We are here to help people to identify areas which may benefit from training & development to boost their leadership and management process skills. We often provide help gaining insights and skills which may need to be built upon and developed further by people of all ages.

We are often involved in very meaningful & sometimes passionate discussions about leadership needs and leaders' & supervisory styles and qualities whenever we are addressing many areas of business improvement such as TQM, business expansion, boosting morale, empowering staff, and so on. For this reason, we believe very strongly that reviewing and improving leadership skills are benefits highly valued by those using our tried and proven approach to business improvement and staff development.

APPROPRIATE EFFECTIVE & CLEAR COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS are crucial for successful leadership in highly competitive markets.

We have a number of carefully designed, completely unique training exercises indoors & outdoors which are very powerful means of inculcating & boosting communications between stakeholders, between team members and between teams and their internal & external clients.




From 30 years experience we know a strong and effective team will always seek to reflect upon, review, improve, renew and build upon their internal and external communications skills and communications techniques & methods.

EMBRACING & ENABLING CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

The concept of trying your best to continuously improve all aspects of your performance and stay competitive and attractive is as important in business as it is in the field of competitive dancing, entertainment, sport and other walks of life. We have been successfully involved in a wide variety of successful projects designed to help staff understand the theories and practical ways and means of bringing about major changes and improvements to improve the efficiency of people and processes in a wide range of different types of commercial organisations. The success of many of these initiatives have been published and can be seen on our other web site.

Continuous Improvement requires the right frame of mind, a strong work ethic and lots of hard work under the aegis of good performance coaches. The results can be outstanding and very rewarding for those involved but you do need proper coaching to do it efficiently. We would strongly recommend that if you are serious about implementing a CI initiative you consult with experts such as the European Foundation for Quality Management ( EFQM) and consider asking us to help you too.

A party of senior engineering staff from Rolls Royce plc (Derby) during a programme of Continuous Improvement (CE) which we designed and ran for their Chief Engineer to specifically dramatically reduce the Strip & Build Cycle for the CAA Tests for the Trent 700 jet engine.



Other organisations who have involved us in their CI initiatives have been AVIVA, Bosch, Lucas Aerospace, Rolls Royce, Range Rover, Powergen ( e.on ), CDC, TXU, and many others.

QUALITY ASSURANCE & CUSTOMER CARE


We've always been Sold on Service & Quality - and if you are to stay successful you probably need to be too. In increasingly competitive markets we all need to be very focussed on improving our knowledge and understanding of what our clients need and require from us. We all need staff who are thoughtful and enthusiastic about improving how quality is perceived, monitored and delivered. In addition, improving Customer Care and reviewing the ways we deal with clients is also crucial for the success of many enterprises.


Over the last 30 years we have worked very closely on programmes to improve quality and customer care with some of the most quality conscious manufacturing organisations in the world, including Rolls Royce Aero Engines, Robert Bosch GmbH and Range Rover. We have also worked closely with organisations delivering very high levels of customer service including Marks & Spencer, Boots, Steigenberger Hotels, Aviva, Audi, VW, B&Q and many others. As a result we have designed and delivered and reviewed a large number of very carefully designed, completely unique indoor & outdoor training exercises designed to stimulate lively and worthwhile discussions on what is needed to delight customers and exceed their expectations and to make profits at the same time. We know what works well and can select and, if necessary, tweak training modules to suit your specific needs.

Most people who work for a living have to attend meetings of some sort - often quite frequently and yet just how many times have you left a meeting feeling one or more of the following :-

* the meeting was a complete waste of your time ?
* there was no need for you to even be there ?
* the meeting was really boring and lacking in interest ?
* you didn't achieve nearly as much as your would have liked ?
* the meeting maybe shouldn't have been called in the first place ?
* the meeting was badly organised or ill prepared ?
* the agenda was not well thought through ?
* the meeting wasn't controlled very well ?
* some people didn't feel consulted or represented ?
* key people were absent from the meeting ?
* the gathering started late or lasted far too long ?
* so much more could have been achieved if the meeting had been better organised and managed... ?


If you don't ever feel any of the above frustrations, then you must work with some very professional and competent colleagues. Lucky you ! For many people, however, sadly, such sentiments may be quite commonplace.

Making your meetings more fun and more productive is something we may be able to you assist you with. We can help coach people to improve the way they manage and run meetings and we can also offer facilities to help you run real meetings in an unusual or more creative way.Your younger colleagues may also be interested in improving your presentation skills with us too.

