I have recently been attending a course called Managing People for Growth run by Scottish Enterprise. It was a hybrid online and in person course and while I would say that the in person training was more effective, the whole course has been useful.
As usual with such general courses, some of it will be more useful and applicable than others. This post is therefore mostly a guide to the things I found useful along with links to online resources for the techniques covered for reference.
Things I had seen before
A lot of the course covered topics I was already aware of, but it was useful to get a refresher on these subjects such as:
- Start Stop Continue
- Question Types
- Encouraging Diversity
- SMART Targets
- The GROW model of coaching
- Mind Maps
New ideas
Alongside the familiar techniques there was also a welcome amount of useful new material including:
- Time use pie charting
- Fist to Five
- Identifying and eliminating irritators
- Push-Pull management
- Conflict resolving styles
- Accountability Ladder
Missed Opportunities
There were a few things I might have liked to see in place of some of the less useful material. Inevitably since I am aware of them this would have been revision for me, but might have been useful for others
- The benefits of assigning time in a calendar over a simple task list
- A discussion of Agile practices
- The Pomodoro Technique and similar methods
Thoughts on the course
Generally the course was well structured and engaging. There were a few elements introduced that are either controversial or debunked such as the 7/38/55 rule. However generally speaking most of the advice was practical and supported by evidence or at least easy to experiment with to see if it suits your style. I think on balance the course would have worked better entirely in person. It had clearly been designed for in person training when first designed. The hybrid style felt more like a cost saving exercise than an intentional choice.
As part of the course I had to produce a feedback presentation which can be found here. Note that the person icons in the presentation represent me experimenting with a great new Powerpoint feature for online presentation. This is called Cameo and allows you to insert your camera feed into slides in a much more professional looking way than the standard Teams style box in the corner.
