All our programmes are tailored to your needs. Our process begins with a discovery conversation looking at the broader organisational context and your desired learning outcomes for your delegates.  We will often engage with several stakeholders before starting our design.  Even with our more standard programmes, where many elements are tried and tested, we still consult with you to ensure we have tailored our content and approach to suit your organisation and people.

Some of our programmes include a number of tried and tested elements. This means that we can efficiently and cost-effectively build a workshop for you that hits your brief, without requiring a lot of design work.  Our ‘Presentation Skills’ and ‘Feedback Skills’ workshops are good examples of this.

We strongly believe that people learn best by engaging emotionally with the topic and actually practising the skills in question. As well as being experienced facilitators, we have backgrounds as actors and writers, so we combine this experience to create a blended learning approach which lifts the theory off the page.

In terms of specific methods, alongside user-friendly theory and group discussion, there are a couple of key techniques in our work:

Forum Theatre

‍This is a fantastic learning tool where participants watch a scene, played out by our team, showing an ineffective interaction. The scene is then replayed, with the participants coaching the central character, in stop-start fashion, until a more effective conversation is realised.

‍Practice

‍Central to all our work is providing opportunities for people to practise skills and embed new habits.  In our work around leading and managing others, we create a safe environment in very small groups to enable people to practise their challenging conversations.

On our presentation skills programmes, we build the key skills of body language, voice and content, piece by piece. 

Yes, we do. We are based in the UK but have worked extensively around the globe. We have associates based outside the UK, many of whom speak other languages. We are currently delivering a programme for a global bank using associates based in Singapore and also have a contract running workshops in English and French for a European train company.

Yes, we do. Our preference is to work face-to-face where possible because we know this delivers the highest level of engagement and participation. That said, it is sometimes practical and effective for some of our work to be delivered online, especially as that now reflects the reality of many workplace interactions. Our ‘Conversation Clinics’, with individuals and small-groups, work particularly well virtually.

For some clients, we’ve harnessed the best of both worlds – delivering a face-to-face workshop, followed up by small-group conversation practice sessions online.

Yes, we do. We partner with a couple of excellent production companies to produce video materials and e-learning modules. We co-ordinate the whole process: from research and script-writing, through to casting, filming and editing. We have recently produced training videos for a global pharmaceutical company and created an e-learning module on feedback skills for a major UK charity.