Lunching at the Millstone Inn in Hathersage during an informal meeting.





This is our own sailing cruiser which we often use as an unusual relaxing meetings venue on this beautiful lake in the Lake District in Cumbria.

We have a wide range of training tasks to choose from - from light-hearted simple short ice breaker tasks to very complex, sophisticated half day duration team tasks involving multi-tasking and rapidly changing parameters to test the keenest of minds.

Making a video about rock climbing to be broadcast ( it was ) on BBC1


Reviewing a session for Basilica Computers

VISION SHARING - INSPIRATION & SETTING UP MISSIONS STAFF WILL ACHIEVE

John F. Kennedy was an inspirational leader who outlined his dream - a vision - to plan a mission to try to put a man on the moon. It was at a time when there were no rockets or even life support systems in existence to do so. The mission was to make the dream come true.

Even if it's not rocket science, we are always happy to help our clients to share their visions and dreams for the future with their colleagues.



Sometimes, with a degree of inspiration and belief in our leadership plus sufficient organisation and sincere support we can all achieve great things. Inspiration helps us achieve much more collectively than we may ever imagine. We can aspire to achieve the impossible and make it happen. The way that leaders present their dreams and ideas to their teams and share their enthusiasm for tough targets can be greatly assisted if the team members have an appropriate forum in which to learn about and discuss their shared hopes and ambitions.

If you have some tough tasks or daunting ahead of you, there's much to be said for using one of our unique OMD training & development courses to or tailored conference gatherings to help you get folks on board and share your vision.

RECOGNISING THAT WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT TALENTS, QUALITIES, PREFERENCES, SKILLS and SHORTCOMINGS

Appreciating that people have different strengths and weaknesses and working around shortcomings and taking advantage and utilising strengths is commonly recognised as a critical part of developing effective working teams.



It will not surprise you to learn that a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of individual team members ( human or canine ! ) is important and becomes a part of many of the courses we tailor for our corporate clients wishing to help their teams perform even better. It is a key stage of some of our sophisticated leadership skills training events too.

The discussions of strengths & weaknesses and ways and means of working this knowledge to get better performances from winning teams. This can often be combined with Psychometric Questionnaires & Evaluations and Self Perception Analyses which we are fully qualified to use with our customers. We are happy to discuss with clients which types of psychometric assessment work best in the kinds of forums which we are often working in. Sometimes the simplest ones which don't use up too much valuable time enable people to have open and light-hearted or more serious but nonetheless good natured discussions are the best.

SENSIBLY USING PSYCHOMETRIC ASSESSMENTS & UNDERSTANDING & USING TEAM DYNAMICS THEORY




Properly used in the right hands, Psychometric Tests have a very definite role to play in many of our bespoke training programmes. We often include sessions devoted to this interesting application of theory to practical situations when working with training groups in the evenings. It helps people understand how different people may prefer to adopt different roles within a team - why they may act differently to other people - and how best to manage people with different traits. It isn't hard to learn but if not done properly it can be harmful and counter productive, so we suggest you check anybody doing this work for you has a sound grasp of applied psychology. You perhaps wouldn't go helicopter flying with someone who didn't have a pilot's licence, but we know that development training can go horribly wrong sometimes if people who are not sufficiently skilled or experienced try to use psychometric assessments on a "monkey see, monkey do" basis.




We have many years experience in the judicious use of a range of Psychometric Tests and Self Perception Questionnaires which we have developed for use by real team members and for individuals. Such work can be very enlightening and often helps group members to understand and appreciate that others in their group may see the world and react to events quite differently. This can be a powerful aid to leaders wanting to get the very best performance from their teams... and we encourage clients who have not used some of these techniques before to incorporate them into some of their more sophisticated training courses with us. We can supply everything that's needed and will run the results and discussions sessions for you.

The results of tests taken prior to a course can be used during the event to very good effect.

FAILING TO PLAN PROPERLY IS PLANNING FOR FAILURE

We are often asked to help teach people to learn to "plan the planning" & improve planning skills

In our experience, "Planning" is something which lots of quite clever & intelligent people don't always do very well or naturally. Even when a team has a clear "Blueprint" outlining what's expected from them it is not always obvious how that will be achieved - a bit like throwing a design for a yacht at a team but forgetting to tell them about the details of how to construct it. A lot of people may think they have a plan and then end up "working it out as they go along". Indeed, moreover, often planning & mapping out the details of a detailed plan is something which is only done well by people who are trained and experienced in activities such as building, complex manufacturing processes and, of course, busy mums & dads who constantly have to plan ahead to balance transporting, feeding and looking after their kids, jobs and other family activities.

