their experience of the role and their personal situation. Amanda bridges the gap to enable participants to apply learning of new tools, ideas or skills to their role or situation. This places responsibility for learning and application on the job holder and completing a personal action plan helps them to decide how they will put their new-found learning and ideas into practice.

The context of working in public service is recognised and reflected in all sessions.

Action planning is standard in all sessions and completed at the end. Participants are encouraged to share their plan with their Line Manager and/or colleagues back at work. We include sign-posting to in-house learning opportunities, resources and further support, including ideas for self-directed learning as part of this activity.

Short, focused, relevant materials and activity sheets are provided for each session. They’re used during the session and afterwards they act as a reference point and resource to support the topic. We can tailor them to include your in-house learning information, such as links to e-learning on the subject or your preferred tools.

Group sizes

These programmes are highly participative, designed for a maximum group size of 12. Ideally, half-day sessions would always be for groups of 8-10, but 12’s fine if you have to.

Feedback

See some of the comments from participants in Amanda’s sessions for public service organisations:

‘Brilliant all round!’
‘I liked that the trainer engaged with the activities that needed her input and then stepped back and allowed us to get on with things.’
‘Very alive!’
‘Very interactive.’
‘Inspirational
‘The trainer was great, really understanding.’
‘Amanda was really helpful and explained everything well.’
‘Excellent I learned a lot about myself.’
‘Just great!’
‘Great facilitator!’
‘This is the second bite-sized course I have done with Amanda – great, engaging course leader.’
‘I loved it.’
‘An excellent course.’
‘I would recommend this to everyone.’
‘Great course and trainer. Amanda helped to make me feel at ease.’
‘Great trainer.’
‘Brilliant!’
‘Excellent course – thank you! I have learnt so much from this.’
‘Fantastic.’
‘Day flew by.’
‘Excellent day. Best training delivered to me so far.’
‘The day has flown by. A very enjoyable course which I think everyone should go on.’
‘Very informal trainer. Knows what she is taking about, energetic and passionate!!!’
‘Extremely good.’
‘Very knowledgeable and very clear messages. Showed experience in the topic.’
‘The trainer was awesome.’
‘[Amanda] was bubbly, very friendly. Knew her stuff. Very inspiring.’
‘Excellent. Font of fantastic knowledge.’
‘Fab!!!’

Any questions? Can’t see what you want? Just give us a call today on 01582 463460 and we can design a programme from scratch, just for you.