In the summer of 2008 I wrote a blog called How To Be Brave.  It proved to be one of our most popular blogs hit-wise.  So I followed it up with  How To Be Brave: The Return.  Now I’m aiming at an all-out workshop on the topic!

So on Saturday 20 Feb 10 2010 I’ll be delivering a 1-day workshop at Queen’s University called To Boldly Go: How to Be Fearless.  Here’s the blurb.

Always do what you are afraid to do, said Emerson. Very well. But how? This workshop will provide you with a toolbox of techniques to overcome your personal fears in everyday life. Choose which work for you. All are immediately applicable. Whether you lack self-assurance when it comes to social occasions, public speaking, or interviews, fear not, confidence is at hand.

Having successfully completed this course, you will be able to:
1. Understand the biology of fear responses and triggers within the human body and your own personality
2. Use a selection of psychological and practical techniques to reduce or overcome these fear habits
3. Develop your own sense of self-confidence and self-esteem

This workshop will be run as part of the Queen’s University Open Learning Programme.  Please click here to find out how to enrol.  The course cost is only £25 (no concessions).  There is a class size limit of 18 to facilitate greater interaction.

It takes guts to sign up on a course and talk into that classroom, knowing that you’ll have to meet new people and do new things.  Take your first step to fearlessness by enroling.

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar. ~Raymond Lindquist

This two day workshop will take place on Wednesday – Thursday, 17-18 February 10, 09:30-16:30.  Speaker: Dawn Baird.

The realities of modern work life – flat structures, tough workloads and the need to exert influence across traditional boundaries – ensure that assertiveness skills are not an optional extra.  Aggression is unacceptable; passivity is ineffective.

Previous attendees of this workshop have said:

Met and surpassed.  Enjoyed especially session on emotional intelligence – had heard about it but didn’t know alot about it.  Really enjoyable course.  Professional trainers and also enthusiastic participants helped to make it enjoyable and relevant to me.

Emma Rollins, Assistant Tourism Development Officer, Ards Council

I found the course very interesting and practical, the blend of theory and practical solutions on how to behave assertively exceed my expectations before the course.   I really enjoyed the course.  I thought Dawn and Allen were great trainers who put the group at ease and explained their subject matter very well.

Elaine Vaughan, HR Officer, Police Ombudsman

In this workshop you will learn a powerful set of techniques and how to use them in specific workplace scenarios, such as when negotiating or influencing.  Also covered are the relationships between assertiveness and more general work-related issues, like the conflict created when giving criticism and receiving feedback.

Allen Baird will no longer be c0-speaking at this event, as originally announced.

To book a place, contact Marc Forte at the School of Education (Short Courses Programmes) on 028 9097 5260 or email cpd@qub.ac.uk.

Image credit: prajuvikas.

In the first blog in this series I mentioned that I’m delivering (for the second time) a 1-day course in Queen’s University called What Men Want: How To Manage the Men in Your Life.  Although this is a course about men for women, it got me thinking about what it is – if anything – that all men might want.  Here are some suggestions.

Author John Eldredge has a very frank take on What Men Want (as he explains on this video clip).  For Eldredge, it consists of three things:

• A battle to fight
• A beauty to rescue
• An adventure to live

Jayson Gaddis, men’s coach and counselor, likewise posits a three-fold want in an excellent articled called Why Many Men Are Still Boys and What Can Be Done About It.  Jason’s ‘solution’ for modern men is a potent mixture of:

• Initiation into manhood
• Mentorship
• A Men’s Circle

Or trial, teacher and tribe, to put it a little differently.

For myself, I find it easier to answer the question of what we men need.  Martin Seligman makes a three-part distinction between:

1. The Pleasant Life – a life of pleasure
2. The Good Life – a life of engagement
3. The Meaningful life – a life of purpose

Although a meaningful life is the ‘highest’ level lived experience for a man, it doesn’t negate the other two.  They are not like different judo belts that you must put off and take on as you ascend to mastery.  I think they are better pictured as concentric circles with the meaningful life encompassing and providing perspective for the rest.

