Newsletter July 2010

July Assignments

As the summer holidays begin, graduates start preparing for Assessment Centres and so do the assessors. During July, graduates were invited to undertake verbal and numerical reasoning tests in preparation for the Assessment Centre run for one of England's largest County Councils. An addition to the testing this year was Situational Judgement testing which tests analytical skills.

Towards the end of July, forty observers were trained in readiness for the Assessment Centre in August. The observers were intoduced to the tasks that will be used and what competencies and behaviours these tasks are designed to test. The observer training was undertaken in a single day.

Another Perfecting Your Presentation Skills course was 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.

Other assignments in July include:

Cohorts 14, 15 and 16 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.
A one day Personal Effectiveness course was delivered to a group of managers at a Welsh County Council. This group had previously undertaken a course on Leading and Motivating People Through Change.
Cohort five of a Management Fundamentals programme, at the UK's largest charity, undertook a third day to share their experience of implementing what they had learned to date and to receive additional input including coaching practice.
Two half day modules of a Management Programme were delivered to a group of new manager at Wales leading independent training company. The modules covered the key management skills of Motivating Others and how to achieve Influence and Leverage.