Newsletter August 2010

One of the main events in August was the graduate Assessment Centre for one of England's largest County Councils.

A team of four facilitators and two technicians subjected 38 graduates to an intensive day of assessment while being observed by 40 council employees. The assessment centre included individual tasks, group exercises and concluded with a development task that involved all 38 graduates.

Prior to the assessment centre the candidates undertook some online testing. These marks were combined with the comments of the observers and 21 candidates were put forward for interview.

Continuing the graduate theme, two more Perfecting Your Presentation Skills courses were run for graduate trainees at one of the UK's largest engineering and manufacturing companies.

The course covers presentation techniques and allows the graduates to practice their skills. As well as video recording the presentations, an interactive voting system is used to allow the audience to rate elements of the presentations.

The voting system provides an instant, audience reaction tracking capability similar to that used for the leadership debates during the last election. Using this audience reaction in conjunction with video gives insight into what is working and what is not during a presentation.

The first Influence and Persuasion Skills course was run for same company as a part of its graduate development programme.

Other assignments in August include:

• Two new programmes were delivered to a large, international, engineering consultancy. These were Stress for Managers and DiSC® Personality Profiling for recruitment and career planning.
   
• A one day workshop was facilitated to review a major engineering project for renewable energy using tidal power. The workshop involved design and project engineers who were guided through a series of discussions to identify the key successes of the project and to see what lessons had been learned for future projects of this scale.
   
• A train the trainer day was delivered for in-house trainers to support the delivery of the Management Fundamentals programme, at the UK's largest charity.
   
• Two half day modules of a Management Programme were delivered to a group of new managers at Wales' leading independent training company. The modules covered the key management skills of Delegation and Performance Management.
   
• Cohort 17 started a seven module Management Development Programme this month. The programme, for a UK government agency, uses a blend of classroom training and self directed learning that will lead to an ILM accredited certificate. Twenty cohorts of managers will undertake this programme and receive 360 Feedback as a part of the process.