ELS at VSC today - Resettlement Event!

 

 

 

ELS are at VSC today!

British Forces Resettlement Service Event

 

 

Come on down and see what we can offer you as you consider your move into the civilian employment market!

We can also hold your security clearances, a very valuable asset which is often over looked by personnel leaving the Armed Forces.

FACILITATION COURSE 10 - 12 June 2013 by Lucy Saunders

So there I was nearly at the end of my terminal leave and edging rapidly closer to my Discharge date and I heard about the APMG International's Facilitation Course via the company Explosive Learning Solutions on Twitter - There were some last minute places going on the course and was I interested?  My first thought was - 3 day course, decent price and another qualification to add to the CV...I was sold!

 Then a few days later whilst I was tootling down the M1 to Oxford I started to actually think about what I was going to be doing?  What was a Facilitator?  What exactly was I going to be learning?  I thought about what Facilitation meant to me...To facilitate meant to enable something, to aid where possible and support something to happen.  Mmmmm, I worked in a customer facing role, I did that all the time right?!?!

 Monday morning came and I arrived at ELS HQ. The building is modern with great facilities and is ideally located at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus just off the A34.  I settled into the classroom of 6 students and we started our introductions.  I was pleased to find that there was a good mix of ex-Military and Civilian personnel on the course and also on the ELS team.  I felt instantly relaxed and knew the outcome of the 3 days would be extremely positive.

 As it turned out this was the first EVER Facilitators Course to be run...in the entire world!!  I was excited...So, I wondered, what was it all about?  After a post introduction cuppa we then got down to our learning and over the next 2 and a half days we covered a vast amount of information from the text books we were provided.  There was an excellent mix of presentations, discussions and exercises with regular breaks for refreshments.  A fantastic lunch was also provided daily.  Without giving too much away of the course material it is all about the thinking behind being a facilitator, the different models, tools and techniques that a facilitator can employ when assisting a CEO/MD/Manager with a Meeting, Event or Workshop.  The emphasis on the course is all about Process or 'Green Thinking' and getting to the bottom of that 'wicked problem'.  The course also covered a lot of other things that can be applied in other forms of life, be it professional or personal, such as identifying Conflict and the Management of Conflict, Personality Profiling and how to be a good Active Listener.  It was all interesting stuff!

 

Before I knew it Wednesday afternoon was upon us and it was exam time - 50 multiple choice questions to be answered in 40 minutes....Exam done and after an agonising wait whilst our instructor marked the papers we were called back into the classroom and all informed that we had passed.  We were 6 newly qualified Facilitators armed with a fundamental knowledge of facilitation, we were all ecstatic.

 For me this course was so intense and so very different to any other course I have ever been on in my life, there was so much information to take on board and the civilian terminology made it all the more difficult BUT I had passed, I had done it!  I had passed the most challenging qualification I had embarked on during my whole life and it made me feel so proud of myself, not only that but it gave me an increased level of belief in myself and gave me a renewed level of optimism that now anything was really possible.  I had met some great people and worked with a great company, I would thoroughly recommend Explosive Learning Solutions to anyone whether you are a Service Leaver embarking on a new career or whether you are just looking to do some professional development.

 I'm already looking forward to booking my next course!!

Guest Blogger

Lucy Saunders

@Career_Woman

For Lucy's personal blog: wp.me/p3pMeQ-1X

Our next Facilitation Course is running the 2nd – 4th September!

LinkedIn Contacts by Mary Thomas

I was excited to be given the new LinkedIn Contacts functionality at the end of last week. I talked about this in my last post on LinkedIn Changes. You can sign up for the functionality at http://contacts.linkedin.com./ I love the new functionality – though I can see room for improvement – which no doubt will happen as LinkedIn gets feedback.

 

When you sign up for the module, you can link to your email system – though it will work without this. I am using Google apps for my email (with an Outlook front end), so it was a simple case of linking through Gmail. This brought into LinkedIn any notes that I made against a contact in my email system and imported the latest email messages I have exchanged with a contact.

 

Now when I click on a contact, I can see an additional box.

 

 

For each contact I can add notes or information about how we met. I can see the lastest emails that we have exchanged. I can group my contacts by using the Tag feature. I can also schedule a reminder to contact this person again in a day, a week or a month – or regularly.

CIicking on Contacts > Connections from the Main Menu,allows me to click on Today on the left hand side.



This shows me which of my contacts have a new position or a birthday today and allows me to send them a message directly from within LinkedIn. A default message does come up but you can personalise it as you wish. Just be careful, at the moment, if you send a message, the box doesn’t go away so you could accidentally send the message twice! The message isn’t yet displayed as part of the information about the contact either which is also an error in my opinion.

Clicking on the calendar button on the right, will show me my calendar from my email system. Remember my email and calendar is part of Google apps so actually this is showing me my calendar from Google.

Looking at the list of contacts directly below ‘Today’, I can sort my contacts by recent conversation, newly added, alphabetical, location or interestingly ‘lost contact’. LinkedIn gives you a list of when it thinks you last contacted certain people. A great way of deciding whether to send a message to get back in touch or to remove from your connections list.
Just a note – you can no longer send a message to a group of contacts – probably because too many people were using this for blanket spamming.

The functionality will be available in mobile devices too – though at the moment it is not available in the UK app stores.

I do have concerns about security and the lack of backup of the notes and so will be careful what I store within LinkedIn, but in general, I can see that I will make use of this new functionality to form better relationships with my LinkedIn contacts – and of course that is what LinkedIn is all about.

Have you got this new functionality yet? What do you think?

Guest Blogger
Mary Thomas
mary@concisetraining.net