Author Archives: simonr

Online confidence training

online confidence training

online confidence training

Anyone who’s been at one of our in-house training courses will know that our on-line training resources are available for free… but now…

This should have a fanfare or something, honestly! 🙂

Our set of three confidence modules are available to everyone!

Module one looks at confidence in the day to day: it’s about resilience, emotional robustness and mental toughness. In short it’s about ‘coping’.
http://www.mindflash.com/199146684/confidence-%231—resilience/

Module two looks at confidence for the big events – presentations, best man speeches, interviews, meetings wtih the boss….
http://www.mindflash.com/196962916/confidence-%232—big-moments!/

Module three looks at how to act assertively and the tools of being assertive (particularly at work but in life generally)
http://www.mindflash.com/196962917/confidence-%233—acting-assertively/

Do, please, spread the word! 🙂

MBTI Step 2 – a bit more detail.

I recently wrote a short blog about the differences between step one and step two MBTI profiles and promised to explore things in a bit more detail. With apologies for the delay, here’s a bit more information…

Remember that the Step 1 profile simply defines you as E or I (for example). The Step 2 profile breaks that down into five subscales.

Party image

Party time

As an example of how it works, the first subscale looks at how ‘immediately approachable‘ you are. I often describe it along the lines of “suppose you’re at a party – this is the measure of how easily you can go up to strangers and say ‘Hi, my names’s Fred’…”.  That’s a bit of an oversimplification but it’ does well enough to start to conversation going.

Notice that all this does is measure the initial E-ness (is that a word?). It doesn’t measure the other things to do with being an Extravert such as how you recharge your batteries or how much of your thinking is done out loud – there are other subscales to measure those.

Importantly, the different subscales can now start to measure different aspects of how E or I you are. You may be generally an E but find it difficult to initiate conversations with strangers – so your overall E score might have a value for the subscale I’ve just described which is much less E… in fact your subscale might even by I!  (These are called OOPSs by the way – Out Of Preference Score – was there ever a better acronym? 🙂 )

With 20 of these subscales to play with, there’s a wealth of information available in the Step 2 score.  And, of course, it gets even more fascinating in the hands of a skilled MBTI facilitator (us, anyone?) because they’ll be able to look at how these subscales interact with each other.

MBTI2 vs MBTI 1 – a quickie

I recently described MBTI step 2 as being as far ahead of the ‘traditional’ MBTI (now known as step 1) as the MBTI1 is beyond astrology. I thought it might be nice, in the light of their confused reaction (“MBTI too what?”) to explore some of the pros and cons of MBTI step 2 to vs MBTI step 1.

MBTI logo

MBTI logo

The main difference between MBTI1 and MBTI2 is this: whereas the step one profile (something like INTJ) breaks personality down into four binary division, giving 16 ‘Types’ of personality, MBTI step 2 breaks each of the four divisions into five subscales. That gives a total of twenty measures of personality… That’s a massive increase in how specific the MBTI profile can be!

So then, here goes with a whistle-stop MBTI-comparison! 🙂

Let’s start by looking at the cons… to my mind they tend to be more logistic than conceptual but that could be just me! 🙂

  • it’s more expensive – that’s not to be sneezed at if you’ve got a group, to be honest and it’s not something your MBTI practitioner can do anything about
  •  it takes longer to debrief – there’s so much more information it can take quite a while for people to get their brains around it: because of this extra information, it’s worth seriously considering one-to-one debriefs of the MBTI profile
  •  the mathematical details of exactly how it’s constructed aren’t public – the beauty of MBTI 1 is that the principles are very easily understood but the statistics behind step 2 aren’t made public
  • it’s probably best done with an MBTI step 1 to explain all the principles.

To be honest the last point is just an attempt to reduce the costs – you don’t have to do it with an MBTI1 at all – it’s just cheaper to do a group introduction. Actually, having said that, a group MBTI session has all kinds of advantages in terms of the exercises and group interactions that can be explored, so perhaps a group MBTI1 is the best option.

