It’s okay. You’re not alone. The stress that many people feel when they have to speak in public is right up there with bereavement and divorce. Even the most accomplished managers and leaders can break out in a cold sweat when faced with a row of expectant faces.

Think Training & Development believe that to give a great presentation, you simply need to remember one thing the majority of communication is non-verbal.

There is much research to support the theory that what people take in when you’re speaking is 7% content, 38% how you say things and 55% body language. This means that a staggering 93% of your impact will be based on your voice and your demeanour.

Don’t get us wrong. You can’t just stand up and talk gibberish. But you’ll only sound confident and sincere if your voice and body language are in sync with your words.

Ever listened to someone telling a story that sounded plausible but… you just had a gut feeling that they weren’t telling the truth?

Ever watched a truly great comedian and wondered why people didn’t laugh when you repeated their jokes in the pub?

People can only pay attention to a small amount of information at any one time on a conscious level. Their sub-conscious, on the other hand, can take in millions of bits of information every second. It will be their sub-conscious that decides whether what you have to say is worth listening to. And they’ll unknowingly base their decision on your tone, pace, timing, gestures, eye contact and the way you carry yourself.

We appreciate that this news may have you reaching for the Prozac, but can we suggest an alternative and more productive way to calm your nerves?

Think Training & Development specialise in Advanced Presentation Skills training and Leadership Development.

Gavin Aubrey is a highly accomplished public speaker, brilliant showman, hugely entertaining, fast–paced, and pragmatic and 100% focused on getting you the results you want.

Think Eddie Izzard meets Derren Brown. Without the stilettos. Or the card tricks. Well, maybe a few over lunch…

If you want to deliver the best speaking performance of your life, you can find Gavin at www.thinktd.co.uk.

Book any session before 30^th June 2010 and qualify for 25% discount off Executive Coaching Programmes.

If you want better results, you can find them at www.thinktd.co.uk Tel: 01225 479756 Email: info@thinktd.co.uk

Don’t worry. They don’t actually want to know what colour your underwear is. Especially if it’s grey. The point is, when you saw the question you probably answered it in your head.

The brain is a very powerful thing. It’s like Google. Ask it a question and it will give you an answer. The answer will be based on whatever your brain holds in its database about that subject.

If things aren’t going your way, you are probably asking yourself the wrong questions.

You: “Why can’t I be confident, like Jim?”

Your brain: “Well now, let’s see…..yep! GOT IT. It’s because you failed your 11+, your parents didn’t love you, you were always last to be picked for school sports teams, you messed up that presentation last week…oh…and you’re not that good looking.”

Questions are a very powerful thing. They do 2 things:

• They direct your thinking along a particular route;
• They affect your level of motivation.

Good, well phrased questions have the power to transform your thinking, re-order the way you see problems and challenges and propel you to act in a positive and productive way.

The bad news is that your brain didn’t come with an instruction manual. The good news is that it’s easy to learn how to ask yourself better questions. And when you do, you’ll unlock the potential to achieve more than you ever thought possible.

The even better news is that, once you have learned to do this – you can use the questions with your staff to help ‘them excel at what they do too.

Think Training and Development specialise in Executive Coaching and Leadership Development.

They might not be the most conventional of corporate coaches, but they’ll immerse themselves in your world so that they understand your particular challenges. Their Executive Coaching programme is fast–paced, pragmatic and 100% focused on getting you the results you want.

In short, they’re a bit like Starsky and Hutch. Except one of them is a girl. Oh, and they won’t park their car sideways in your car-park.

Book a session before 30th June 2010 and qualify for 25% discount off Executive Coaching Programmes.

If you want better results, you can find them at www.thinktd.co.uk
Tel: 01225 479756
Email: info@thinktd.co.uk

If not you can listen to it here for the next 7 days: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rmst0

If you missed it, and your company hasn’t caught the Myers-Briggs® bug yet, here’s an overview of what it’s all about.

How did it all start?

The Myers-Briggs® Type Indicator (MBTI) was the brainchild of two American housewives, Isabel Myers and her mother, Katharine Briggs, back in the 1950s; apparently based upon the theories of Carl Jung.

Years of development later, it’s now the most popular personality profiling tool, used in businesses across the world. More than 200,000 people took the MBTI last year in Europe alone.

What is it used for?

Myers-Briggs® is commonly used across all business sectors for:

• Individual personal development: Improving influencing skills, sales skills, public speaking or leadership skills as examples;
• Team building: To help colleagues understand how to pool their different resources for the common good of their company and get better results in the process;
• Conflict management – to provide a non-confrontational language to resolve issues and promote unity among co-workers.

What is involved?

• First you complete a questionnaire which takes about half an hour. This gives a first indication of what your personality type might be.
• Next you have a feedback session with a licensed Myers-Briggs® practitioner; this will usually include answering questions and completing some light-hearted exercises.
• You then find your ‘best-fit’ type from one of 16 possible personality types.
• You’ll be given some literature which explains what this means – including information on how you impact on others, how you deal with stress and how you can develop.

This can be done on an individual basis or in teams if everyone is willing to share their results and can be great fun.

Can you fake it?

