For an increasingly broad range of professionals, effective negotiation is a critical skill to acquire when dealing with both colleagues and clients. This course will help you to learn some practical negotiation techniques and strategies, and to plan your negotiations to give you the greatest chance of success. Covering the principles, the preparation and the practice of negotiating skills the course combines theory with practical activities and scenarios, that will help you put what you learn into practice.
Negotiation Skills - The Principles enables you to:
- Plan all your negotiations effectively
- Identify your own negotiation style to help you improve
- Adapt your negotiation style to suit the context of the situation
- Understand how to prepare in a way that will ensure the best result for you
Principles
- What is the aim of negotiation?
- What is the context of the negotiation?
- What is win win?
- How do people negotiate?
- What makes a good negotiator?
- What are the key skills involved in negotiating?
- What is the process of negotiation?
- Why is planning important?
- What practicalities do I need to consider?
- What tools are there to help me plan?
Practice
- How should I behave during a negotiation?
- How do I trade concessions?
- How do I use the key skills in a negotiation?
- How do we come to an agreement?
- What should I do once I have come to an agreement?
This course is designed to provide an introduction to the basic skills of negotiation and is suitable for anyone who negotiates with suppliers, partners, customers or colleagues.
Professionals in all walks of life sometimes struggle to get their issues heard at the strategic level. Thinking Strategically has been designed for professionals who want to develop their strategic thinking skills. Illustrated throughout with real life activities and scenarios, this course will show you why strategy is important to all professionals, and offer tips to help you to think strategically within the organisation.
Thinking Strategically enables you to:
- Deal with uncertainty
- Question the status quo
- Use a combination of creative and analytical skills
Learning Outcomes
Strategy and you
- What is strategy?
- Why is strategy important?
- How is strategy different from planning?
- What is strategic thinking?
- Who needs to think strategically?
- How will thinking strategically improve my performance?
- When should I think strategically?
- Can thinking strategically be a bad thing?
Thinking differently
- How is thinking strategically different to what I do the rest of the time?
- What skills do I need to be able to think strategically?
- What is creative thinking?
- How do I research and analyse information?
- How do I make decisions?
- How do I communicate strategy?
- How do I handle uncertainty and change?
- Where can I find inspiration?
Theory and process
- What is the right way to do strategy?
- What strategic theory should I be aware of?
- What processes do organisations typically go through to develop strategy?
- What processes do organisations typically go through to implement strategy?
- How do I keep up with new developments?
Tools and techniques
- Why should I use strategic tools?
- How do I create a SWOT analysis?
- What internal factors should I consider?
- What external factors should I consider?
- How do I plan for the future?
- How can I measure success?
- What other tools might I need to know about?
Making it happen
- How does theory work in practice?
- How do I fit into the strategic process?
- How can I contribute to my organisation’s strategy?
- What makes a good strategy work?
- How do I monitor and evaluate what I’ve been doing?
- What other factors do I need to take into account?
- What do I do if I don’t agree with the strategy?
- When should strategy change?
Target Audience
Professionals in all areas who wish to influence effectively the strategic direction of their organisation.
Author
Anna Faherty is a writer, lecturer and consultant working across the publishing, museum and charity sectors. She has hands-on management experience as director of a multi-million pound publishing division and is currently on the board of a small independent museum.
Advanced Negotiation
The ability to negotiate effectively in any situation is a skill that can be learnt like any other. Advanced Negotiation enables you to hone and improve your negotiation techniques and strategies. You will be able to plan for complex negotiations, ensuring that the outcome of any negotiation undertaken is successful, and also learn how to handle difficult situations as they arise.
The course covers the process of negotiation, the trading of constants and variables in order to achieve a successful outcome, the balance of power and persuasion and rapport building techniques. The course will give more experienced negotiators the opportunity to refresh negotiation skills, while also providing an overview for those looking to improve their negotiation skills for the first time.
Advanced Negotiation enables you to:
- Use NLP to build rapport
- Trade concessions effectively
- Reach an acceptable conclusion for both parties by using constants and variables
- Handle difficult situations and difficult people
- Understand and avoid some of the common traps in negotiations
- Learn when not to negotiate and when to say NO!
Learning Outcomes
The principles of negotiation
- What is the aim of negotiation?
- How do people negotiate?
- What makes someone a good negotiator?