I should probably confess something here, too, at risk of sounding horribly conceited: on my training sessions to qualify as an MBTI2 practitioner we discussed the statistical issues behind it – and frankly I was the only one in my group interested (and probably one of only a few in the country to be able to understand it… a PhD which relies on statistical analysis does funny things to a man for the rest of his life! 🙂  )

Okay, now for a brief idea about the pros…

  • more information – more information – more information!  Did you get that there’s more information?
  • it takes more account of the inevitable “yes but” responses that people have because it more easily allows (compared to the MBTI1 process) for things like “I’m generally E but…”
  • it begins to account (quite strongly in fact) for situational issues and – in a lot of circumstances – behavioural ones too. One of the big weaknesses of MBTI1 is that it’s a bit crude (you’re E or I, for example) whereas MBTI2 can recognise that for example you are “Generally E but will behave as an I when…”
I have to admit, as an MBTI practitioner, I love this extra flexibility. Personally, I find there’s so much information in the MBTI2 that the best way to explore it with clients is to ‘do an MBTI1’ first so that the principles are firmly fixed and then to go on to look at the MBTI2 results in the context of those principles – otherwise it can all be a bit overwhelming.
Okay – speaking of overwhelming, that’ll do. Next time I’ll work through one of the five sets of subscales so you can see exactly what I’m talking about… it’s all a bit abstract at the moment (and I duly apologies to all S-preferences out there! 🙂  )

Stress and the book launch!

Okay, okay, it’s late.  But not very late.

Simon’s new book should have been available today but it isn’t – sorry!

So where is it?  It’s out at review… means it’s not far away at all, and that means that if you want to be right at the front of the queue you can let us know and we’ll email you personally when it’s finally(!) released.

The plan is that this short book (it’s under 50 sides of A4) will take a lot of the stress out of designing (and delivering presentations). Of course, presenting will always be a cause of stress, but a lot of the stress-management tools we talk about will help there, too! 🙂

In other news, we’re also working on an audio of Bamboo and Oak, our big stress-buster presentation. It’s being edited at the moment and should be available over the summer at some point.

In the meantime, enjoy the sunshine (it won’t last!)

MBTI – the interview :)

MBTI can be a bit of an abstract concept sometimes: chatting about it sometimes helps, so we were happy to chat, here… it’s not Simon’r finest hour, in terms of dress-sense but what the heck…. 🙂  

Teacher stress – a tool

I talked last post (called with little imagination ‘Teacher Stress’) about the fact that teachers are somewhat special in the way they have to deal with stress because many of the tools that are available to ‘normal’ people can’t be used by classroom-facing teachers.

I’d like to explore in this blog a technique that does work for teachers. The plan isn’t to deal with stress, it’s to make teachers more immune to stress and more ’emotionally robust’.

Culturally (I’m writing in the UK) we find it very difficult to say “I’m really good at this”. Some people can, of course – but even then not everyone who says it believes it. With teachers’ being judged by external factors so much, this lack of self belief can get pretty serious. We often start to believe that we’re genuinely not good at anything – and feeling like this is a sure fire recipe for being vulnerably to stress… if you don’t feel able to admit to yourself that you’re a good teacher (or good parent or trainer or accountant or whatever!) and then the proof comes in that you’re not, in the form of bad results in this year’s GCSE or Value Added Scores… you can see where this can lead!

So here’s the tool.

Create a table with three columns (a simple sheet of A4 will do, it doesn’t need to be on a computer, or even be neat!) and label the right hand column “Acts”. In it, jot down half a dozen things you’ve done successfully in the last 72 hours. Most people protest that they’ve not achieved anything in their last 72 hours when I use this exercise as part of our stress management training but that’s not the point – it doesn’t have to be something that turns the world around.

In my case I’ve been known to include driving to the venue without crashing or (as far as I was aware) breaking any laws. One client included getting dressed in the morning which seemed to me to be a great example because everyone does it! (If someone else dressed them in the morning they clearly have a far more interesting life than I do!). Leave a bit of space between each of the items on your list and dont’ get stressed if you can’t immediately create six. Half a dozen is an approximate number!

When you’ve listed your successes, label the middle column “Skills”.

