TimeBank is keen to ensure that its staff and those of its partner organisations have access to development opportunities. While franchisee organisations employ the Project Coordinators and therefore have responsibility for individual staff training, TimeBank organises a number of workshops throughout the year to share and develop best practice and to build strong support networks between coordinators across the UK. For this particular event, TimeBank wanted to respond to requests for personal development and to provide an opportunity to develop relevant skills for the successful delivery of Time Together. The needs varied from communication, influencing and mediation skills through to project management.

Tamsin Alger, Project Manager for Time Together at TimeBank, commissioned Jacqueline Hill and Nick Coombe of J Hill Associates to provide three half-day workshops as part of a two-day national project co-ordinators' conference. Jacqueline and Nick worked with the Time Together central team to develop the agenda and test the design of the sessions. The first workshop helped participants to identify their personal communication and influencing styles and to develop an understanding of how they are perceived by and their impact on others. Participants then explored how their personal styles affected their approach to their work and highlighted some practical actions to achieve the outcomes they were looking for. The second workshop took the idea of personal communication and influencing styles a step further and explored different mediation techniques including how to give, seek and receive feedback effectively and an NLP technique for resolving conflict. The final workshop looked at a typical project management cycle, explored the various components and used the learning about personal styles to help participants improve their approach to management. Each workshop ended with a session where participants identified actions they would take to put the learning into practice back in the workplace.

By jointly analysing the development needs of the Project Co-ordinators and designing the workshops we were able to provide a programme that was relevant to all the participants and one which provided significant personal development over a short period of time. The models gave a common language for the Project Co-ordinators to use when supporting each other and a basis from which to develop their own personal styles and approaches across a range of applications and situations. The participants were able to:

• Grow comfortable with their own personal communication style and have awareness of how this affects others
• Increase their confidence in managing relationships at work
• Develop a greater ability to prioritise tasks at work and establish boundaries thereby positively impacting their own personal wellbeing
• Develop confidence in having performance-based conversations with others
• Gain skills and confidence to ask for feedback
• Develop a better understanding of how to manage a project and where the pitfalls may occur
• Gain more confidence in managing others through the duration of a project
• Acquire some principles of project management that can be used in a variety of situations in their work with Time Together

The residential conference allowed the facilitators to offer coaching sessions in their 'free' time for TimeBank staff, which the individuals involved found very helpful. The consultants also helped the Time Together team to identify longer term success criteria against which the workshops can be measured in 3-6 months time. In particular it is hoped that participants will have used the skills learned to resolve difficult situations with others and develop others' skills in resolving their own situations.

Tamsin Alger, commented "The national workshops were an opportunity for us to bring together coordinators from across the country to develop their personal and professional skills and to strengthen existing support networks, all of which contributed to developing best practice in the delivery of Time Together nationally. J Hill Associates worked closely with us from the beginning in designing a tailor-made series of workshops that made the most of their expertise and applied it to our specific situation. We were impressed by the professionalism, commitment and enthusiasm of both Nick and Jacqueline when designing the workshops and over the two days in which they were delivered. We had very positive feedback from coordinators who found the workshops useful and engaging. We look forward to continuing to work with J Hill Associates in the future."

Participant feedback included the following:

• "Excellent, very relevant and useful"
• "The sessions were very useful and well-organised and the facilitators were well-informed and they will develop my skills"
• "Very relevant and well-facilitated"
  
• "The colour coding of different personalities helped me to deal with a difficult situation"
• "Was good to have workshops on personal development as we don't necessarily take time to do these things otherwise"
• "I will think more about giving feedback and mediation, and not be afraid to do so"
• "Management cycle will be implemented and planning is very useful to achieve targets"
• "Project management was very useful for my future planning of events and time management. The usefulness of prioritising"