OK, I’m confused.

According the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD)’s latest Learning and Talent Development survey, 46% of their 700+ respondents put coaching in their top three most effective learning and development practices (note this is down from 53% last year).

OK, so you’ve started creeping round the web, you’ve watched a few videos of professors explaining strategy, checked out some different resources (and if you haven’t done any of the above, check out Part 1, then come back). Maybe you’ve chewed through the business section of your weekend newspaper - well done. Now you want to get specific about issues that are relevant to your business - how to do that?

• Follow your employer’s fortunes in the financial pages/sites.
• Follow your clients’ fortunes in the financial pages/sites.
• Get hold of published research about the sectors in which your (or your client’s) business operates. Identify the key trends at work in the sector.
• Identify relevant sector bodies (such as the IPA) and check out their resources.
• Get hold of a relevant annual report and, when you’ve made as much sense of it as you can, craft questions about what you need help on and ask someone knowledgeable. Who to ask? If you think it wouldn’t look good to ask at work, consider a relative, friend, neighbour, someone in your community or network.
• Identify potential mentors and ask them if they will support you. Consider how you may be able to help them in return.
• Get stuck into the literature. There’s no shortage of brilliantly written, compellingly-argued, evidence-based case studies if you want to find out about a strategy that worked.
• Contribute to a case study in your business. Applying what you are learning and turning it into a practical contribution is one of the best ways to up your business savvy.

This is something I’ve been hearing a lot lately. For people who’ve found themselves working in a highly commercial, entrepreneurial environment, yet whose further education was anything but commercial, this can be a tough one. Watching reality TV shows featuring people in suits might be entertaining, but it won’t really fill the gaps.

(It’s also why my friend Andie reckons everyone should work in a retail outlet before they embark on their career. She’s got a point: a lot of what I learned doing a Saturday job in a shop proved really useful later on. How to deal with the public, tricky customers, finding out what triggers people to buy or walk away, dealing with money, to name just a few.)

So if the UK isn’t as productive as it could be (according to the Office of National Statistics, UK GDP per worker fell relative to all the other G7 countries except Italy and Germany), and yet we’re seeing continued investment (albeit reduced in some sectors) in training, what’s going on? I think there are several possible reasons:

• ‘Entitlementitis’ - employees are in ‘gimme gimme’ mode and, whilst there is a high expectation that training will be provided, there can be a low understanding of this being a two-way contract between employer and employee.
• ‘Conscripts vs Volunteers’ - we’ve all seen or suffered the participant, or rather attendee, who doesn’t “know why I’ve been sent on this course” (conscript), and how different their experience of the exact same training can be to that of a volunteer, who knows they are there for a particular reason, and is motivated by that.
• ‘Matrix moment’ - when the participants seem to think that, just by turning up, they will experience what only happens in movies, when characters can (by accident or fiendish design) suddenly sprout the skills required.
• “I haven’t got time to apply it” - which can mean several things: the workload has followed the participant into the training to such an extent they cannot concentrate; the link between the topic and their role is too tenuous for them to see ways to apply it; their line manager won’t tolerate the temporary drop in productivity as the new skill-set is learned back on the job.

What’s to be done? Some thoughts:

“Oh no, surely not? Isn’t it enough already that I have to do a *@$% presentation?” Well, it depends… How much do you want your audience to buy into what you’re presenting, and how thoroughly do you know what they respond well to? If the answer to both those questions is “a lot” then you may want to build in some ways of involving your audience. If you’re unsure if audience involvement is going to work with your group, you can always ask them. Or try involving them a little and see how it goes. Try these tips to involve your audience, a little, some of the time, or a lot.

A little

Most of us who do presentations spend far longer preparing our visuals (the dreaded 'deck') than we do our voices. Yet our voice is an enormously powerful medium. Ask anyone who’s sat through a monotone presentation. Or listen to a brilliant orator. Getting some variety in our vocal delivery is vital to emphasise key points, keep the audience’s attention, create the right mood, inspire, touch emotions and generally engage our audience.

• Pace - slow down or speed up
• Tone - the best orators can create sing-song passages in a speech; in other parts they may create a mood of doom for dramatic effect
• Pitch - OK, not all audiences will welcome comedic falsetto, but a broader scale of pitch will help engage them
• Volume - a whisper can be powerful, as can a quotation delivered with more volume
• Rhythm - or cadence, as your words ebb and flow, as if to a beat
• Language - catch-phrases, trios of words (the 'power of three' used by many a politician) and metaphor
• Pause - silence can be one of the most powerful ways of using our voice.

The key to using any of the above is to practise - out loud and several times. A flat, monotone 'read through' is a sure sign of a speaker who hasn’t sufficiently prepared.

This week, I’m back at Central St Martin’s Art School, where they run excellent short courses during the full-time students’ holidays. Each time I’ve done a course here, at some point in the week I hit the wall of, “I’m just not creative”. This time it only took until Monday afternoon! And each time, I’m inspired by the gentle and oh so insightful coaching from the tutors. And often it’s the same: “Just relax and play with it a little”. There I was, rushing in search of a solution to the brief (a collage about ‘cities’) - and, unsurprisingly, couldn’t crack it.

With the iPod in my head playing its customary track of, “Faster, faster, get there, faster”, I industriously chopped and sliced, shredded and tore, scrambled elements together and then was deeply unimpressed with the results of my labour.

Being a Big Fan of all things to do with resilience, I was fascinated when a nearby school launched ‘Failure Week’ - and clearly so were huge swathes of the media.

Here’s what Dr Elyse Waites, Wimbledon High School’s Head of Year 7 and co-instigator of ‘Failure Week’ has to say about it:

How do you respond to setbacks? Do you see them as a sign that you’re a failure, or do you stop and think about how to do better next time? How do you view effort? As a pre-requisite to good performance, or as something that people with natural talent simply don’t need? Your answers will give you a clue to your mindset, the subject of Carol Dweck’s insightful book.

Dweck identifies two mindsets: fixed and growth. The fixed mindset views ability as just that - fixed - and believes it to be carved in stone from an early age. We’re the finished product. Period. The growth mindset views ability as something that can be developed with commitment, effort and practice. We’re dynamic, developing and a work-in-progress. No prizes for guessing which one Dweck is promoting here.

What IS a 'tricky conversation'? You probably already know the answer and I’ll bet you can think of some people and conversations that you would immediately file under 'tricky'. But just to clarify, a tricky or difficult conversation might be one where some or all of these elements apply:

• The stakes are high: one or both of you has a lot to lose;
• You feel very uneasy (and possibly queasy) even thinking about it;
• There’s a lot that usually goes unsaid and gets bottled up, just to keep the peace;
• You are anxious it will spiral into a confrontation (it may have before).

Sound familiar? And who might these conversations be with?