We have a very number of carefully designed, completely unique training exercises designed by our expert programme designers including Dr Iain Jennings, Wing Commander Pete Daughtrey, Dr Andy MacLean and others. These are very effective ways of developing & improving planning skills.

We don't know who invented the wheel or the spindle - but weren't they really good ideas ?l
Sometimes getting away for a team retreat with good facilitation from trained and qualified team coaching experts can help bring out some great ideas for improving your teams' productivity, morale and overall effectiveness. Often run in combination with simple psychometric evaluations and self perception questionnaires which we have developed and perfected over the years, our creativity training sessions are always well received.

We will be delighted to discuss including some of our tried and tested training modules which can help develop the time management skills and abilities of personnel at all levels - from apprentices to board members. Some of these training methods and techniques have been fully audited by the Charted Institute of Personnel & Development interviewing and running benchmarking and evaluation audits with real training sessions here for our clients such as TXU, Rolls Royce, Bosch GmbH, NHS Supplies and many other well known quality conscious clients.

After 30 years of constantly working with clients in and around the Peak District we have an enviable number of very carefully designed, reliable and completely unique indoor and outdoors based training exercises which can be used to inculcate and develop various decision making skills. These include exercises exclusive to our company such as trail quests on mountain bikes, treasure hunts, underground cost-benefit analyses of proposed capital development projects, mountain rescue search tasks, incident journeys, and many more.

A jolly group of firefighters from Baale Nassau on the Dutch-Belgian Border area.




Working in small teams during a light-hearted inter-team competition involving orienteering and trailquests.






What rain ?

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CONFIDENCE BUILDING FOR TEAMS & INDIVIDUALS

For 30 years we have been heavily involved as professional outdoor and indoor trainers and coaches helping people to improve their confidence in themselves, in their own abilities and in the skills and talents of those they work with.

We have also been involved with helping real teams to develop their skills and feel more confident about themselves and their dealings with their stakeholders. One of our secrets is knowing how best to transfer the good feelings and confidence we can generate out and about in the countryside with the reality of life back at work. It isn't easy and we feel to be done rally well it requires staff who are not only patient, friendly coaches and instructors but who are also practical psychologists and / or development training consultants too. Such staff have all the skills and understanding needed to make confidence building training work well in an enjoyable and lasting way.

Most of us enjoy working alongside colleagues who we feel are competent and in whom we feel are confident that they can do a good professional job, it therefore makes sense to invest in helping colleagues feel more confident and empowered. We know that success invariably helps to encourage further success. We all understand it is often more relaxing and more comfortable driving in a car as a passenger with a person driving who we admire as a safe and competent . However, many people admit they would like to feel more self confident and we have tried and proven ways and means of developing people 's self confidence and self-worth and methods to help them overcome confidence issues. A classic self confidence issue or worry for some people is that awful feeling they get when asked to give a talk to a large audience, for others it may be a quite natural anxiety about being given control of a large project for the first time... or maybe the fear of being asked to manage a team of people. OMD techniques can be applied to help people overcome their worries and fears and the great feeling of success that this can generate can often be used to very effectively address other self confidence issues.

As you might expect, we very successfully use the enjoyment and satisfaction arising from successfully undertaking team activities such as abseiling, sailing boats, flying aircraft, going on underground caving trips, completing projects and team tasks within time limits, and other forms of positive reinforcement to help condition our participants into a mental set where they feel good about themselves - and this can have a marked impact of their lasting self confidence and their willingness to try new tasks and do well in them. Sometimes it is the fear of failure and the fear of fear itself which can hold people back. When participants realise that all the things we ask them to try are well within their capabilities, it is most regarding to see how quickly they ask if they can attempt more challenges.

Enjoyable and worthwhile experiences shared with people ( and even horses) can form enjoyable and meaningful relationships and are valuable opportunities for forming lasting links and friendships. At home or at work you can't have too many friends and well wishers and people willing to help you out at work.