- Why is preparation so important?
Negotiation dynamics
- What are negotiation dynamics?
- What is my negotiation style?
- What is NLP and how can it help me build rapport?
- How can I make the power balance work for me?
- How do I persuade people effectively?
Preparing for complex negotiation
- When should I negotiate?
- How can I use constants and variables to prepare?
- How can I use a "range of outcomes” to plan a win win outcome?
- What common traps should I be aware of?
Trading concessions
- Why is trading concessions so important?
- How do I trade concessions effectively?
- What do I do if they won't give way on anything?
- What tactics should I recognise?
Getting out of deadlock!
- What difficult issues might I face?
- How do I deal with objections?
- How do I deal with an aggressive negotiator who refuses to budge?
- How do I resolve conflict?
- How do I create a positive atmosphere for agreement?
Target Audience
This course is suitable for experienced professionals looking to improve and refresh their skills in negotiation.
Managing Relationships
This course helps you understand the complexities of managing relationships and gives advice on how to enhance the way you interact with your colleagues.
Managing Relationships enables you to:
- Understand how influence and persuasion can help you to get what you want from your working relationships
- Generate enthusiasm and buy-in for your ideas and projects
- Achieve your objectives through delegation
- Understand why some relationships are difficult and how to improve them
- Get the most out of your colleagues, even those over whom you have no direct control
Learning Outcomes
Motivation and persuasion
- Why do I need to be persuasive?
- How can I generate enthusiasm?
- How do I motivate people?
- How do I deal with periods of change?
Delegation and responsibility
- How should I delegate?
- How do I get the results I want?
- What other issues are there?
Difficult relationships
- Why are some relationships difficult?
- How do I avoid making it worse?
- How can I improve difficult relationships?
- How should I deal with problems?
- What legalities should I be aware of?
Choosing people to work with
- How do I find the right person?
- Who should I meet?
- How should I handle a meeting?
Target Audience
This course is designed to appeal to people in all functions at all levels.
Those who are less experienced may not have considered these topics before and will find significant improvements in the way they operate and in their overall effectiveness.
More experienced or senior people will value the opportunity to spend time on these critical issues discreetly.
Networking Skills
This course includes information on the types of social media which have become predominant in modern networking, showing how they can be utilized to maximize your network. The course explains the key skills needed to make the most of any network, expand it and ensure that it meets career and business needs. Practical exercises and activities make it easy for any professional to put the sound advice into practice.
Networking Skills enables you to:
- Understand the purpose of networking and the skill sets involved
- Improve the core skills needed for building relationships
- Research and plan conversations effectively
- Make the most of conversations with existing or potential members of your network
- Manage and administer your network effectively
- Develop their network over time as your objectives change
- Understand how to keep your network under control
Learning Outcomes
What is networking?
- What is networking?
- Why should I network?
- Can’t I just use the contacts I already have?
- What skills do I need to network effectively?
Developing your network
- Who should I include in my network?
- How do I research new contacts?
- How do I prepare to network?
- How can I develop my network online?
Having conversations
- How can I start a conversation?
- How can I make sure people remember me?
- What are the key communication skills?
- How do I move on from a conversation?
- What do I do after the conversation is over?
Managing your network
- How do I keep track of my contacts?
- What routine tasks do I need to perform?
- How do I keep my network under control?
- How do I maintain the online side of my network?
Building relationships
- How should I contact my contacts?
- How do I keep my contacts happy?
- How do I get what I want from my network?
- How do I network within my organisation?
Target Audience
This course is designed to appeal to professionals at all stages of their career. Those who are less experienced may not have considered these topics before and will find significant improvements in the way they operate and in their overall effectiveness. More experienced or senior people will value the opportunity to think through their approach once more and identify potential improvements in the way they operate.
Management Thinking
Making Budgeting Work in the Real World
Budgeting seems so simple in the textbooks. So why does it often fail in practice? Stuart Warner explains the barriers to effective budgeting and enables you to create and manage budgets more successfully. The author's practical experience, coupled with many hours discussing the issues in the classroom, enables him to frame the key questions and open the debate about how to create an effective and efficient budgeting process. This course will stimulate intelligent dialogue and debate, and provide a valuable and evolving resource of professional knowledge and experience. Each module is split into two activities: Understanding the issues and Putting it into practice. The first encourages you to think about a topic, drawing on your own professional experience and knowledge. The second helps you to put ideas and/or theories into practice as part of your day-to-day work.