As with all personality tools; of course you can. But what would be the point? Ethical practitioners of Myers Briggs®, such as those we employ at Think, will tell you that your Myers-Briggs® results are confidential and only shared with others with your consent. So, if you want to fake it, the only person you’re really kidding is yourself.

Is it any good?

While the Jungian purists would have us believe it’s a load of nonsense, my view is that anything that makes people feel good about themselves and promotes unity and understanding among co-workers can only be positive for company results.

Part of the Myers-Briggs® appeal is that it’s based on concepts that are easy to grasp and easy to identify with. We’ve used it extensively and with great success with people from the UK to India, Trinidad to Kazakhstan to improve all manner of staff performance.

Want to know more?

If you’d like to know more about how Myers-Briggs® could help your business become more effective, listen to our free podcasts on the subject, check out our special introductory offers via the Home Page or give us a call.

If you feel more like a referee than a manager most days, the chances are that your team has not yet found a way to pool their resources and use their differences to best effect.
Myers-Briggs® Personality Type is a popular psychological profiling tool that can be used to help people understand how they impact on each other. It explores how different people are energised, how they take in information, make decisions and organise their lives. For example:

• Some people like to throw ideas around out loud while others prefer to figure things out quietly on their own.
• Some need to collect lots of information before they’ll act while others will just go with their hunches.
• Some base their decisions on feelings and values while others deal in logic and principles.
• And some like to plan and organise while others wait till the very last minute to deliver.

Myers Briggs® is based on the theory that there are 16 unique personality types. It doesn’t seek to put people in boxes or explain everything about a person’s behaviour. What it will do, though, is help your people understand and appreciate their differences, reduce conflict and get your team working together for the common good of your company.

Think Training & Development specialise in delivering Myers-Briggs® training to organisations to improve their teamwork, retention and most importantly, their productivity.

Using a series of light-hearted exercises to help people discover their own and their colleagues’ personality types, Think has brought unity to hundreds of teams across the world since they opened for business in 2003.

Gavin Aubrey and Wendie Michie, directors of Think and licensed Myers Briggs® practitioners, offer fast–paced, pragmatic and hugely energising sessions in this fascinating subject which are 100% focused on getting you the results you want.

If your team could use a little Think love, you can find them at http://www.thinktd.co.uk

Tel: 01225 479756
Email: info@thinktd.co.uk

Your company is not doing as well as it could. Your people need some direction; some motivation. And you’re the person to deliver it. If only you knew how.

You need some help, so you book yourself on to an expensive Leadership Training Course.

You enter the second rate hotel where the event is being held and a name sticker is slapped on to your lapel. You check out who else is on the course but there is no-one from your particular industry. You’re given a big, shiny manual that is mostly full of blank pages for you to make notes, although, to be fair, it’s peppered periodically with mysterious acronyms to help you remember how to be a captain of industry.

Then, best of all, you get to learn how to lead from the front from a guy who has never been out of the classroom long enough to know where the front is. You spend the rest of the day pondering the potential risks of death by PowerPoint and the journey home removing bits of glue from your suit where your name sticker has been.

You return to work to find your sales figures are down, your marketing team has gone AWOL and Sally from accounts is in your office, crying because her husband has left her.

You hurriedly leaf through your new manual to help you, but all you can see are unfathomable graphs and the Christmas shopping list you wrote while one of the other delegates was asking an interminably long and irrelevant question…

It may not surprise you to learn that Think Training & Development Ltd does not run open, generic Leadership Training courses. Their trainers do not deal in ‘ideal world’ theory, nor do they issue glossy manuals that are destined to gather dust on your office shelf.

Think comes to you. You do not go to them. They might not be the most conventional of corporate trainers, but they’ll immerse themselves in your world to understand your particular company’s challenges. Their Leadership Training is practical, energising and tailored to your people. And they get results.

In short – they’re a bit like the A-Team… except they don’t carry guns and they do accept payment.

If you think you could use their help, you’ll find them at www.thinktd.co.uk.

Gavin Aubrey and Wendie Michie
Think Training & Development Ltd
Unit 8, Widbrook Marina
Bradford-on-Avon
Wiltshire
BA15 1UD

Tel: 01225 479756
Email: info@thinktd.co.uk

• Luke SkyWalkers
• Followers
• Dark Side

First, the ‘Luke Skywalkers’ of this world. These are the people who will never let you down and strive to achieve great things, whatever is thrown at them (You probably have a few of these in your organisation).

At the other end of the scale, you have those people who primarily like to moan a lot and drag everyone around them down in the process. We’ll call these people ‘The Dark Side’ (You probably have more of these).

The Lukes are immune to the Dark Side – they will not enter the Dark Side and will not be influenced by those on the Dark Side. However, the middle group, well, that’s a different story.

The middle group of people usually contains the majority. We’ll call them the ‘Followers’. The quality of their output will often depend on how much they are influenced by each of the other groups. If they’re with the Lukes, all will be well. But once the Dark-Siders get hold of them though, with their talk of the credit crunch, recession, cut-backs and redundancies….you have no hope of getting much work done.

