Emma Sue Prince

Member Since: 5th Apr 2012
Columnist
Emma Sue Prince is author of “7 Skills for the Future” available now to pre-order from Amazon. Emma Sue Prince is a specialist in experiential learning and believes strongly that this methodology is key to developing life skills and soft skills as it is the only way to develop self-awareness, upon which all behavioural change is based. She delivers powerful workshops in this regard and does so with many different target groups including “closed” groups such as Muslim communities in Bangladesh and North Africa and diverse groups in the UK including lawyers, doctors and software engineers.
http://www.unimenta.com/The-Advantage-training/Licensed-trainer
Emma Sue provides consultancy in emerging economies and travels regularly to India, Bangladesh and Tanzania advising on a range of large funded projects. She runs a free membership site – Unimenta – for practitioners working in soft skills. When not working Emma Sue runs a local gospel choir in her home town of Godalming, Surrey and is an avid baker.
Director Unimenta
My discussion replies
Hi SB - I couldn't agree more with Clive's suggestion about doing something interactive on mindfulness - has huge impact on engagement and wellbeing. Perhaps you could help take them through a simple mindfulness exercise to help highlight this. I also have some free materials on my site www.unimenta.com that might be suitable. All of them focus on experiential methodologies.
Anything that you do should be experiential and help them to reflect on their behaviour and ways they might change or shift. So it has to be something that will challenge them in the moment. You say they work well as a team - well, challenge that - get them to do something seemingly "impossible" and see what happens. You can create an exercise out of nothing - set them a task or challenge and let them figure out a solution. Then facilitate deep insightful reflection into the process of what happened, how they responded, what they were doing, what skills they were using, where the weaknesses were and what they could have done differently. Perhaps the "something impossible" could relate to what is coming ahead so that they can go away with something tangible.
Happy to correspond further on this to help come up with ideas.
Emma Sue
Thank you for sending me this, Scott.
Best wishes,
Emma
Thank you,
Emma Sue
Hi Shane
This may be of interest: a flexible postgraduate qualification in delivering soft skills and experiential learning from the University of Roehampton?
You can find out more here:
http://www.unimenta.com/Default.aspx?pagename=Post-graduate-certificate-...
Emma Sue
Thanks Steve. This brief was provided to me by the client. They are Master Trainers but this does not necessarily mean the same thing in India as it might mean elsewhere.
The two objectives are for them to share learning from projects they have been involved with and to make the most of the conference - I should have mentioned this is a pre-conference event! - so use the conference for networking and for professional development,
Emma
Dear Scott
Thank you for your comments. Really helpful and support some of what we are doing now as I have only just found your answer!
Thanks again,
Emma Sue
Thanks Sue - I will try these,
appreciated,
Emma Sue
Thanks - that is a great idea - any group like that would be ideal too.
Hi Patricia
It really does depend on what you want to get out of it. I think studying at Masters' level does have value as training is often unregulated but if the Masters' is very academic or theoretical, then it might not give you sufficient hands-on experience. On the other hand, perhaps you have a lot of experience already and want to consolidate this.
I run a free membership site for trainers who deliver soft skills - also an unregulated industry. We have developed a new programme which is a 60 Masters' credit for delivering soft skills and experiential learning. It's validated by the University of Roehampton. What I found interesting about delivering this has been the breadth and range of participant - people from the experienced corporate trainer, who did indeed want to consolidate skills - to those who wanted to branch out further into personal development and delivering this in a robust and "best practice" way. The programme had a mix of both theory and hands-on practice, trying stuff out and relating it back to their own working situations. You can find out more here www.unimenta.com under professional development.
Another thing to consider is length of Programme, commitment involved if fitting in with work and if any support is offered in terms of finding work.
Hope this helpful. Happy to chat further if useful,
best wishes,
Emma Sue
plenty of opportunities to apply knowledge and ideas. Definitely should not be about just theory. A qualification can help to consolidate experience and expertise and ensure they are grounded in best practice. There is a lot of training available out there- there is also a lot which provides lots of activities for learners/trainees/delegates but not able to necessarily help people to draw out their learning, build their self-awareness and make positive change that lasts long beyond the training.
A qualified, experienced facilitator/trainer/coach should be able to deliver those kinds of long-lasting and sustainable results, provided they've had the right training and background themselves.