Making Budgeting Work in the Real World enables you to:
- Choose the most appropriate budgeting method
- Devise ways to overcome weaknesses in their current budgeting system
- Consider ways of better communicating and presenting budgets to non-financial staff
- Meet the varying budget preparation needs of different departments
Learning Outcomes
Things aren’t what they seem
- Advice from the sages of budgeting
- The budgeting cycle
- Top down or bottom up?
- The link between planning and budgeting
- Organisational time and resource
Alternative budgeting systems
- Budgeting and/or forecasting
- Rolling versus fixed period budgeting
- Incremental versus ZBB
- Functional versus ABB
- Life cycle budgeting
Issues in setting budgets
- Approaches to forecasting budgets
- Using spreadsheets for budgeting
- Organisational culture
- Non-finance budget holders
- The participation debate
- The perennial negotiation battle
- Budgets as an evaluation and reward tool
Monitoring and presenting budgets
- A suitable management tool?
- A true measure of performance?
- When to budget?
- Vulnerable variances
- Presentation pitfalls
The future of budgeting
- Is traditional budgeting dead?
- Living with budgets
- Beyond budgeting Part 1: Adaptive management
- Beyond budgeting Part 2: Decentralised decision making
Target Audience
This course is designed to appeal to professionals, both in finance functions and other areas, who are looking for a practical course that enables them to apply budgeting theory and knowledge in their own organisation.
Author
Over the years Stuart Warner BSc (Hons), ACA, NLP Practitioner, has taught thousands of accountants to pass their professional exams and kept them up to date once qualified. He has written and delivered numerous finance training courses, both face-to-face and using e-learning technology. He has authored exams, audio guides, podcasts, training videos and most recently he has published a book on finance.
Managing People
Leadership Skills
Now updated to include information on transformational leadership and goal translation this course will help you to develop your leadership skills and use them to provide direction for your team. The course also includes how to manage cross-functional teams and write effective mission statements.
Leadership Skills enables you to:
- Think about what it means to be a manager whether in practice or in industry
- Understand the three levels of management and apply them in practice
- Recognise the main leadership styles and judge which approach to take in different situations
- Differentiate between goals and objectives and understand how they relate to one another
- Translate the goals of the company as a whole into individual "SMART" objectives
- Use ongoing performance criteria to manage your team more effectively
Learning outcomes
Management
- What is management?
- What are the three levels of management?
- Who is a manager?
- What is organisational structure?
Leadership
- What is leadership?
- What are the main leadership styles?
- What makes an effective leader?
- How can leadership styles help me?
Goal translation
- What is goal translation?
- Why do we need goal translation?
- What are mission statements?
- What are goals and objectives?
- How do we write good objectives?
Ongoing performance criteria
- What are ongoing performance criteria?
- What are accountabilities?
- What are standards?
- What are competencies?
- What are personal development plans?
Target audience
This course is designed to appeal to both those that manage others or who wish to develop management skills as part of their personal and professional development. It is equally well suited for those in practice and in industry.
Those who are new to management or are preparing to take on a management role will find that this course provides an understanding of the leadership skills they will need to progress and how to develop them.
More experienced or senior managers will value the opportunity to spend time refreshing or developing their leadership skills.
Managing Professionals for Results
To manage professionals to best effect you need to develop a variety of managerial skills. This course will help you hone your leadership skills to enable you to point your team in the best direction, improve your ability to coach and get the best out of your team, and help you position yourself within the team to act as a role model and effectively balance your team's workload.
This course will stimulate intelligent dialogue and debate, and provide a valuable and evolving resource of professional knowledge and experience. Each module is split into two activities: Understanding the issues and Putting it into practice. The first encourages you to think about a topic, drawing on your own professional experience and knowledge. The second helps you to put ideas and/or theories into practice as part of your day-to-day work.
This course will stimulate intelligent dialogue and debate, and provide a valuable and evolving resource of professional knowledge and experience. Each module is split into two activities: Understanding the issues and Putting it into practice. The first encourages you to think about a topic, drawing on your own professional experience and knowledge. The second helps you to put ideas and/or theories into practice as part of your day-to-day work.
