SME Academy

We are pleased to announce that the eligiblility criteria for the Leadership & Management Grants from Train to Gain have changed so that they now include more small businesses.

If your organisation has between 5 and 249 staff, you may be eligible for a grant of £1,000 to spend on leadership & management training, coaching or mentoring.  See more detail

This is a great opportunity to up-skill - both for you and your staff:

• Are your business skills and knowledge up to date (or are you still relying on skills you learned on a course 10 years ago)?
• Who in your business could improve their management style?
• Are the members of the senior management team ready to inspire and lead staff through changes?
• Are you being as strategic as you could be?
• Do you throw new managers in at the deep end without any training on how to get the best out of their people?
• Are you holding your business back by not delegating?  You know: “If you want something done right, you need to do it yourself”.

SME Academy can advise you on how the grant works, show you the options available to you and help you to apply for the funding.

We provide:

• One-to-one training, coaching and mentoring
• In-house training and workshops
• Open programmes and training courses

Our style is very down-to-earth and we focus on what helps you and your staff to get the skills you need, when you need them.

Contact Hannah McNamara on 020 7939 9910 for more information or use our contact form.

On Thursday 13th November 2008, Patrick White will be running his popular one-day course ‘Moving your business to the next level’.

This course is perfect for any business owner or company director who is  planning the next stage of the development of the business.  If you are in the midst of strategic business planning, a day with Patrick on this course will be invaluable.

It’s a great introduction to SME Academy’s Business Growth Programme.

Because the  one-day course is hosted by Business Link, it is fully-funded for SMEs.  To attend the course through SME Academy would normally cost £250+VAT.

Register for the ‘Moving Your Business to the Next Level’ now.

Patrick White will be holding a workshop ‘Sales Success: The art of consultative selling’ on 4th November 2008.

This event is being hosted and funded by Business Link London.  Places on this course would normally be £250+VAT but because Business Link is LDA funded, places are being fully funded and there is no charge to attend.

Find out more and book your place.

Business owners and their staff can attend a free workshop with Patrick White on 23rd October 2008.

The places on this course would normally cost £250+VAT but because Business Link is LDA funded, they are fully subsidising the course.

Find out more and book your place.

Hannah McNamara will be running a fully-funded workshop on Tuesday 14th October 2008 through Business Link London.

Places on this course would normally by £250+VAT per head, but because Business Link London receives LDA funding, businesses can attend (or send staff) for free.

The workshop is almost fully booked, but you can register here.

Last week, Hannah McNamara was interviewed by Monique Terrell on her show SparkleVirtually on BlogTalkRadio.

The topic was ‘Coaching 101′ and Hannah explained about how coaching works, what it’s suitable for and what you should look for in a coach (if hiring a coach is the right thing for you!)

Listen now

In this column, we address the ups and downs of being a director or owner/manager in a growing business.

A business owner writes:

“I set up the business 6 years ago and it was just me and my business partner. The first few years were tough. Now there are 13 of us and we’re got steady business coming in. The trouble is I spend most days fire-fighting because the staff keep coming to me with problems. Last week it was a customer who would only talk to me. This week it’s arguments with a supplier over terms. Why can’t they just get on with it and sort out their own problems? I could do it when I was doing the work.”

Hannah McNamara replies:

First of all, you’re not alone.  This is actually a common problem among people who have built their businesses up and then brought in other people.  Have you also caught yourself saying or thinking phrases like”You can’t find the staff these days” or “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself”?

Neither of these attitudes is helpful, but they are forgiveable!  You may be a victim of your own success.  You built the business with your partner.  You know all the intricacies of how the business works.  You probably care deeply about things being done right.  You have a personal connection with many of your key customers and probably some of your suppliers.  You have developed your skills in this business over the last 6 years and it can be painful to see other people potentially undoing all the good work that you’ve put in.  Your business has needed you for the last 6 years and you’ve worked hard to achieve success.

The fact is, no one will ever be able to do the job exactly as you do it.  They might mess up from time to time.  The might handle a tricky situation differently.  They might even do things BETTER than you can.   But unless you let them try, you’ll never know.

Before you leap in and abdicate all responsiblity to your staff, you need to be clear about what you expect of them and where the boundaries lie.  For example, at what point should they come to you with a problem or concern?  You also need to be clear about whether if they do come to you, you’ll take the problem on yourself or whether you’ll coach them on how to handle it themselves.

There’s that saying, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”  As long as your staff know that you’ll sort their problems out for them, you’re giving them the fish.  It could be that you don’t think you’ve got time to train them, or teach them how to fish, and it’s quicker to do the job yourself, but this really is a false economy.   All the time that you take responsibilities away from people, you are tying yourself to that role and you’ll never be able to step away.