As a man matures i.e. transforms from a boy to a man, he shifts in three ways:

1. His experience of pleasure moves from the quantitative to the qualitative, with greater powers of impulse control and responsibility available to him.
2. The tasks he chooses to engage in require increasing levels of challenge and skill, and so that he constantly experiences new levels of learning about and leadership within the world.
3. He discovers or creates a purpose in life that over time becomes more explicit, more focused than before, and from which he prunes the necessary until all that remains is a destiny.  Such a man of destiny will aim to serve a cause greater than himself, but will make himself greater in the process.

At least, that’s what I think!  And the old question remains as to how to do this for men.  Jayson seems to use wilderness trips as a means to facilitate growth in male maturity.  I’d like to experience this method before commenting much on its effectiveness.  But I guess it beats any classroom or training room as a learning environment for guys.  Can you think of a better one?  The pub doesn’t count…

In 2008 I designed and delivered a workshop called What Men Want: How to Manage the Men in Your Life.  I’ll be delivering it again at Queen’s University on Saturday 13 February 2010 (one day before my birthday).  The title got me thinking – what do men want in different areas of life?  Here are some Internet resources to help to find out.

5 Things Men Want To Hear

What Men Want (men’s wants divided up into three hierarchical levels)

What Men Want: Neanderthal TV

What Do Men Want: It’ s not what you think! (by Dr John Grey of Venus & Mars fame)

What Men Want … Online

Men Want It Fast, Women Want It All: 8 things e-tailers need to know about shopping and the sexes

What boys want from school.  Read here.

When you type in “what men want” in Google for a search, 99% of the answers have to do with relationships – what men want in the bedroom, from a wife/girlfriend/lover, in conversation etc.  I was interested in finding out what men want from life, in work, at play.  I’m particularly intrigued by what men want in a learning experience or a training day.  I came up with zero.

Perhaps a better question would be: How Do Men Spend Their Time? That’s always a good indicator of values and priorities.  The answers I got back were fairly depressing: in pubs, staring at or ogling women, with their PlayStation/Nintendo thingy, tinkering in their garage or shed, and talking rubbish.  Pass the the shotgun now…

No wonder we men are depressed and suicidal, living in fantasy world, or wrecking our lives with reckless behaviour.

I’ll end with another interesting way of re-framing the title question: What Do Men Wish For? There is a real list of answers from real men.  It’s a way away from Covey’s ‘Live, Love, Learn and Leave a Lasting Legacy’!  Their answers are more basic and primitive, less sophisticated and civilized.  That’s where I’m going on this workshop.  Be prepared.

To book a place, phone the School of Education (Open Learning) on 028 9097 3539/3323 or email openlearning.education@qub.ac.uk.

Image credit: chanchan222.

On Wednesday 18 November 2009 I’m delivering a 1-day workshop as part of the Queen’s University Continuing Professional Development (CPD)  Short Coruse Programme…for the second time.  It’s name?  Radical Time Management!

Here’s the rundown.

“Notes and checklists, calendars and appointment books, project timetables and reminder systems – should managing time require so much… time? And once the training session is over, how many of these tools do we actually employ to effect in our working lives?  Statistics tell a grim tale: most Time Management training is ineffective and therefore literally (and ironically) a waste of time. So this workshop will take a radically different track. We will focus on two proven techniques that yield maximum results for time-poor managers and business people. The first is the revolutionary ‘80/20 Principle’; the second is the ‘Quadrant 2′ system developed by Stephen Covey. Between them, these ideas will radically alter how you view and use time – from a quantity to a quality perspective, from spending time to investing time.”

This was a popular course first time round with great feedback.  I felt compelled to design it after reading about and personally experimenting with a host of time management techniques myself which I found overly complex or (more usually) overly simplistic.  For instance, I remember reading a whole book by some time management guru whose basic big idea was the cunning use  of suspension files and file dividers!  As Dawn would say, pur-leese!

I’ve built this course around what I personally have found the most useful, and therefore what I’m keen to share with others.  This is a cut-the-crap, back-to-basics sort of course that sets time management in the larger framework of where you’re going with your life and how best to get there.

If you’ve time, see you there.  If you haven’t, definitely see you there!

To book a place, contact Marc Forte at the School of Education (Short Courses Programmes) on 028 9097 5260 or email cpd@qub.ac.uk.

Image credit: Orange42.