Managing Professionals for Results enables you to:
- Think about what management is and how to nurture a talent for managing people
- Look at how your coaching and leadership skills affect your team
- Think about the best approaches to use when managing professionals
- Examine the different roles managers are expected to take as part of their team and how to effectively fulfil these different roles and manage from within a team
- Effectively give feedback to the people on your team and also avoid or resolve any conflict which arises on the team
Learning outcomes
What is management?
- Defining management
- Types of management
- Managing different resources
- Structure and teams
- Team growth
Being a leader
- The ideal leader
- Leadership styles
- Goal translation
- Setting objectives
- Using ongoing performance criteria
Being a coach
- The ideal coach
- Motivation
- Adapting your style
- Individual feedback
- Identifying performance problems
- Group feedback
Being part of the team
- Delegating effectively
- Balancing workloads
- Being a role model
- Offering help
- Dealing with conflict
- Communicating effectively
Target audience
This course is designed to appeal to all professionals who manage a team of any size.
Managing High Performing Teams
The most effective teams are not people who are simply told what to do, they are a team of individuals that know how to work together and handle the tasks that arise in the best way possible.
Successful team management can provide a multitude of benefits to an organisation. A high performing team increases morale, improves productivity and efficiency and provides better overall organisational performance.
This course will equip managers to create, develop and nurture a streamlined team. Learners will understand the different stages of team development, how to adopt the most appropriate approach and how to handle issues such as team performance, politics, dynamics and power structures.
Managing High Performing Teams enables you to:
- Understand your role within the team, what your team needs and how to focus your management inputs to provide this
- Give the team direction by translating business goals into team goals and objectives
- Adapt your behaviour to achieve better results and enhanced team performance
- Balance your own work with the needs of the team, therefore increasing your productivity
- Delegate effectively and provide help without taking over, enabling your team members to learn the skills that they need to do their job better
Learning outcomes
What makes a team?
- What is a team?
- What do we mean by "high performing"?
- What affects how a team functions?
- How do individuals' attitudes affect the team?
- What are the four stages of team development?
- What is the manager's role in a high performing team?
Forming
- How do I know if my team is at the "forming" stage?
- What does the team need from me at the forming stage?
- How can I provide leadership to my team?
- How can I give my team direction?
- What should my focus be at this stage?
Storming
- How do I know if my team is at the "storming" stage?
- What does the team need from me at the storming stage?
- How should I coach my team through conflict?
- How can I give effective feedback?
- What should my focus be at this stage?
Norming
- How do I know if my team is "norming"?
- What does the team need from me at the norming stage?
- How can I step back and support the team at the same time?
- How can I provide help without taking over?
- What should my focus be at this stage?
Performing
- How do I know if my team is "performing"?
- What does the team need from me once they are performing?
- How can we ensure we communicate well as a team?
- How do I balance my time as worker and manager?
- What should my focus be once my team is performing?
Target audience
This course will appeal to people at all levels.
New managers, or those preparing to take the role on, will be equipped to create, manage and nurture a streamlined team. More experienced or senior managers will be value the opportunity to refresh their skills and approach.
Managing from Within the Team
This course helps managers to balance these two roles, manage their team’s workload and delegate effectively. The course takes you through how to successfully communicate at different levels within your organisation as well as how to avoid or else manage conflict within your team.
Managing from Within the Team enables you to:
- Get the balance right between doing and managing
- Manage their time well and delegate effectively
- Be conscious of their responsibility as role model to the team and what it involves
- See how their behaviour can shape the behaviour of others
- Know when and how to offer help to team members
- Provide help to team members without taking over
Learning outcomes
Balancing personal workload
- How do I balance my own work with the needs of the team?
- How should I delegate
- How do I balance my team's workload
- How do I make sure I am effective?
- How should I manage my time?
- What is a role model?
- How can I be a role model?
- How should my team view me?
- How should I behave?
- How can I communicate?
- How do I help when I have been asked?
- How do I help when I have not been asked?
- How do I help members of the team without taking over?
- What skills do I need to provide help
- How should I deal with conflict within the team?
Target audience
This course is designed to appeal to people working at all levels, whether they manage others or wish to develop management skills as part of their personal and professional development.
Those who are new to management or preparing to take on a management role will find that this course provides invaluable guidance on how to approach the role of manager within a team.
More experienced managers will value the opportunity to spend time brushing up on their skills and refreshing their approach to management.
