The Learning and Development Group provides a forum for members who work in Learning and Development or who have a key role or interest in people and organisational development.
The group was set up with the aim of recognising the importance of L&D in the field of HR and to provide interesting and innovative opportunties for members to share and develop their knowledge and skills.
Come and join us - you will be made very welcome!
Dates for your Diary:
Thursday 21 October 2010 - Talent Management, in partnership with Worcester University Business School.
Tuesday 16 November 2010
Wednesday 19 January 2011
Tuesday 22 March 2011
Thursday 19 May 2011
Wednesday 6 July 2011
All meetings will be held at The Swan, Whittington, 6.30pm for 7pm. See our event listings for further details.
Building Teams - How to run a successful team building event
The L&D Group Meeting on 18 March invited members to come along and share their experience of teambuilding events and exercises, either as a trainer or team member. It also offered members a preview of the CIPD Toolkit ‘Team Development Exercises’, written by Alison Hardingham & Charlotte Ellis.
It was a lively evening, starting with a ‘Getting to Know Each Other ’icebreaker exercise from the Toolkit, to encourage people to interact and find out a little more about each other - including a prize for the best score, to give the exercise a competitive edge!
We also explored some well-known tools for team building including Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Firo B and Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI). There was some lively debate on the pros and cons of each of these personality profiling tools and their value in teambuilding.
We sampled a number of the exercises in the Toolkit, including a team creativity exercise using metaphors and an exercise for building relationships in virtual teams. A challenging exercise for everyone was ‘Dialogue-ing’, an exercise which encourages team members to communicate in the spirit of genuine curiosity and exploration – no judgements or decisions allowed!
Overall the group thought the Toolkit was a good resource for both Trainers and Team Managers. It does include exercises with different levels of facilitation from the most straightforward exercises, which a team manager could use in an way day or team meeting, to those that require an experienced facilitator.
The evening provided a great opportunity to have a taster of some of the exercises in the Team Development Toolkit and everyone went away with some ideas they could use .
Full details on the Team Development Exercises Toolkit can be found on the CIPD website – www.cipd.co.uk/bookstore
MEMORY MAGIC (How to remember Whatshername)
In our world of data overload and the pressure to retain more and more information how often do you find you forget names, passwords, shopping lists – even why you’ve walked into a room?
Well hopefully you attended the Memory Magic L&D SIG event in December 2009. It was a dark winter evening but despite this there was a great turnout at UCW.
It was facilitated by Ann Grindrod from Simply Learning and Brain in Business who has experience of severe memory loss in the past. She taught us a number of tools and techniques to help us improve our memory skills. ‘Willing’ volunteers where selected and members of the group remembered their names using tools such as rhyme, nature, book or film titles and association. We learnt that we could remember all the volunteers’ names by using, for example, imagination, being creative and counting.
Other important memory pointers were colour, reviewing learning, drinking lots of water, understanding how learning styles affect memory and most importantly believing in your ability to remember.
Ann’s personal experiences and enthusiasm meant the time flew by and everyone came away with new tricks to improve their memory.
Penny West
H&W Branch Member
CAN MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT REALLY WORK?
Can Management Development Really Work? That was the burning question for the evening, when Hereford and Worcester branch joined forces with the University of Worcester Business School to hold their first joint business event on 29 September.
The event looked at the challenges faced in designing and delivering effective management and leadership development against a backdrop of national and global economic uncertainty.
With organisations needing to make effective use of training and development budgets, management development that provides a provable return on investment is of key importance.
The event explored the use of ‘Action Learning’ in management development and how it is of particular relevance to organisations today. This is a method where groups of managers, or professionals, help each other solve the real organisational challenges they face, through a structured collaborative peer-coaching process. This combines both action with learning.
Dr. David Collier, Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the University answered the question ‘Management Development: How can it Really Work?’. Dr. Collier has over 20 years experience in designing and delivering management development to a range of national and global organisations and is a strong advocate of work-based action learning methods.
He said: “Unfortunately a lot of formal management training leads to little change in performance, behaviour or the bottom line. So it becomes a cost not an investment. Action–based development, such as action learning, helps to bridge that gap. “
The event examined the benefits of action learning and delegates had an opportunity to experience key aspects of the action learning process.
The business school also offered the group an opportunity to provide feedback for the development of their forthcoming MA in Professional Practice which uses work-based learning and action learning. If any CIPD member would like to get involved in this programme development contact David Collier at d.collier@worc.ac.uk. For more information on the management programmes at the Business School contact Vicki Lancey at v.lancey@worc.ac.uk
For more information, contact Nichola McKay, Branch Learning and Development Champion, Tel: 07772 204173, nichola.mckay@btinternet.com.