Email Courses and Live Workshops

Email Coaching Course - Taking Control : Time & Workload Management. See below for details and feedback from previous participants.

Live Workshops - sample feedback from the last workshop is available below. Please contact me if you would like to be notified of future workshops.

Email Coaching Course : Taking Control - A Time & Workload Management Course

This course consists of 6 modules, sent out by email on a weekly, or fortnightly, basis (your choice) PLUS personal 1-1 email coaching.

What some previous participants have said :

"This course has a much more profound impact than reading a book or going on a one day course and I am impressed by how much it gets you to change behaviour. Studying the course over a number of weeks gives you time to practice and absorb the new habits" Anna, Project Director

"This course has been invaluable and has given me such a boost both personally and professionally. I have never felt so organised and unstressed in my life and leave a tidy desk at work every day. Like a juggler, I keep a few balls in the air all the time, and since starting this course, not one has hit me on the head! The email coaching was great. I thought you were very insightful and picked up on things that made me think. Thank you." Kathleen Murray. Carers Connect @ Highland Carers Project.

"This course helped me to separate the really important aspects of my life from what was cluttering it up and stopping me from being as creative as I want to be and it gave me the will and confidence to sweep that clutter aside. The email coaching was deeply motivating, in a quiet and gentle way, and a very powerful part of the process - partly because it keeps it personal, but also because it makes the course into a dialogue, which has been a key reason for keeping the momentum up. Thanks!" Mandy.

"I would recommend this T&WM course to anyone who wants to organise their time more effectively. Not only will work become more efficient, leisure time will be improved too. There are lots of tips and exercises to enable you to do this, along with very positive feedback from Lynda which made the coaching an essential part of the course." Vivian

Summary of Course Content
Module 1 - You and Your Time - Introduction, Challenges, Motivation,
Time Audit
Module 2 - Time Analysis, Job Analysis and Setting Up Systems
Module 3 - Planning, Scheduling & Goal Setting
Module 4 - Managing People - Setting Boundaries, Influencing & Negotiating
Module 5 - Managing Everything Else! - Delegation, Meetings, Procrastination...
Module 6 - Review and Work/Life Balance

If you'd like to find out a little more about the course, you can read the start of Module 1 below.

Start Date : Whenever you like but you need to be at your normal place of work (ie not away on a course, on holiday etc) for the first three Modules.

To Book
Price for individuals who are self-funding - £49. To book, using either your PayPal account or a credit/debit card, use the Buy Now button below. Or contact me if you prefer to pay by cheque.

Price for organisations - £89 per participant. Use PayPal

or contact me if you wish to be invoiced in advance of payment.

Extract from Module 1 of Taking Control 1 : Time & Workload Management

Overview of Module Content
1. Introduction
2. Course Outcomes
3. The Challenge of Time & Workload Management
- What stops us making the changes we say we want to make?
4. The Importance of Reflective Thinking
5. Getting Motivated
- Activity 1
6. The Internal Saboteur
7. Starting Where You Are
- Time Audit
- Activity 2
8. Getting into Action NOW
- Activity 3
9. At the End of the Week
- Activity 4
- Activity 5
- Feedback to the coach

1. Introduction and Practicalities
Whether you are an employee, or a volunteer, in an organisation, a small business owner or a self-employed professional, this course will help you. You can also apply many of the theories and activities to managing your home environment and workload.

You will learn how to :
1. Accomplish more of what you want and/or need to accomplish
2. Be more in control
3. Create a better work/life balance

Every week (or fortnight) for the next six weeks I'll be emailing you a Module in which I address some aspect of Time and Workload Management (T&WM). I'll be asking you to take action based on the Module content and to send me feedback on the results of the actions that you have taken. You will then receive personalised email coaching based on your feedback.

This is an email coaching course, not just an email version of a book. You may already have read one or two Time Management books and tried to apply some of the ideas but perhaps not with as much success as you would have wished. This course will provide you with the same content in terms of techniques and information that you would find in a book - but it does much more than just tell you what you 'should' do. It asks you to actively engage with the content and provides you with structure, support and encouragement over an extended period of time.

You may find that some of the time management and workload difficulties you have which led you to do this course also show up in relation to the course itself (eg making time to do the modules, getting the feedback to me on time). Your personal email coaching will help you to overcome any such barriers that you may encounter.

