Personal Effectiveness

• The use of personal productivity methods or tools you can customise to your personal work environment.
• Combining application of the basic techniques ensures everything is covered, with more advanced personal effectiveness skills to develop your financial
• The opportunity to consider how you can be improving personal effectiveness in everyday situations.

This personal effectiveness training course is suitable for professionals working in both financial services and other industries.

Participants will be able to:

• Describe time use in terms of Knowledge, Attitude, Skills and Habits (KASH)
• Define principles of effective decision making in deciphering what is really important and urgent.
• Consider how mental well-being can influence personal effectiveness at work.
• Demonstrate the fallacy of multi-tasking and how to develop task focus.
• Practice developing personal effectiveness habits

Enhancing Personal Effectiveness and KASH – what we are learning.

• Defining personal effectiveness skills
• Cause and effect – how KASH can drive your personal communication
• What causes us to be less effective in personal productivity and how do we avoid doing so
• Play-Pen projects
• Having a good day – in advance
• Dealing with the inevitable “difficult day” more effectively

Quick Question – Where do we most need to improve?

Important &/or Urgent?

• Your To-Do List
• Prioritising – how to do so – using a bit of science
• Defining your important work
• Reacting to being reactive
• What are your priorities – what should they be
• When you are truly overwhelmed, how to manage the fall out in advance
• The multitasking paradox
• Delegating where possible

Exercise: What do you need to work on first, and second?

Technology handling

• The principles behind your decision making.
• Email/Message handling tips
• Zoom & Teams
• Working from home or remotely
• Using technology as a useful tool, not a fearful driving force
• The curse of the BCC
• How to use technology more effectively

Quick Case study-based question: What does your list look like?

Time bandits – confront or cooperate?

• Handling interruptions
• Dealing with clients & colleagues
• Avoiding “play pen” or other pleasant but less critical tasks, more effectively
• Managing competing and equally “urgent” requests
• The power of focus
• Remember the CBE (can’t be everywhere!)
• How your personal communication effectiveness can improve effectiveness
• Quick tips to stay focused

Exercise: You & Your “To Do List”: what changes can you make?

Managing yourself and your day

• Managing your energy
• Dealing with a “bad day”
• How to fit work into life, and life into work
• Being your best self

Exercise: You & Your KASH – what now?

A highly successful, long and varied “fast track” career in Lloyds Bank, led him to very senior management at an early age. He was then “head hunted” to join a merchant bank at the main board director level. He now has over 40 years of experience in the UK banking and financial services sector.

The Trainer has been a freelance soft skills training consultant since retiring and is currently an external Master Trainer at both HSBC and Bank of China where he has delivered soft skills training on a wide range of topics. At HSBC he helped screen and assess both prospective and existing trainers for soft skills capabilities and has delivered train-the-trainer programmes. At the Bank of China, he has designed and delivered successfully a comprehensive presentation skills programme. Mark has created and delivered soft skills training to a vast range of clients, from global giants to small firms and partnerships.

“I don’t have the time” is a well-used excuse and is sometimes true. When it isn’t, spending time on making yourself more effective is the best way to achieve the most productive use of your time management and personal effectiveness and although it involves some effort, it is a skill that can be easily learned. This 3-hour personal effectiveness training course (including a break!) will show you the principles of improving your personal productivity activities, so you get more done, with less effort, and maybe less stress.

You will never get 25 hours a day, but you can keep improving your personal productivity and your output. To do this, we will look at how our mental capacity can be managed and we examine some misconceptions about time. We consider how to handle distractions and interruptions, and how to approach an ever-increasing list of tasks in a stress-reduced manner. We also consider the best responses when you really “don’t have the time”!