Nano & micro-learning

“How do I find the mental space to learn and continuously develop my skills and manage the day job?”

Fostering the right mindset and enhancing our learning ability is essential for developing skills needed now and in the future. Those with a growth mindset are open to challenges and use failures as lessons from which they can learn. A growth mindset leads to people trying to be the best they can be, and therefore being more likely to fulfil their potential.

• Growth mindset and why it’s so important.
• Growth vs fixed mindset with some scenarios.
• Learning from mistakes.
• Continuous improvement.

“My job is more demanding than ever, things are constantly changing, and I’m not sure if this is manageable in the long term.”

Combining tried and tested time management techniques with personal energy management will help us be more sustainable and avoid burnout. This requires a balance of doing and recharging. During the periods of doing, prioritise work using time management approaches and then use periods of downtime to step back, recharge and be ready for the next challenge.

• Time management – 7 common mistakes, inbox management, and managing workload and conflicting demands.
• Energy management – being more sustainable.
• How burnout differs from stress and how to deal with and avoid it.
• Virtual delegation and recognising what you should and shouldn’t delegate.
• Changing bad habits for good.

“I’m still trying to balance work and home – dealing with distractions and working with colleagues who are either working remotely and/or in the office.”

Structuring a working from home day is perhaps more important than when in the workplace – managing distractions, motivation and maintaining focus can be more challenging. With less visibility of each other, seeking help and support as well as building relationships and ensuring communication is effective is crucial.

• Managing time and structuring the day when working from home.
• Building relationships and networking virtually.
• Productive and engaged teams – emotional and job-related support.
• Motivating virtually and maintaining focus.
• Confident presenting in a virtual world.

“I am finding it difficult to create an environment of trust, confidence and optimism – how do I do this to meet the needs of the business and be true to myself at the same time?”

Leaders must commit to both developing and consistently demonstrating the fundamental behaviours that create and sustain trust – within themselves and across their teams: integrity, transparency, empathy, authenticity, reliability, and overall competence. Good communication is fundamental to providing purpose and generating drive.

• The importance of purpose, meaning and values.
• Compassionate leadership and bounded optimism.
• Emotional intelligence and self-awareness.
• Building trust in teams, inclusive leadership and generating drive.
• Creating a communications strategy and using storytelling to communicate data.

“I’m still struggling to manage my virtual/hybrid team effectively. We need to improve communication and collaboration and be sure that everyone is contributing to achieving our goals.”

To manage a virtual team successfully, leaders need to acquire a new set of skills around communication, motivation, and relationship management; based on a foundation of trust that is earned from a distance.

• Remote management – responsibilities, priorities and reward & recognition.
• Collaborating and communicating with remote teams.
• Virtual delegation.
• Building relationships and trust with your team.
• Virtual coaching.

“It can be difficult to understand how others must be feeling in certain situations, and see things from their point of view – sometimes I struggle to understand how these feelings may differ from my own.”

Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person's feelings and emotions. It is essential to building good relationships, both at work and in our personal life, by enabling us to resolve conflicts, to build more productive teams, and to improve our relationships with co-workers, clients and customers.

• Building empathy and compassionate leadership.
• Emotional intelligence, self-awareness and unconscious bias.
• Active and inactive listening.
• Positive psychology, mindfulness and making time to reflect.

"My friends, team and colleagues have a lot to deal with right now – how can I spot signs that they are struggling and support them better?”

We are all balancing more than ever, and many of us are trying to cope with situations we have never experienced before. At the same time, businesses are under enormous pressure and have to do more with less. Never has it been more vital for us to stay connected, support each other and look for signs that someone may need help.

• Wellbeing and balance.
• Talking about mental health and mental health in the workplace.
• Staying connected.
• Managing stress and anxiety.
• Understanding the brain - the difference between yourself and your chimp.

“There is a lot of diversity of thought, different experiences through lockdowns, cultural differences and biases. How do I challenge perceptions and respect different perspectives to support others and strengthen at work?"

Diversity and inclusion is about more than complying legally. Diversity is about respecting and appreciating every individual and the value they bring. Inclusion is about ensuring that everyone feels that they belong within the organisational culture. Companies with great diversity and inclusion outperform their peers by a significant margin, and we all have a role to play.

• Supporting diversity, inclusive leadership and unconscious bias
• Understanding microaggressions.
• Supporting LGBTQ+ communities.
• Understanding gender pronouns.
• Building multicultural relationships.

“There have been changes in my team/my role, we have to do more with less but we need to react and respond more quickly to meet business needs.”

Resilience is the capacity of people to effectively cope with, adjust, or recover from change, stress or adversity. Resilience is not something that we have or don’t have; it’s something we can learn. Agility is about speed and flexibility and how rapidly we respond to change. We can all develop ways to think and behave that help us cope and adapt to challenging situations quickly and successfully.

• Resilience, emotional resilience.
• Bounded optimism.
• Measuring personal resilience.
• Building social connections at work.
• Flexibility and agility.

“I am finding it difficult to achieve the outcomes that I need when communicating with others especially when working remotely.“

Communication plays a key role in shaping a positive culture within our office, home, classroom, and community. When we understand the theory of communication styles we can more readily appreciate the fundamental differences between each of us. Building our approach virtually will increase our confidence, make us more influential and help gain buy-in.

• Understanding communication styles.
• The four communication styles - learn to communicate more effectively in every interaction.
• Finding your virtual voice.
• Creating a communication strategy and virtual influencing.