The table below gives an example of how your company productivity can be affected by negativity:

Now for a little maths quiz. To work out the average productivity of your team, you first need to decide which category they each fall into. Let’s assume you have 100 people:

Divide the total by 100 to find the average percentage of time your team is productive. In this case, it’s 66.5%.

The Dark-Siders are the people who will tell you what you’re doing wrong so it’s not a bad thing to have a few of them, yet you don’t want too many. The trick is to motivate as many as possible to move up a category or, better still, two.

As they do, there will be less distraction for the Followers and you will find that their productivity improves too. Here’s an example:

The big question is…How do you achieve this?

The answer lies in training and development for your employees. It’s worth remembering that in staff surveys, employees often rate ‘learning and development’ and ‘culture’ higher than ‘money’ when asked why they stay with their employer.

Think Training & Development specialises in Team Skills, Leadership Programmes and Myers Briggs.
If you want to know how to improve your corporate culture, motivate your Dark-Siders and improve your productivity, visit the site here or give us a call on 01225 479756

About Think Training & Development

Think Training & Development was founded in 2003, by Wendie Michie and Gavin Aubrey. They have had the good fortune to coach and train thousands of people in more than 10 countries across 4 continents.

To book a course for your company or to find out more, please contact:

Wendie Michie and Gavin Aubrey
Think Training & Development,
Unit 8,
Widbrook Marina,
Bradford on Avon,
Wiltshire
BA15 1UD
Tel: 01225 479756
Email: info@thinktd.co.uk

Using Gavin’s techniques, individuals can unleash their full potential and achieve personal success. He says “Mooing like a cow demonstrates how you can control your motivation and success.” He continues “What makes the successful, successful? Is it education, good looks, luck, length of service?  Look around at the people you class as successful (if you feel successful look in the mirror). Are they better looking, educated to a higher standard, had a lucky break or just been there forever? Probably not…what sets them apart is their attitude.”

For his next exercise, Gavin uses another technique. He explains “Close your eyes and imagine half a lemon in your hand, notice the texture and contour. Now bring the lemon to your mouth and take a bite.” He continues “If done correctly, everybody experiences some sensation of biting a real lemon – saliva in the back of the throat, pulling a funny face. But why? The lemon was never there. Your brain is a magnificent creation, unfortunately we were given limited instructions on how to use it, and therefore we usually live our lives on what has happened rather than what could happen. If your brain can taste a non-existent lemon you can develop attitude.”

To listen to Gavin’s motivation podcast, or to book a training or coaching programme for yourself or your staff, visit the Think website.

About Think Training & Development
Think Training & Development Ltd was founded in 2003, by Wendie Michie and Gavin Aubrey. They have had the good fortune to coach and train thousands of people in more than 10 countries, across four continents ranging from Kazakhstan to Tobago, Deli to Hong Kong, Stevenage to Mayfair. The company employs a fabulous team of like-minded associate coaches and trainers from a variety of walks of life. To book a course or find out more, please contact:

Wendie Michie and Gavin Aubrey
Think Training & Development,
Unit 8,
Widbrook Marina,
Bradford on Avon,
Wiltshire
BA15 1UD

Tel: 01225 479756
Email: info@thinktd.co.uk

Trainees from more than 10 countries are turning to Think for a breath of fresh air and pragmatic approach to communication and personal development training. Whilst the media scaremonger with news of job cuts, company closures, and reduced salaries, many forward thinking companies realise that at times like this, you need your staff to be firing on all cylinders. By investing in communication skills, leadership programmes and personal development training, companies can increase staff morale and reap the rewards through increased energy, motivation and productivity.

Gavin uses an approach that stimulates thought and debate amongst his trainees. That’s where the banana story comes from. Gavin says, “If what you’re doing is working really well, keep doing it. If it’s not working, try something different. Try turning your banana round and opening it the other way, it might be easier. Most people I meet aren’t quite getting the result they want, but they keep trying the same thing and are confused about why it’s not working.”

This is just one of the techniques Gavin and Wendie use in their training sessions. There are a range of courses on offer, including training in Myers Briggs personality types; the world renowned, psychological tool to help you understand yourself and others and bring about improved performance. There are also communication, leadership, team skills, advanced sales & presentation skills and executive coaching courses. The new website has free podcasts on coaching, motivation and…how do you open your banana? Over the coming months the audio section will be expanded to cover a full range of simple to use and easy to apply personal and management training sessions.

To book a training or coaching programme for yourself or your staff, visit the Think website or give us a call on 01225 479756.

About Think Training & Development

Think Training & Development Ltd was founded in 2003, by Wendie Michie and Gavin Aubrey. They have had the good fortune to coach and train thousands of people in more than 10 countries, across four continents ranging from Kazakhstan to Tobago, Deli to Hong Kong, Stevenage to Mayfair. The company employs a fabulous team of like-minded associate coaches and trainers from a variety of walks of life. To book a course or find out more, please contact:

Wendie Michie and Gavin Aubrey
Think Training & Development,
Unit 8,
Widbrook Marina,
Bradford on Avon,
Wiltshire
BA15 1UD

Tel: 01225 479756
Email: info@thinktd.co.uk