Training design, delivery and follow up

1. How we design our training programmes

2. How we deliver them

3. How we follow-up

THE ATTITUDE
Behind everything we do is a spirit of ‘doing the job right’. Or, to be more precise: ‘do the job as right as we can possibly do it’. We work to four key values:

1. Practicality
There’s no point attending a training course which ends up as an interesting intellectual exercise, but doesn’t actually give you useful ways of doing the job better. Everything you’ll learn in a Communication Game course is focused on helping you and your people work increasingly well.

2. Due Diligence
One of the challenges with the very concept of due diligence lies in the question of “Just how much diligence is due?” Of course, DFVP does a pretty good job of answering that. But, for us, the journey never ends, and you can be reasonably confident that our obsessiveness with making our training as DFVP as we possibly can is hard-wired not only into the content, but every step of our interaction with you and your team.

3. Humility
For us, humility is the natural bedfellow of Due Diligence. We are so alive to the inevitability of our blind-spots, and we welcome your input any and every step of the way. How can we make this easier, clearer, ever-more robust, ever more enjoyable? Talking of which…

4. …Good humour
As we’ve surely made clear by now, we know that getting this stuff right has massive consequences, so we take it very seriously. But with all this diligence and humility, it would be only too easy to end up somewhat prissy and sanctimonious. And apart from being rather unattractive, that would be just plain boring – for you and for us. So it’s really important to us that we all have a good time. And, importantly, this feeds right back into ‘practicality’ -because having groovy chemicals, like serotonin, swimming around in our brains makes it easier for us all to learn.

THE CONTENT

Decades of hands-on experience
Many people claim that ‘those who can, do; those who can’t, teach’. We kind of scupper that idea though, because we both do and teach. So the basis of what we teach is rooted in decades of on-going experience in the public and private sectors . And it also comes from decades of studying behavioural linguistics and psychoneuroendocrinology – which has given us a wealth of insights into why people at work do what they do.

Modelled using BS0
BS0 is the British Standard for putting together British Standards (which in turn provide the basis for 40% of the world’s ISO standards). So, as robust methods go, this is about as good as it gets. And the content of all Communication Game training rests on a foundation of practice standards which the team put together by following BS0 to the letter. In fact, we’ve gone one step further because, unlike BS0, DFVP of course requires us to show our workings out.

So, along with the models, insights and techniques, you’ll also receive the relevant standards that lie behind them, and the ‘workings out’ which back them up.

PREP
Of course, people can do some of that prep on this site. But we also ask every delegate to complete a pre-course questionnaire, which asks them to identify:

• where they are now,
• the impact it’s having on them and your organisation, and
• where they want to get to.

And we analyse each of these and, if needs be, arrange a call to clarify anything we’re not sure about before the training starts. That means we should know where everyone’s at when they arrive at the first session, what their concerns are, and where they’re trying to get to.

LIMITED CLASS SIZES
We limit the size of our live classes. In a classroom setting – whether in person or online – ours not ‘training for the masses’; we need to be sure we’re keeping track of how each learner is getting on. (Inevitably our e-learning has to work differently).

STYLE
We use brain-friendly learning techniques in every part of our training. So we keep ‘chalk and talk’ to a minimum. Instead there’s a smorgasbord of games and puzzles. If it’s in-class training, one minute you may be on a treasure hunt; the next you might be playing ‘catch’ with bars of chocolate. (Obviously that’s trickier online, but even then the courses are still highly interactive.) And every exercise is designed to help you embed another piece of learning.

FEEDBACK
We don’t believe in the ‘happy sheets’ many training companies use. We hand out our feedback sheets at the beginning. Before each module we discuss what we’ll be covering, and invite each trainee to relate it to the challenges they identified in their pre-course questionnaire.

At the end of each module, everyone gets to review what they’ve learned – against those challenges. And they give serious consideration to how it can help them tackle that issue a little bit better – if they were to put it into practice. But are they actually going to follow-through? At this point we get everyone to identify anything they feel may still be standing in the way of their desire or ability to use this piece of learning.

This means that, by the end of the course each individual should have a clear picture of what they need to do, and what additional support they may yet need. And of course, you or your line manager can get that clear picture too. That’s how you continue the credible dialogue about what it will take to make IC Leadership work.

ONE TO ONES
We feel it would be senseless for you to invest all that time with us if we were simply going to walk away afterwards. We arrange follow ups with each trainee after each course (and even between sessions if that’s what people need).

This is not just to support them by answering any technical questions they may have (although that’s obviously valuable in itself). We’re also keen to understand if there are any political or ‘personality’ blocks they’ve encountered which might be getting in the way.

And we’ll have a mop up session with you to discover if there’s any other support you may need to get to where you want to be.

ON-GOING DEVELOPMENT
Because this is a never-ending journey, we’ll be happy if you want to be kept up to date with any developments we may not yet even foresee. Or to tell us what updates you’d find useful, or any other ideas you may have for building a world where DFVP internal communication is the norm rather than the exception.