Each of your successes is based upon (at least!) one skill so beside each Act, jot down a skill it’s based upon. Don’t take the word Skill too literally – anything that the Act is predicated on will do.

For example, if I get to a training venue on time (a success) it is predicated on an ability to drive (or a could have picked ‘plan’ or ‘navigate’ etc).  (I should add, in case anyone is doubting me, that I have always got to training venues on time, this is just an example! 🙂 )

I suggest taking a break before the next bit – the metaphorical cup of tea sounds like a good idea!

Step three is simple – each Skill is built in turn upon (at least!) on “Fundamental”. Label the left hand column that way and (the obvious bit here!) list a Fundamental for each of the Skills (and hence each of the Acts).

Take another break – there’s nothing worse than getting stressed by the exercise itself!

Now have a look at the list of things you have in your left hand column. These are basic, fundamental, important and timeless things that are

  • about you
  • true
  • positive.

The important thing to remember is that no matter what may or may not go right tomorrow.  If you get stressed every time things like these go wrong you’re going to suffer from a lot of stress! But by drawing attention to the fundamental, positive things about you, you’ve now got a tool to fight that response with.

Just because this year’s value added is negative doesn’t automatically mean you’re a bad teacher and should get stressed! Go back to your list and remind yourself of the important, long-term, robust positives!

If you’re a teacher, your mileage will vary, of course, but personally I use  this technique every six months or so to keep my list fresh and in my mind – or whenever I’m told to use it by one or two of my most trusted friends (who spot when I’m getting wound up long, long before I do!). I realise that training and teaching are different in many ways but there are similarities too: live by the feedback form, die by the feedback form! 🙂

I’ll look next time at a couple of techniques for dealing with stress using physiological tools for when stress does get to you in the classroom!

You may want to know a bit about our stress INSET for teachers

Presentations and confidence in Oxford

Hospital entrance

Hospital Entrance

Some social responsibility news! Anyone who’s worked with us for a long time knows about our social responsibility programme (we call it our 13% policy) and as part of that we’ve just agreed to do two workshops for the Thames Valley Cancer Network at the John Radcliffe Hospital over the next couple of weeks.

We’re going to be doing a workshop session on confidence & resilience and another on presentation skills.

And at the same time stay with friends… what could be better! 🙂

Myths in training – why researching your material is a good plan! ;)

Anyone who’s taken any training from us in confidence, credibility or communication skills will know we get hot under the collar about the myth that only seven percent of the meaning of a verbal communication is contained in the words.

Trainers who should know better cite the work of Prof Albert Mehrabian without actually checking their facts. The myth has been debunked time and time again – including by the good prof himself! – but that doesn’t stop it creeping into the content of some trainers (can you tell we’ve come across this recently and it’s pushed our “get annoyed” button? 🙂  )

There are  a lot (seriously, an awful lot!) of places to debunk the myth, but this video is a fun way to do it… enjoy!

A bit of a brag… :)

Some of you will know that we have up our sleeve a big presentation called “Bamboo and Oak” and you’ll know we delivered it to headline the Norther HR Briefing…… and  the results are in! Here’s the feedback comment section:

Very interesting, good to finish session on a high.  Good techniques delivered and will be tested.

So refreshing.

Different and challenging.

Very helpful, well presented – will try these things.

Fab.

Some useful practical tools that I will use back at the office.

Some really good hints and tips and I think Simon should sell his Renault and buy a Porsche!

Some useful tools/tips.

Practical.

Very helpful.

Very applicable.

Best speaker – really enjoyed.

Very useful stress busting techniques.

Excellent delivery and content.  Good use and explanation of tools and story telling.  Very engaging.

Good ideas well presented.  Stimulating and enjoyable.

Uplifting finish – well planned.

Great ideas for keeping sane at work. 

Time to break out the smarties and have a cup of tea to celebrate, I think.  🙂

Online training courses

Great new for all you time-short people!

The first three of our online training courses are now available here. There are about half a dozen more to come but for now we’ve got up three courses on confidence, designed to help anyone who needs a bit more confidence in their lives and work or who’s getting stressed about having to say ‘no’, take a bit more control of their lives or cope with the big events.  Enjoy!