How To Associates

It’s Not What You Know It’s Who You Know

A residential programme designed to prepare high potential individuals for management and leadership in the British cultural sector gave us a call. ‘We’ve had unprecedented demand from graduates to offer networking training. Can you help?’ We locked ourselves away and crafted a half-day workshop simulating a variety of networking environments. Facilitating discussion, modelling excellence and practically drawing connections, ensured our course became a regular training module.

We promised they would learn How To:

• Build rapport
• Make and map connections
• Identify what made them memorable
• Ensure their story was remembered through their delivery style
• Allow their body and message to be congruent

The high potential group walked out of the workshop knowing more about their personal impact, experienced the ease of networking and discovered the truth behind ‘six degrees of separation’.

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Say It Like You Mean It

The lobbying arm of an international law firm wanted its junior team members to become more self-aware in both internal and external meetings. Particular attention needed to focus towards preparing them for more senior and more experienced audiences. Sean designed an intensive one-day training programme using drama-based learning tools to build confidence.

We promised they would learn How To:

• Exude confidence whoever the audience
• Read the audience and flex their delivery in response
• Think on their feet and adapt their message on the trot
• Stop broadcasting and start having a conversation
• Manage nerves
• Engage through the art of story telling

The junior team members discovered their potential relied on some simple yet smart preparation. Having experienced effective preparation and practice in the workshop they were itching to take it live!

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Show Don't Tell

A global financial institution wanted to know how to encourage managers to take more responsibility in spreading corporate messages. They wanted them to become accountable for making corporate stories their own stories: to be compelling. It was important the course was, in itself, so compelling they would be clammering to sign up. We took our time to carefully consider every detail of the course. We even went as far as sourcing a rather unusual environment which would promote new ways of thinking.

We promised they would learn How To:

• Take what was theirs and be accountable
• Make corporate messages memorable and relevant
• Listen and seek to understand
• Interpret and relate corporate messages to the day to day reality
• Be inspired to motivate others

So how did the organisation benefit? Its line managers owned responsibility for corporate strategy. It was translated into clear day to day tasks. Indirectly, the organisation had fostered a closer community of leaders across the business who are now invigorated to motivate and inspire others.

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Authentic Client Relationships

When a luxury brand was in the process of modernising its image, we got a call. Its new image was being translated into all aspects of the business, including the makeover of its reception area. Its state of the art naughties design promised a completely new experience for its visitors. This radical change demanded a completely different style of client service.

Over the weekend, just as the builders were lifting the last of the dust sheets ready for the Monday morning launch, the client services team and How To were hard at work. Simulating the meeting and greeting of visitors in the new space and coaching in best-practice client service thoroughly prepared the team to go live.

They learnt How To:

• Translate the new, modern company image into their client service style
• Confidently make a strong first impression for their organisation
• Manage slick client service whilst building genuine relationships
• Be discrete in an open environment
• Proactively handle clients to deliver exceptional service

This organisation understood the direct link between its client services team and the value of its brand. Not only did the team have the responsibility of making the first impression for their brand, they also had the responsibility to transform the brand’s image, literally, over night.

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Cohesive Teamwork

A world leading consultancy wanted to encourage its leadership talent to operate effectively as a team. The challenge? These leaders were widely dispersed throughout the globe with infrequent opportunities to work face to face. So we designed a development programme, made up of a series of short, portable workshops, that we could deliver wherever in the world and whenever in the calendar they were next due to meet.

They learnt How To:

• Speak openly with each other
• Explore new possibilities as a group
• Identify shared values whilst respecting global diversity
• Translate and deliver the company’s vision as a team
• Engage together whilst working remotely

The success of our workshops relied on our coaches’ ability to foster a safe environment for these leaders to open up to each other. In addition, our workshops were dynamic incorporating a unique mix of learning tools: everything from improvisation to Rugby training. This created a memorable, shared learning experience. Bonding together in this unique environment, the leaders were motivated to nurture their relationships beyond the confines of the programme.

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Confident Communication

The brilliant minds of a top hedge fund spent most of their working lives interacting with their computer screens. Now it was time to exercise their mental abilities in a new way: to interact with people. Long term career development within this hedge fund demanded the skill to succinctly and simply articulate complex financial models to their clients. We understood that our programme needed to gently coax their brilliance out of their minds and into their mouths. Nothing short of a challenging, competitive yet cognitive workshop would do.

They learnt How To:

• Channel their energy to engage effectively with others
• Tell stories as a tool to connect to others
• Persuade and influence, using the body and the voice
• Project confidence even when in the firing line
• Deliver a message confidently without knowing all the facts
• Trust themselves to handle any situation

In only 7 short years, this Hedge Fund had grown into one of the top players in the world. We won over our delegates by delivering a learning experience that matched their fast-paced, challenging and competitive environment.

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Striking Personal Impact

A financial institution heard about us through an HR networking forum. For the first time in their 150 year history a soft skills training initiative was being introduced. Our brief was to design a beginners and advanced personal impact programme. It had to fit neatly into the overall shape of the soft skills programme, complimenting and reinforcing content from other workshops without overlapping learning.

Here, personal impact was defined as how individuals were perceived by others as well as how individuals could influence others. It was important that this course did not bleed into their existing presentation skills course, negotiation skills course or selling course.

We came up with a few ingenious exercises to test personal impact. The result? They learnt How To:

• Make the impact intended
• Be interesting and interested
• Listen and understand
• Respond to others in order to achieve a shared goal
• Understand and appreciate differences in others
• Influence and relate to others through verbal and non-verbal techniques

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