Now, here we come to the big problem.  You have been in the business doing things yourself, and certain things, such as how to deal with people situations, have become second nature.  You can’t understand why people can’t do it themselves and it’s frustrating you.

You’re at a stage in your learning called ‘Unconscious Competence’.  Let me explain.  There are 4 stages of learning:

1. Unconscious Incompetence - otherwise known as blissful ignorance!  At this stage, you don’t know what you don’t know.  Other people might be doing things for you and you don’t know what’s involved in them.  You might even think that the things that others do is easy.
2. Conscious Incompetence - there are things that you know you’re not doing properly, but you haven’t quite got the hang of it yet.  Someone might be teaching you, but it doesn’t quite make sense and you feel out of your depth.
3. Conscious Competence - you now know what to do and how to do them, but you have to think about it to get it right.  You could explain to someone what you’re doing as you’re doing it, because you’re still focused on the steps you need to take to do things properly.
4. Unconscious Competence - practice makes perfect.  At this stage, you don’t even have to think about it because it comes naturally.  If someone asked you to tell them what you’re doing, it would be difficult to describe it to them because you’re not aware of the steps you’re going through.

If you’re at the stage of Unconscious Competence, where are your staff?

More importantly, if you do decide to train them in what to do, where do you start?  For example, if you’ve been riding a bike for years, you may think that you just get on the bike and ride.  If you’re explaining how to do it to someone else, you might leave out vital pieces of information like it’s easier to balance when you’re going faster or that you need to pedal harder to go up a hill.  All these things seem like common sense, but they’re not to someone who’s in stages 1 or 2 of their learning.  You can’t blame them when they don’t know what they don’t know.

It sounds like you need to be clear about two things.  1. Your role in the business. 2. What you expect of your staff.

Once you ARE clear about them, then you need to seriously think about staff training.  Spend some time thinking about what they need to learn how to do better and how you’ll know that they are making progress.  For example, what will you see them doing differently?  What will they be saying differently?  How will you be feeling about them taking on more responsibility?

Ultimately, if you are in charge, then it’s your responsibility to manage your resources effectively.  That includes your human resources.  You get out what you put in and you need to invest more time in developing your people if they are ever going to be able to let you get on with the crucial job of running the business.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2008

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Funding for training is available through Train to Gain. A grant of £1,000 is currently available for businesses with 10-249 staff who are based in London. For more information on how SME Academy can help you access this grant, click here.

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About the Author: Hannah McNamara is a Director at SME Academy and works with business owners to be more effective at work and get more from their staff.  She provides training courses, team coaching and one-to-one Leadership & Management Coaching.

Welcome to our first video newsletter presented by Hannah McNamara. Running time approx 7 minutes.

Accessibility: A transcript is available to our deaf clients - click here.

 

 Newsletter - June 2008: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Links mentioned in the newsletter:Forthcoming SME Academy Courses and Dates
Sales Success: The art of consultative selling
Win-Win Negotiation
Business Growth Course
Business Strategy & Planning
Leadership & Management
Developing Your Marketing Strategy
New laws on Unfair Commercial Practices - The Unfair Consumer Practice Directive
E-BOOK: 10 Ways to Sabotage Your Own Career - are you making these mistakes?To discuss your individual circumstances, call 020 7939 9910 and ask for either Hannah McNamara or Dominic Beecheno.

This is a transcription of the June Video Newsletter.

Hi, I’m Hannah McNamara and welcome to our first Video Newsletter – which is a joint venture between SME Academy and HRM Coaching.

Now, over the course of the next few minutes I’m just going to take you through some of the things that have been happening with both companies – which, as you probably know, I’m involved with both of them.

SME Academy is helping small businesses to grow; it’s supporting entrepreneurs and business owners and HRM Coaching is more for people who are working in big companies, who want help with career development and Leadership and Management skills.

So the first thing I’m going to talk you through is what’s going on with SME Academy.

We’ve – over the last week – been updating and revamping our website, so please do go and have a look. It’s: www.smeacademy.co.uk.

And what we’ve been doing there is updating the site so it has got all the information about the courses we’ve got coming up over the next few months; so it’s going to take us through some of that.

We’ve got lots going on – and one of the big developments is that you can now go on there and request brochures.

So you can get a free brochure for every course that we’ve got listed on the website, you just need to go onto the page for each of the courses – just pop your details in and you can download it instantly.

And if you do want to have a look at some of the other courses that are there just pop your details on, hit ‘Add to Cart’ and it’s going to start stacking up all the brochures that you can get the details of.

Now, in those brochures what you’re going to find is:

• What the course is going to be about
• What’s going to be involved in it
• Who it’s suitable for

That sort of thing, as well as the prices.

