Professional Development Training Course

Professional Development Training

Your professional skills are your greatest asset. Why? Because you have the same technical skills and knowledge that many other people have, and the only way to elevate yourself above your competition is to possess the following six additional professional skills that most people ignore: how to set and achieve goals; how to more effectively communicate; how to prioritise and avoid errors; how to handle difficult conflict situations; how to develop more confidence; and how to positively inspire other people, (ie leadership skills).

How can you most efficiently develop these six essential professional skills?

Attend this two-day training event, where you will learn all you need to know to take your personal and professional performance to the next level.

Day One - Professional Development Training - Course Overview

Day Two - Professional Development Training - Course Overview

There are four factors that affect your career: yourself, other people, “the system”, and Mother Nature. Of these four factors, by far the most important is YOURSELF.

Why?

Because you are always present, exerting an influence on your results for good or ill. And because YOU are the only one you can control. (You cannot control other people, you cannot control the system, nor Mother Nature).

This course is about taking control of your mind, language, feelings, and behaviour so that you always trigger a positive response from any situation.

Do you want more details? Read the full course description here.

Book Now - Open Training Course Pricing and Availability

The Professional Development open training course costs only £875 +VAT per delegate.
For this price we provide:

• Two full days of quality training
• 12 trainer-led hours, additional 2-3 via post-course portal independent learning
• Tea, coffee and cakes
• Lunch
• Full colour course handbook
• Written action plan
• Certificate
• Training articles and newsletters
• Access to additional free training material after the course

Plus, optional 3 months free telephone coaching

To answer any on-going questions, you will can receive email and telephone support from your trainer after you have attended the course. Whilst you are implementing what you have learned we will be there to help you if you need us for advice, guidance and coaching.

Next Open Course Dates

What is the training method? Is it interactive?

Yes. We have designed the training style to be highly interactive. To keep everyone feeling involved, we vary the training style.

Sometimes you will be working alone, preparing your own opinions, (for example, when you are doing a self-analysis exercise), then later you are working with your next-door neighbour.
Then later, you will work in bigger groups.

There is always plenty of interaction. So, you will never feel bored, and there is NO death by PowerPoint.
Our delegates tell us that “the time flew-by”, which we take to be a good sign.

Delegates tell us the content is well designed, simple to understand and use.

The training is applied to real-life situations; it is beneficial and packed with useful knowledge.
We are sure you will find this course interesting, well structured, practical and fun.

Professional Development Training - Day One - Morning

Self-analysis. Goal setting. Communication.

Introduction

We are here to answer a single question:

How can we get the best performance from ourselves and others?

Before we can get the best from others, we must first get the best from ourselves.

This course is about how you can improve your results by improving your professional skills.

Improve your results by improving your professional skills.

We need to develop key skills

There are six key skills to master:

1. Goal setting
2. Clear communication
3. Time management
4. Conflict management
5. Manage your own emotions
6. Inspire positive emotions in others

Self-analysis questionnaire: To discover what your personal strengths and weaknesses.

Create the right impression.

Every day you are making impressions in the minds of those people around you. Those mental impressions can help you, fail to help you, or hinder you. The impressions you leave in the minds of others are based upon two things; everything you do, and everything you say.

Impression management is about taking conscious control of your words and behaviour in order to always, create a positive impression in the minds of others.

Develop goal focus: 8 Part SMART goals.

Success is defined as the achievement of a worthwhile and valuable goal. You cannot achieve a goal you do not set. Therefore, the first step to achieving a goal is to set it.

We will investigate the art of effective goal setting.

Communicate with more clarity.

Having a clear goal is only step one.

Now you need to communicate the goal to others, because you cannot achieve your goals, alone. You need to gain the cooperation and understanding of other people. Therefore, you need to master the skills of clear communication.

How to explain your exact meaning

Do you ever say to yourself, “I know what I mean, but I can’t explain it”?

You need to be able to explain the meaning of your key ideas, plans and concepts. Finding the words, to express your exact meaning is not always easy. We will show you how to find your voice.

How to transform negative language into positive.

Many people are too negative. They talk for too long about what they cannot do, or won’t do. We need the conversation to be about what they CAN do and WILL do.

We will show you how to change negative into positive.

Learn how to give 'affirmative commands'.

How to give “affirmative commands”.

In a similar way, many people use negative commands, such as, “Don’t worry”.
But can you see that saying, “don’t worry”, induces the emotion of worry.
You need to state your meaning in affirmative terms. We will show you how.

Summary of morning and action planning.

How are you going to apply these ideas?

Professional Development Training - Day One - Afternoon

Rational Conflict Management.