Practicalities
You will receive a Module, by email, every Friday (or other Friday) so that you can be ready to start working with the Module on the following Monday.

You email me your feedback at the end of the week (end of day Friday or over the weekend).

You will receive a personal coaching email from me within 48 hours of my
receiving your email.

Course Materials
Please note that course materials are for your use only. Whilst I would be delighted if you wish to recommend the course to friends or colleagues I would request that you do not pass the materials on to others either via email or hard copy. The course overview and the first part of this Module can be viewed on my website.

Additional Coaching
The course fee includes the course materials and email coaching.

You may, at any time during the course, request additional 30 minute telephone coaching sessions at the discounted price of £25 per session.

2. Course Outcomes
By using the tools and techniques provided, and taking advantage of the email coaching, you will :
- have assessed the way you spend your time and identified areas for improvement
- have learned to manage yourself better in order to manage your time better
- have a well-stocked toolbox of tips and techniques to help you with your time and workload management
- have experimented with these 'tools' and if necessary adapted them so that they work for the unique individual that you are

3. The Challenge of Time & Workload Management (T&WM)
Why is it that just being told the 'right' way to do something - whether it's managing your time or managing a meeting - so often doesn't lead to significant and permanent changes in behaviour? When it comes to changing behaviour, it's often assumed that what is missing, and what is required, is more knowledge, more information, more 'tools'. Of course, these are important - but often they are not enough. Over the past 20 years I've run many time management courses within organisations and I've discovered that participants usually already know a lot of the theory, what they 'should' do. The challenge is to actually do it.
Wanting to improve your T&WM means you want to make changes.
A Force Field Analysis diagramme is one way of summarising the factors for (driving forces) and against (resisting forces) making a particular change. For example, you work from home, don't really have a routine and tend to have very fragmented days. You decide that the change you want to make is to be at your desk from 9am to 5pm every weekday.

Examples of Driving Forces might include :

Less guilt
More structure
Better separation between work & leisure time
More focused

Examples of Resisting Forces might include :

Dislike routine
Enjoy variety
Need to fit in exercise

(I have attached a more detailed Handout on Force Field Analysis which you may wish to apply to specific changes you wish to make - in T&WM or any other area of your life).

Reasons why we don't always make the changes we say we want to make.
Reason 1. We have mixed feelings about implementing the change. There are reason why we do want to - but there are often other reasons why we don't.

It may be that when you look at your diagramme, you decide that the Resisting Forces outweigh the Driving Forces - and you decide to carry on as you are. But what if you decide that you do still want to implement working a 9-5 day? Will it be enough to just 'schedule' it? Or have you tried before and found that having a schedule doesn't mean you stick to a schedule?

Reason 2. According to the song "Breaking up is hard to do". Breaking habits is also hard to do. T&WM is very much about changing habits. About getting rid of existing ineffective habits and acquiring new effective habits. There is a saying that "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got". (Another version of this is a definition of 'insanity', attributed to Einstein, as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"). Both these statements refer to the persistence of habits. For example, if working excessively long hours hasn't solved your time management problems yet, working even longer hours probably won't either.

Recent research shows that many habits are actually 'hard-wired' in the brain. This doesn't mean that they can never be replaced with better habits - but it does explain why good intentions alone may not be enough and why it can take time and more creativity than that supplied by will-power alone. It's not just a 'simple' matter of will-power and self-discipline.

Reason 3. Focusing on the wrong thing - pushing yourself to do what you believe you 'should' do rather than being pulled by the benefits of doing it - particularly in terms of the positive feelings associated with these benefits. "I am going to work from 9-5 every day" just isn't very exciting. "Working from 9-5 every day is one of the things that will help me to get control of my time and workload. Then I'll have more time for the things I really want to do [be specific] and I'll feel really energised and happy" works better. But you have to feel that energy and happiness - not just 'think about' it.

Reason 4. Habits are not just about how we 'do' things. The reason we may have developed many of our ineffective 'doing' habits is that we have ineffective, or downright counter-productive, 'thinking' habits. For example, we may believe that if we set boundaries and say "no" to people we will be disliked - or even, if it's a senior manager, damage our career prospects. For you to gain maximum benefit from the course it will be important for you to identify not only what you are doing, or not doing (which is a form of doing) that doesn't work but also, in many cases, the underlying thoughts/beliefs/assumptions upon which the behaviour is based.