So do have a look at the website – I think I’ve got some links just down there for you to have a look at. [Points to links under the video screen]

We’ve got all the course dates through the summer, as I say, and for all of them you can book online as well.

A number of our clients have been saying to us that they really wanted to book by credit card, so we have made that facility available for you now. So hopefully that’s going to make it a bit easier for those of you who want to just manage cash flow a bit.

The other thing that I just wanted to let you know is with all the courses that we’ve got on there it might be that you’ve got other people in the company who really need to have more than one of those courses – or you’ve got a couple of people that you might want to send on any one of the courses.

What I suggest you do is just get in touch with us because what we can do is work with you and help to build a programme around what that person is going to need or what that group of people need.

Because we do work with a lot of our clients and run in-house courses for them.

The next few courses we’ve got coming up are covering all sorts of topics, from:

• Business Strategy and Planning
• Sales
• Negotiation

And over the last few months we’ve been doing some really nice work with people on:

• Sales Techniques
• Negotiation Skills

You might have been to one of Patrick’s courses where he has been getting everybody involved in Negotiation Techniques and different things that you can do to close sales and win new business.

We also have the ‘How to Recession Proof Your Business’ seminars that some of you might have been on. We’re going to be running that one again in the next few months so do watch this space.

And we’ve also had a number of people going through the ‘Business Growth’ course with Patrick. And so over the course of a few months what we’re doing is going through – really looking in depth at the business:

• Where it’s going
• People on board with it

And what needs to be done to communicate any changes with people about the business; and just growing it, which is quite relevant for a lot of people right now – where it’s not so much growth that’s on their mind, it’s how to avoid either standing still or shrinking with all the talk of a recession.

The next few courses we’ve got – as I say, we’ve got ‘Business Strategy’ coming up, we’ve got ‘Leadership and Management’.

We’ve also got some new courses on ‘Sales and Marketing’ – separated out into a few different days; one is ‘Self Success’ and the other one is ‘Developing your Marketing Strategy’.

And both of those are taking into account the changes that happened this week in the law – as regards:

• Sales
• High Pressure Sales
• And some of the slightly borderline marketing techniques that people have been using.

So, do have a look. The link is down there – so you can just see what sort of courses are coming up.

Then on HRM Coaching – let me tell you what’s been going on there. We’ve actually been really busy just over the last few months, particularly after Bank Holidays.

And I think that’s when people have the time-out and think: Where am I going with my career? – We’ve had lots of interest in that over the last few months.

Career Coaching has been very popular, with people weighing up their options and thinking: If I am going to be facing redundancy, what will I do next?

Other people just thinking: How can I improve my prospects in my career? – And we’ve had an awful lot of people downloading our E-book:

‘How to Sabotage Your Own Career’

So if you haven’t had a look at that, go onto the HRM Coaching website (www.hrmcoaching.com). Take a look, you might find that there are some new tips in there for you – you might know it all already, but do have a look at that.

The other thing we’ve been doing on the Coaching side is helping people that are getting very stressed at work. With all the uncertainty around it it’s really taking its toll on people, whether they’re employed or whether they’re business owners.

So if you’re feeling under pressure or you know someone that’s suffering a bit with the stress get them to just give us a call and we can talk through what their options are and how we can help.

And the other thing that kind of adds onto that is we’ve had a lot of clients coming to us because they’ve got somebody who, in their business, is making life a bit difficult for other people at work.

And we’ve had some really good success stories over the past few weeks with people who, just who are making some really practical adjustments to the way they deal with people.

I’ve been able to nip what could develop into problem behaviour in the bud and also just improving their inter – ah, personal relationships with people.

So, I said it was just going to be a few minutes, there is a lot that I’ve told you about there. But as I say, lots of links down there that you can look at.

And if you have got anything that you want to have a chat with us about, whilst we’re busy we will still take the time to talk things through with you – particularly if you’re just weighing up options and not sure what it is that you want to develop on.

So give us a call (020 7939 9910) – either ring me, Hannah McNamara, or call Dominic who you might have met already. Dominic is new to the team and I’ll put his details down below as well!

So hopefully speak to you soon and we’ll be in touch soon, bye.

Testimonial for Patrick White’s course: Sales Success - the art of consultative selling

Hello, my name is Verity Barton and I’m a Business Psychologist and Trainer; and I’ve just been to the Business Link and SME Academy Presentation where Patrick White was giving us a presentation on:

The Art of Consultative Selling

Which I found out was extremely useful and I’ll be applying it to my business and I fully recommend it to everybody.

We have just released details of our next course - Business Strategy & Planning.  You can download a course brochure free from http://www.smeacademy.co.uk/businessplanning/