Perhaps you’ve been in a Leadership position for some time and are thinking about a bit of a refresher or some new ideas to engage your team?

Then why not book onto our Leadership Skills Open Workshop Course!

We have a few spaces left on Wednesday 13th June in Glasgow.

Each space will only cost £199 + VAT per person!

For more details about the course or to book click here or call us on 0845 8381729.

Regards

Heather

Account Manager

Managing time is a misnomer. We can’t actually manage time but what we can do is manage ourselves more effectively around the time we do have.

Our Time Management Course will engage more tools in which to control the time you have available.

We have this course running in Nottingham on Monday 2nd July.

The price for this course is £199 + VAT per person.

For more details about the course click here or call us on 0845 8381729

Regards

Heather

Account Manager

Maybe you have been asked to carry out interviews and you are a little worried that you might choose the wrong person.

Then why not book onto our Interview Skills Course!

We have this course running in Sunderland (Seaham) on Thursday 24th May 2012.

Each space costs £199 + VAT per person.

For more details about the course or to book click here or you can give us a call on 0845 8381729

Regards

Heather

Account Manager

Managing time is a misnomer. We can’t actually manage time but what we can do is manage ourselves more effectively around the time we do have.

Our Time Management Course will engage more tools in which to control the time you have available.

We have this course running in Newcastle on Wednesday 4th July.

The price for this course is £199 + VAT per person.

For further details about this course click here or give us a call on 0845 8381729

Regards

Heather

Account Manager

Have you just been promoted into a Leadership position and lacking a bit of confidence in how to get the best out of your team?

Perhaps you’ve been in a Leadership position for some time and are thinking about a bit of a refresher or some new ideas to engage your team?

Then why not book onto our Leadership Skills Open Workshop Course!

We have a few spaces left on Wednesday 23rd May in Newcastle.

Each space will only cost £199 + VAT per person!

For more details about the course or to book click here or call us on 0845 8381729.

Regards

Heather

Account Manager

Have you just been promoted into a Leadership position and lacking a bit of confidence in how to get the best out of your team?

Perhaps you’ve been in a Leadership position for some time and are thinking about a bit of a refresher or some new ideas to engage your team?

Then why not book onto our Leadership Skills Open Workshop Course!

We have a few spaces left on Wednesday 23rd May in Liverpool.

Each space will only cost £199 + VAT per person!

For more details about the course or to book click here or call us on 0845 8381729.

Regards

Heather

Account Manager

Have you just been promoted into a Leadership position and lacking a bit of confidence in how to get the best out of your team?

Perhaps you’ve been in a Leadership position for some time and are thinking about a bit of a refresher or some new ideas to engage your team?

Then why not book onto our Leadership Skills Open Workshop Course!

We have a few spaces left on Wednesday 23rd May in Chelmsford/Essex.

Each space will only cost £199 + VAT per person!

For more details about the course or to book click here or call us on 0845 8381729.

Regards

Heather

Account Manager

Doing this leaves little time to make the big important decisions that really affect us, this is why when we make decisions they should be made assertively.

If you don’t know what being Assertive is, in a nutshell it’s taking control of yourself, your feeling and your emotions and not letting gut or instinctive reactions take as much control as they would do normally.  Making decisions assertively works in exactly the same way.

Each time you need to make a decision rank it’s importance on the significance of the decision and the impact it will have in your life.

For example choosing what film to see at the cinema or what to have for dinner are not massive decisions.  You could spend so much time choosing what film to see, and at the end you may feel disappointed that you wasted your time if the film wasn’t that great.  This feeling of disappointment probably comes from the fact that you spent so much time deciding what to see in the first place.

Here’s the thing though – you’re still alive!  The fact that the film was rubbish hasn’t impacted on your life, your health, your family, your job or your friends.  In fact it in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t such a big decision to make at all, so why waste the time making the decision if it has little or no impact?

Deciding whether you should get married, have a child, move job or ask for a promotion or pay rise – now those are big decisions.  It’s these type of decisions that you should be spending your time making.

As I mentioned before, if you need to make a decision, rank it.  Use a star system for example and rate each decision against it.  For example, deciding what film to see may be a one star.  Deciding whether to move job maybe five stars.  Base the rating system on the impact it will have on your life if it was to go wrong.

The trick is to make low rated decisions quickly.  Don’t ponder for ages on what film to see, decide quickly.  OK, so you may have lost a few pounds in cash seeing the film, but you’re still alive at the end of it.

Instead spend your valuable time making the decisions that will impact on you.  For example if you decide to move jobs, think about the pro’s and con’s of it.  Will you truly be better of moving?  Why do you want to move?  How could you improve your current job?  Get the idea?  Only make these big decisions after careful consideration.

So in general, making decisions assertively is about rating the decision, make the small decisions quickly and spend your time on the bigger things that will impact on your life.

Want to be more Assertive in your life?  Why not attend one of our Assertiveness Skills Courses.