Conflict is inevitable, you are bound to get some.
WHY? Because not everyone agrees with your views.
You cannot always avoid conflicts, nor should you. But you SHOULD learn to quickly and effectively resolve them. This course will show you how.

Manage conflict with reason - a rational approach.

How to manage conflict and difficult conversations.

Typically, there are three ways people try to manage conflict, but only the first one works.

1. Reason: a rational approach to conflict management
2. Negative emotion: too much anger, upset
3. Avoidance: run away from difficult conflict situations

You need to know how NOT to emotionalise conflicts, but rather how to rationalise them.

That is the theme of the afternoon session.
In order to do that we need to learn:

The difference between objective and subjective language.

To rationalise conflict, we need to understand the difference between two types of language.

• Factual, objective language, and
• Subjective, opinionated and emotionalised language

We will discover the difference.

When in conflict, it is important to NOT use highly charged, emotionalised and opinionated language.

Use objective language, not emotionalised, subjective language.

We will practice translating derogatory, emotional and highly opinionated language into safer, objective factual, NON emotional. This is a key skill you must master before you can properly prepare your scripts.

Always prepare what you will say before you say it.

If you can, before you have the conflict conversation, prepare what you will say, and what you will NOT say.
We will show you how and practice.

Always propose a practical solution or suggested corrective action.

It is important to propose a specific practical corrective action and ask the other person to commit.
We will discuss what that means and how to apply it.

Differentiate between reasons and excuses

Carefully differentiate between reasons and excuses

If the other will not commit to your suggested corrective actions, you must differentiate between what you will accept as a reason, and what you won’t. We will discover the difference between reasons and excuses.

Know when to concede and when to stand your ground

It is vital that you know when to compromise and when NOT to.
If you compromise too much, you will compromise your standards and lose too much.
If you don’t compromise enough, you will appear intransigent and stubborn.
We will show you where and how to draw the line.

To appear assertive, use proper voice tones and body language.

It is not enough to use the right words; you must also use the tone and body language.

We will show you how to strike the right balance and communicate exactly the right amount of assertiveness.

The importance of praise and appreciation.

It is important to finish on a positive. We will discuss the vital importance of proper praise, appreciation and thanks. We will discuss how the lack of appreciation affects people and how to inspire more motivation by the use of positive praise.

How to put these ideas into practice.

We will learn by doing. We will practice these techniques and by the end of the day, you will get good at this!

Professional Development Training - Day Two - Morning

Time management. Prioritisation. Prevention. Delegation

You are a limited resource, but you seem to be facing an UNLIMITED demand.

So, you cannot do it ALL today.
Instead, you must manage your time, prioritise tasks, organise and delegate. These are the themes of this morning’s programme.

How to get the most done in the minimum time.

It is important to recognise that you are not paid for your time.
Instead, you are paid for the ACHIEVEMENT that you can squeeze into a given amount of time.

Time management is about getting more value from every hour invested. How can you maximise the VALUE ADDED per hour?

Operate according to your plan not your mood.

In order to get more achievement from your time and effort, it is vital that you operate according to your plan, NOT your mood.

Operate according to your plan, NOT your mood.

Procrastination is the error of putting things off because you don’t want to do them.
We will show you how to beat the common habits of procrastination.

How to prioritise your tasks and time

Time management means doing the most valuable things, in the most logical order.
We will show you how to do this.

How to use "deadline pressure" and "value" as key criterion

You should evaluate tasks by two fundamental criterion: Their value and their deadline pressure.

We will show you how. These two criterion allow us to differentiate between two types of day: busy days and productive days.

Distinguish "busy days" from "productive days"

Have you ever had a “Busy but Non-Productive day”? A day when you work hard but achieve little.

We will analyse this problem, find its causes and eliminate them.

Time wasters, and how to get rid of them.

We will get into the nitty gritty details of who and what wastes your time?

• Your own bad habits?
• Other people’s bad habits?
• Inefficient systems?

You will identify problems, and their solutions.

How to put jobs into their best logical order.

We will introduce you to our unique Prioritisation App, and you will finally have in your hands, a fool proof method to perfectly prioritise your work.

Our time management Prioritisation App will make you more efficient as it will give you “a track to run on”.

How to handle distractions that would take you off track.

Even though you have “a track to run on” events will continually conspire to take you off track. We need to determine how to resist the forces that would take you off track.

We will find out how to keep to the plan.

One way is through delegation.

Learn how to delegate as much work as possible, for the right reasons only.

Delegate as much work as possible, for the right reasons only

You can (and should) delegate as much as you can, to the right people. We will discover exactly how to delegate, why to delegate, and WHY many people are AFRAID to delegate.

Pareto 80/20 principle and its application to time management

80-20 pareto rule suggests that, in any situation, the majority-share of the VALUE is contained within the minority-share of the content.

