Brain in Business

It was my first time at a BFLG meeting and clinic, and it was fantastic - great people, stimulating workshop presented by Ant Shearn,Julie was wonderful, venue was ideal and lunch was lovely!

My clinic question was.......one of my clients is an e.commerce/marketing company, and the team are very young (how young is very young? Lets say around 22/24yrs!) The company is very "cutting edge" and the team are cool/hip/trendy, and therefore I asked for ideas for "edgy" ways to deliver the training programme(core management skills)?

Ideas included:
Various quizzes - this helps to keep their attention and make it fun
Using popular/high profile people (eg.Gordon Ramsey v Jamie Oliver) to identify key characteristics/strengths
Competitive games
Incorporate the themes of "the Apprentice" /"X Factor" into relevant learning objectives eg: presentation skills/teambuilding skills/communication skills
The site TrainerBubble.com has many ideas
Ask the team to compile the programme content which will help "bridge the gap" in terms of the languauge and style the team uses and engages with
List all the contents on cards and ask the team to select what they want to cover

Thanks for all your ideas, and anymore suggestions will be greatly appreciated

This was also my first meeting, and (as I said gushingly as I rushed away), it is the best group of this type I have attended. Fun, friendly and (most importantly) useful.

Reading your post, one other point came to mind...is there any way that you could use social media in the training e.g. facebook, twitter etc?

You could also ask people to suggest quotes from music lyrics ot TV programmes that summarise the learning.

See you at the next meeting,

Sheridan Webb

Thanks for your suggestions Sheridan, especially the one about using facebook, twitter etc
Looking forward to seeing you at the next meeting
Festive wishes
Jaqui

Hi Jacqui,
It's great to hear that you enjoyed the session so much - I hope to see you at a future one too.

The young folk that I meet (my daughters and their friends as well as some work people) are completely into their mobile phones, youtube and social networking (Facebook anyway).

So how could you get them to share info using those media?

We once did a review where we asked everyone to write down their learning in 'txtspk' which was fun and fast - but actually texting it would be even better.

Look out for some webinars we're going to do soon as they would be another way of sharing learning.

Enjoy the beautiful sunny frosty days.
STella

TRANSFORMERS!!! Yes,transformers......and the idea came from one of the guys in my young and edgy team. For our first session, I asked each of them to bring in an object/item that represented their personality and showed an insight into who they are.
First session - There sitting on the table was a cube (I thought it was a rubic cube - now showing my age!), and when Tom stood up he proudly presented his cube which infact is "Optimus Primus" - the leader of the Transformers team! Think of the car advert where the car turns into an a robot and you have the essence of "transformers". I had to investigate further, so on Christmas Day, I watched "Transformers", and on Boxing Day, I watched "Transformers 2" - now I'm sounding quite sad.........however, I discovered that each of the autobots has an individual personality/character and plays a different role within the team! I am now the proud owner of a "set" of transformer autobots and took them into our second session last week - they loved them, and although they are fun, it proved to be a really effective way of engaging the guys and helping them understand the dynamics of team work, and the importance of each individuals role within the team. Success!