Interpersonal Skills

Future Strategy

Piling more change on top of existing change was never considered a good idea. Better to let thigs bed down, we used to say. Let things settle down for a bit. That was then and this is now however, where old rules no longer apply.

We have made lots of changes this year – website, digital platforms, skills and products. But we aren’t done yet and are determined to adapt to an ever more rapidly changing world of work. With that in mind, we have been doing some spring cleaning of our products and services and are intending to move the business to become simpler and easier to explain (for us) and to understand (for clients). This is more likely to be evolutionary change rather than revolutionary, but we want to make some switches to ensure that what we produce is relevant and valuable, rather than nice to have.

We are also looking at additional markets to enter and are likely to develop our B2C (business to consumer) routes much more in future.

All positive and very exciting for us and we hope for you too, so watch this space!

Re-skilling

At Future Proof Learning, all of us are avid learners and are passionate about learning and development, both our own and our client’s. And while the world was plunged into turmoil and the world of work was flipped upside down, we took the opportunity to learn new skills which we could utilise in the new way of working and beyond.

This opportunity has proved extremely beneficial for us. It has allowed us to create some brand new concepts and ideas to add to our repertoire as well as identifying new ways to deliver workshops and training sessions.

At the beginning of Lockdown in April, we enrolled in a 3-week course with Learning Stone. During that programme we got an excellent overview and introduction to online-blended learning as a concept. It gave us a great foundation to build our confidence, knowledge and experience of delivering programmes online. This training programme opened our eyes to what virtual tools and platforms are available, some of which we are now using every day. Obviously, we are currently operating on an “online only” basis, however we feel that the learning we gained from Learning Stone will also be implemented and utilised when we (hopefully) return to the physical training room.

Later in June, we signed up to a 4-part course with Shona Marshall at the ASM Difference. Her approach gave us great insight to how to adapt our delivery style to suit the online environment. While we had now acquired the practical skills to running workshops online through our learning with Learning Stone, we really valued Shona’s training on how to manage our online style to suit this new environment – how we can stimulate engagement and participation, keep everyone on the learning journey with us and ultimately achieve the client’s desired outcomes.

Since Lockdown began we have also attended a number of webinars through the Association for Coaching. These have been excellent for continuing our own development and for learning some new approaches and techniques to use with our coaching clients. We have attended sessions such as Mindfulness in Coaching, Developing a Growth Mindset and The Five-Minute Coach.

Over the last nine months, we have continued to learn new skills and develop new ways of working in the digital environment and have now settled into our very own style. We have adopted new ideas and concepts which are now starting to feel routine and natural. We are very excited to continue our learning and bring some of these new approaches with us for whatever 2021 has in store for us!

CSR – pro-bono summary

One of the positive effects of the pandemic has been this collective way of helping others in our community. When everything seemed dark and gloomy, people found ways of coming together and offer help where they could. We took the opportunity to offer some pro-bono work during these last nine months. Not only do we feel that pro-bono work can assist organisations and their people who might not otherwise have access to it, but we also get something out of it too. Whether that’s upskilling and providing experience for our staff or broadening our own perspectives and taking on new and different challenges.

While we have offered quite a bit of pro-bono coaching, we have also provided facilitation and L&D consultancy and advice. We have also provided free weekly webinars, available for anyone to attend, covering a range of topics from leadership to resilience.

We will continue to offer pro-bono work on a regular basis as we can see the benefit of this, both to the organisations we work with as well as ourselves.