Your task is to KNOW, what is the high-value 20% portion of the job that contains practically all the value. Then to focus your attention onto that smaller number of things that contain the vast majority of value.

Ignore, minimise or delegate the trivial many.
We will show you how.

Handling interruptions

We will apply the 80-20 rule to handling interruptions.

In any interruption, 80% or MORE of what they want to say to you, you don’t want to know.

But 20% of what they want to say, you need to know.

Question: How can you gain the most value from any interruption, in the minimum time without causing offence?
We will discover the secrets of 80-20 interruptions.

Time management principles, and how to put them into practice?

We will ask you a series of time management questions that will tease-out exactly how you will put time management principles to work, in YOUR life.

Professional Development Training - Day Two - Afternoon

Positive Mental Attitude and Positive Emotional States.

At any given moment, how people feel, affects how they behave.

At any given moment, how people feel, affects how they behave.

Generally, the rule is:

• Positive feelings (optimism, confidence and desire) inspire positive behaviours
• Negative feelings (pessimism, fear and anger) inspire negative behaviours

You need to know how to minimise the negative and maximise the positive emotions.
How to transform negative into positive, is the theme of this afternoon’s training course.

Emotional management is a learnable skill

Many people think their emotions are beyond their control. The truth is everyone has the capacity to change how they feel, in a heartbeat, but most don’t know how to activate the positive portion of their brain. We will show you how to flick the switch.

We will show you the secrets of emotional management.

How emotions affect your results

Emotions affect behaviour. Behaviour affect results. Therefore, emotions affect results.

In order to change your external reality, you first need to change your dominant emotions. You do that by taking charge of your mind and directing your thoughts towards today and a better future.

We will show you how to manage your own mind and how to create and sustain a positive mental attitude, especially during tough times.

Conversation control: How your words affect feelings

The next step in your personal development is to take what you have learned about the power of positive thinking and apply it to language.

It is a fact that your words affect emotions, and if you want to change how you (and others) feel, then take back control of how you speak.

How to become a source of strength to others

How to become a source of strength to others

Everything you say, has an emotional consequence. Recognise that everything you say will make people feel stronger, not stronger, or weaker.

You can use this information to help yourself and others. We will show you how.

Continuous improvement: A progressive approach to working and living.

Continuous improvement is the psychology of progress. It means, never allowing complacent self-satisfaction to take control of your mind, but rather; to be always on the lookout for the next step forward.

The five-part Success Formula

Purpose, plan, action, feedback, change

The principle of Continuous Improvement is a process based upon five words: Purpose, plan, action, feedback, change.

Decide upon clear purpose, write a detailed plan, take intelligent action based upon the plan, observe the feedback results, and each and every day, use them to change (improve) your plan.

The five-part success formula is simple, but it’s not easy.

It is not easy, because it requires that you learn the true meaning of failure.

We will discover how Success and Failure are opposite sides of the same coin. If you want to succeed, you must learn how to learn from failure.

The five-part success formula is simple, but it’s not easy.

The role of failure in success.

Failure is built into the Success Formula.

Every successful person has suffered numerous failures. Winners use their failures to update their next plan, NOT as justifications to abandon the attempt.

We will show you how to become so resilient that NOTHING will stop you from achieving final victory.

How to learn and profit from negative events.

We will discover that “Contained within every defeat is the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit”. We will show you how to “reframe negative events” and transform them into “learning experiences” that propel you forwards.

How to help others to be more successful.

Once you have these understandings in mind, you can use them to help your friends, family and colleagues to achieve any goal they set their mind to.

When you have assimilated these mental, linguistic, and emotional skills you will become a very valuable asset.

Action Plan

As we close the course, we want to know, how will you put these powerful ideas into practice?

Final Summary Close

In-House Training Course Pricing and Proposal

This course is also available from just £1,950 +VAT per day as a bespoke in-house group training course in the UK and worldwide.

It has been designed to provide a similar experience to our open courses, however we can tailor the content to fit your specific needs. In-House Group training costs from just £1,950 +VAT per day (international training price varies). Plus, hotel accommodation for trainer if necessary. (Premier Inn type: not the Hilton!)

This price includes:

• Quality training delivered by an experienced trainer
• Full days training
• Full colour course handbook
• Preparation work
• Travel costs and time
• Written action plan to take away
• Access to our post course portal
• Access to our on-line leadership and management decision matrix templates and tools
• Plus three months FREE telephone coaching to answer any on-going questions

Contact Us Today

Please call us on +44 (0)20 3856 3037 to discuss your requirements for the in-house training course.

If you want to know more about any other Management Training Courses, or their suitability for you or a colleague, call us on +44 (0)20 3856 3037.