Case Study

Rhema Group’s training partnership with professional institution for range of business and management skills.

Selected as the training partner for an historic UK professional institution, Rhema accepted a broad and demanding brief to design and deliver the majority of the organisation’s soft skills training.

Headquartered in London with a presence in over 100 other countries, the client is an organisation with a long history of dedication to progressing the highly-skilled profession it serves and is also a qualifying body, a centre for the exchange of specialist knowledge and a provider of resources to encourage worldwide innovation and excellence. Over 77,000 individual professionals are served by the organisation’s managers and staff.

Rhema’s training partnership involves working closely with the client, under the organisation’s direction on scope and topics, to create and deliver a variety of training inputs. These are in the form of workshops and programmes, some mandatory and others elective, in a mix of 2-hour, half-day and full-day sessions which in 2006 totalled 90 days of training for managers and staff.

A team of five Rhema trainers is led by Director William Burton, who has added value to the courses by including trainers with specialist knowledge and experience in certain areas – including an accountant to deliver the Finance for non-Financial Managers course and a former magistrate with specific legal knowledge for the Data Protection aspects of the training.

The training programmes are available to managers and staff in all areas of the organisation and a feature of this approach to training is that people from different disciplines and cultures within the organisation attend the courses giving Rhema the task of properly and appropriately serving different individual needs simultaneously.

The 21 courses which Rhema is running include:

• Strategic Management Skills, for people established in their roles and looking to improve performance and enhance skills in areas such as managing change, strategic planning and communicating the Senior Management vision to the team as well as remote and virtual team management techniques.
• Advanced Presentation Skills, aimed at those who frequently give presentations and want to hone their skills and take in the wider issues of improving personal impact and effective communication.
• Assertiveness Skills, dealing with assertive behaviours to achieve win/win outcomes without dominating or manipulating others and “saying what needs to be said” or saying “no” without offending.
• Business Writing and Grammar Skills.
• Client Service Skills, exploring techniques which enable participants to exceed their clients’ expectations on a regular basis.
• Conflict Management, using conflict constructively to create a more open environment and stimulate creativity and innovation.
• Influencing Skills.
• Leading Teams.
• Managing Clients.
• Negotiating skills.
• Project Management.

Management Coaching Initiative for global vendor leasing operator

As a follow-on to Project Management training previously provided by Rhema Group, a global vendor leasing organisation has now commissioned Rhema to provide formal Project Management Coaching for ten of its key Project Managers in Europe. The coaching takes the form of bi-weekly sessions spread over four months, with Rob Clark as their PM coach. Delegates are encouraged to identify general and specific issues surrounding the projects that they are currently running and how to implement CORE, their chosen Project Management method. The coaching also provides delegates with a practical opportunity to incorporate a wider range of Project Management Best Practice techniques.

The approach covers the full spectrum of coaching from Non-Directive (PULL – Helping someone solve their own problems) to Directive (PUSH – Solving someone’s problems for them). The coaching deals wide a wide range of issues related to project and programme management including many of the softer skills required to ensure that projects deliver successfully. Additionally work is being completed in real time with direct input to the development of good project documentation on live projects.

Delegates bring real project problems to the sessions where these and their possible solutions are discussed for immediate implementation. Back-up telephone and e-mail support is offered between the formal training sessions.

Overall objectives of the initiative can be summarised as –

• To produce capable people to run successful projects
• To implement Project Management tools and techniques
• To build on the training investment

Results

• Projects on schedule
• Key project documentation in place
• Definition of additional training needs
• Delegates development objectives met