Revolution Learning and Development is a division of Revolution Human Resources Ltd]]> http://www.revolutionlearning.net/2012/04/15/how-to-make-assertive-decisions/feed/ 0 http://www.revolutionlearning.net/2012/03/28/lessons-from-the-apprentice-design-a-new-gadget/ http://www.revolutionlearning.net/2012/03/28/lessons-from-the-apprentice-design-a-new-gadget/#comments Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:05:55 +0000 david http://www.revolutionlearning.net/?p=2853 This weeks task on the Apprentice was to design and pitch a new household gadget.  Lord Sugar said that the success of the task would be very much down to the concept as the team who secured the most orders from two major retailers would win.

The boys led by Azhar decided to focus on an item for the kitchen while the girls an item for the bathroom.

The boys quickly came up with the concept of a table top bin that would compress food waste as you were cooking.  After making the decision, some of the boys headed out to a local retailer to pitch the concept and got some really positive feedback on their idea.

The girls were a bit slower at getting started.  They eventually settled on two ideas – one a portable bath splash screen to stop water from hitting the floor when children were being bathed and a tap cosy that would double up as a cushion to use when bathing.

Both groups split and headed off to do some market research.  Half of the girls headed for a mother and toddlers group and the remained hit the street to talk to passers by.  Feedback from the mother and toddlers group told them that the splash screen wasn’t a great product, and the tap cosy was something they would buy.  The feedback from passers by was very similar.

For the boys, they attended a focus group of chefs to pitch the bin idea as well as a new idea of taking a set of standard rubber gloves and adding a sponge and a scourer to them.  The majority thought that the gloves were a great idea and s few thought the bin wasn’t a bad idea to.

So far so good for both groups, then it all started to unravel.

One half of the girls started to doubt the idea of the tap cosy as they thought it may not be universal enough, so they set about further developing the idea of the splash screen.  The other half of the girls were still working away on ideas for the tap cosy.  It was a similar story for the boys.  While half were talking to the focus group, the others were already well into the design of the bin.

When both groups actually began talking to their counter parts, both project managers made a decision.  The girls choose to ignore their market research and go for the splash screen, and so did the boys opting for the bin.  Annoyingly for the boys, it turns out that the group that attended the initial retailer only pitched the idea of the bin and not the gloves so the research was very much one sided.

The groups briefed their designers and the prototypes were made overnight.

Come the day of the pitch, both groups made some glaring mistakes.  Azhar decided that Duane, who actually came up with the idea and it working should not do the pitch.  Jane,. the PM for the girls delegated the task of pricing and margins to one of the team without considering if this was something they could do.

First pitch for both teams was online retailer Amazon.  The girls pitched their product well, but then it fell to pieces when they offered the buyers prices for 1 million units for a product that was untested.  When challenged on smaller numbers it was clear that the numbers didn’t add up and the buyers gave them this feedback.

For the buys the pitch went well.  Although they agreed only two people would do the pitch, Duane broke rank and stepped up to answer a question.  Just as well as it was a really good answer that seemed to please the buyers.

After the first pitch, an argument broke out between the girls about the pricing.  On the way to the next itch the hurriedly changed things to make sure it was right for the next.

Next pitch was at high street retailer Lakeland.  The buys product seemed to go down well, and things were changed so Duane was this time involved in the pitch.  The girls less so as it was clear that the buyers were not keen on the product.

In the boardroom, Lord Sugars feedback was clear.  For the girls they has mis-understood the brief.  They were asked to come up with a household gadget, he thought it was more of a toy.  The girls agreed that Jane was a good project manager, but they boys though Azhar was poor a communication and there were definitely two split team at work.

In the end they boys won again this week overall securing 13,000 orders against the girls 7,500 and Maria was fired due to her perceived lack of involvement.

So this weeks lessons are:

Delegate Effectively – Ensure you pick the right person for the right job based on their skills to to a task and not just on their willingness to want to do it.  Both teams got this wrong, the girls with the finance and boys with the pitch.

Listen To Your Market Research – The people you speak to will be the people that buy a product or a service.  If you are going to ignore it, why waste the time doing it in the first place?

Communicate With Your Team – Yes as a leader you need to make decisions, but to ensure it is the right decision you should listen to the teams feedback before making that call.

Understand Your Objective – Be clear about what it is you are trying to achieve before setting out to do something.  The girls ended up with the wrong type of product.

Next week, make a new condiment.  Until then.

David

Revolution Learning and Development is a division of Revolution Human Resources Ltd]]> http://www.revolutionlearning.net/2012/03/28/lessons-from-the-apprentice-design-a-new-gadget/feed/ 0 http://www.revolutionlearning.net/2012/03/27/limited-spaces-available-on-our-coaching-skills-training-course-in-the-leedsbradford-area/ http://www.revolutionlearning.net/2012/03/27/limited-spaces-available-on-our-coaching-skills-training-course-in-the-leedsbradford-area/#comments Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:08:57 +0000 Heather http://www.revolutionlearning.net/?p=2847 We have a few places left to fill on our Coaching Skills Training Course in Leeds/Bradford area on Thursday May 3rd 2012.

Each space costs £199.00 + VAT per person. For more information about the course and to book click here or call us on 0845 8381729

Regards

Heather

Account Manager