In order to do this you will need one essential 'change management' habit.

4. The Importance of Reflective Thinking.
A 'bad' habit that many people have is being so busy 'doing', in a reactive way, that there is a certain type of 'thinking' that they don't engage in enough - Reflective Thinking.

Reflection is vital if you wish to make changes in any area of your life, including time and workload management. Making the right changes requires you to learn from your experience - and to learn from your experience you need to reflect upon your experience. The structure of this course, the feedback forms I provide for you to use and the 1-1 email coaching will help you to do this. You will be encouraged to experiment with a range of time and workload management techniques and approaches in a systematic way, reviewing what does and doesn't work for you and why and then to make any necessary further adjustments to get the required results.

Notice whether at this stage you are thinking "But I just want you to tell me what to do. Gimme the quick fix. Wave the magic wand please". I would be! But for the reasons already discussed, there are no quick fixes and magic wands. That's the bad news.

The good news is that your most powerful T&WM tool is you. You are the 'manager'. T&WM is not primarily about techniques. It's primarily about you and it's easier to change yourself than to change your organisation's culture, your manager, your kids, traffic congestion or anything else 'out there'.

The most important thing for you to manage is not your time or your paperwork or your To Do list or ....... It's yourself. Improving your T&WM is a personal development project. To replace old, 'bad' habits with new, 'good' ones it will be necessary for you to change. Otherwise it would be like a child trying to force a square shape into a triangular hole.

The content of the Modules is the same for everybody.
Applying the content will have results which you will reflect upon and feedback to me.
The email coaching based on this feedback is tailored just to you.

As you go through the course, trying things out and using the email coaching, you will learn about your own personal resistances and barriers to effective T&WM and will become more and more skilled at overcoming them and managing yourself in order to manage your time.

(continued in Module 1)

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Live Workshops

Feedback from Putting on the Brakes Workshop (overview below)

"Workshop was excellent, thought provoking and very enjoyable, really glad I attended. Leader was also excellent. It's good to be 'pushed' out of the comfort zone and it was done very effectively. I found the whole workshop very useful, everything seemed to slot into place as the day went on". JG

"The workshop certainly 'did what it said on the box' - Relaxing, Reviewing and Rethinking - and I came away feeling all of these things, which I hope will help me move forward from the sedentary place I find myself at present.
The leader presented the information in a calm and concise manner and I felt that she had a genuine interest in each and every one of the participants.
An ideal venue as the peaceful atmosphere really allowed us to explore our feelings and attitudes without any environmental barriers to distract. Catering excellent too - loved the flapjacks" AE

"Workshop was excellent and I had a lovely day even though it made me take a hard look at myself and my life. It felt very safe within the group, to do that and felt very supported by facilitator. I felt I had a whole day of 'me' time and have taken away a lot to think about. Lynda was warm and friendly but also very professional and obviously knew exactly what she was doing which is very important when dealing with people in this way. Venue was exactly right and the food was superb." KM

Below is an overview of the Workshop.

PUTTING ON THE BRAKES
An Invitation to Women
to
STOP!
For a day of
Relaxing, Reviewing and Rethinking

Are you :
- living your life in overdrive, often feeling tired, low energy or overwhelmed
- spending most of your time responding to other people's needs, requests or demands - at work and/or at home?
- allowing other people to set your priorities?

Women are often praised for taking better care of others than they do of themselves. However, if you don't also look after yourself and your own needs the eventual results are anything from mild to extreme levels of physical, emotional and spiritual fatigue. Taking time for you will not only increase your own aliveness and fulfillment - it will also enable you to be an even better partner, mother, carer, colleague, friend, manager or business woman.

If you would like :
- to learn to say "no" - without feeling guilty
- to create a better balance between your responsibilities to others and your responsibility to yourself
- to make more time for you and for important areas of your life that are currently always taking a back seat
- to identify ways of taking care of yourself to avoid stress and burnout
then this day is for you.

We'll be using a range of activities which, according to the needs of the group, could include questionnaires, clarifying your important values, guided visualisation, collage, relaxation techniques and many others.

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