OMD training if well run offers a great way to develop links with folks in your own team, in other departments, between people working at scattered sites, and can also be used to help develop understanding and mutual respect between people working at very different levels within an organisation. Senior executives who come on courses and join in have often reported afterwards that they had gained a really precious insight into some of the thinking at lower levels in their organisations that they'd been completely unaware of hitherto. Whenever senior directors from companies such as Volvo CE have asked if they could join in with some of their apprentices' training events we have jumped at the opportunity. Not only is that a brilliant way of the Apprentices learning first hand about what goes on in other parts of their own organisation, it also means that senior staff can develop lasting links and inspire their younger colleagues. If it's been a while since your MD spent a day with one of your apprentices or junior staff - he or she might learn something useful popping in to take part in an event - and they might have fun too. Life's too short to be working hard all the time every day of the year !

Over the years we have received many first hand accounts of the major and long lasting improvements to morale following successful OMD training and development courses designed and run by our team of experts.

When the Going Gets Tough - The Tough often seek to raise morale !

It helps any organisation to seek to raise and boost the spirits and morale of teams on many different levels.

WELLNESS - FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.....

There is a little mentioned although very beneficial side effect of holding outdoor training in beautiful surroundings.

They say that a change of scene is almost as good as a rest sometimes. People are often suffering from stress often report after our training events that just spending a few days away from ringing telephones and pressing meetings - even though they have been busy all day - has left them feeling oddly peaceful and relaxed and able to see things much more clearly. We take no credit for that. There is a peace and a tranquility that can easily be found in the beautiful countryside around our venues which can sometimes take your breath away. Sometimes it is good for our wellbeing to just take a couple of minutes and appreciate what we have around us. It seems much easier to see problems from another angle when you are here. Call it a retreat, call it a spiritual thing if you wish. Call it stress release, call it what you will, it seems to work.

Descending a caving ladder during a task based problem solving exercise
to produce a survey of part of this, England's deepest cave system.











Abseiling over a fast flowing river in a dramatic gorge during a task based
problem solving exercise involving the rescue of a large quantity of escaped
very lifelike lifelike "radioactive creatures". Such exercises really do heighten
the emotions of all the people taking part and there is normally a great deal of
involuntary learning and excitement going on during such sessions.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers....

Developing courage & Inspiring your co-workers

photo by Matthew Dent


MOTIVATIONAL SPEECHES HAVE BEEN MADE FOR CENTURIES


WE BELIEVE THAT MOTIVATION IS IMPORTANT TODAY & THAT PEOPLE STILL NEED ENCOURAGEMENT.

THEY NEED COURAGE TOO TO FACE SOME OF THE HARDSHIPS & CHALLENGES THEY ARE OFTEN CALLED TO FACE AT WORK.

We know that our course's participants have always appreciated hearing about their futures and prospects directly from their most senior colleagues. Thus, insofar as possible, we would always urge senior staff to try to spend time with their staff when they are visiting us - just to sincerely "paint the horizon" as our MD puts it.

This concept works well and has been successfully applied on events we have run for apprentices, new police cadets, RAF officers, factory workers fearing redundancies, managers of rapidly expanding teams, doctors facing new challenges, aerospace teams being asked to completely change their working structures, and so on. It is not just a military thing and it is important and is deliberately the last but not least of improvement considerations on this carousel's list. Sincere, reassuring and motivational words can often be much better appreciated sometimes in a pub at the end of a great day working on Continuous Improvement, sat on a boat in the middle of a lake - or just at the start or end of a course.... they have more resonance than an e-mail and people really appreciate having a chance to ask questions and check their understanding.

We would be the last people to ever suggest that merely going off abseiling or caving will change people's working lives. The training work we do for clients is far more complex and sophisticated than going off for a few jolly days out in the countryside. Nonetheless, we do know that our tailored and structured programmes designed and run by our training experts will help ease some of the stresses of facing up to challenges have helped a large number of clients. We are very grateful to those clients who have been kind enough to have this work audited fully by independent assessors form organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development. It requires us to work closely with our clients at a very senior level sometimes... but the results are quite impressive. We cannot stress enough that not all outdoor and indoor management development training providers are the same. You tend to get what you are prepared to pay for.

If you have found this part of our website interesting and useful, may we leave you with a old motivational speech. They are from a play by Will Shakespeare.... you probably know them too. They were directed towards some soldiers by their king just before the fighting at Agincourt and have been referred to many times...


This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's Day.