This month, we recognise Stress Awareness Month and in May, we recognise Mental Health Awareness Week. Both are huge factors affecting our working life so in light of these we sat down with Shona Ward to discuss the training she delivers for us.
We’ve been working with Shona for over 12 years. She’s a great friend of The Hub Events and has been instrumental in the creation of some of our most popular courses on the roster. Shona delivers a number of courses for us, with particular emphasis on stress and mental health in the workplace and how it affects our performance. Read on to find out a bit more about Shona and the way she delivers her training.
As we approach these two very important months, could you share with us a bit about your background in the fields of mental health and stress, and how this has shaped your training?
Firstly, I think what's really interesting is the shift that's happened in the awareness of mental health. I think organisations have often been a little anxious about stress when it comes to their employees. I think the big revolution in my professional lifetime, has been the increased acceptance of mental health issues. We know that 25% of us are going to experience mental health difficulties at some point in our adult life. I'm so appreciative of all the people who have stepped up to talk openly about their mental health issues, including some very famous people and well-recognised faces. I think that's been transformational in terms of people's self-acceptance of those issues. When you're experiencing it, you can feel really alone and really inadequate.
I've got a mental health background; I worked for 20 years as a clinical practitioner in mental health whilst developing my skills and experiences as a trainer. One of the courses I run is Building Your Resilience at Work. We know that 50% of our resilience is inherited, but we can all build our baseline resilience by building our self-worth and practising self-support. I think that increased public acceptance has really helped us all be more self-aware and realise the need for self-support.
The power of this awareness is to create a community of people who feel that they're not alone, that there is support and we can help each other. What that does is it creates in people a sense of belonging and being part of something. That's what human beings are designed to do. We have a very acute sense of wanting to build and belong to communities. It can be catastrophically corrosive, when we use those communities to “other” other people and say, ‘you’re different, you don't belong’. What Mental Health Awareness Month does, is it links people into a sense of community. I think it also works against that sense of ‘othering’ that can happen.
How did the courses come about?
I think probably 12 years ago, I was talking to Christine McDonald from The Hub Events about what kind of courses they ran, and where there was a training need that hadn't quite been fully recognised. We started to reflect on people’s different personalities. I gave her the example that, when we deliver presentation skills modules, (often part of leadership or management training), there's one module where people have to get up on their feet and do a practice presentation. My colleagues and I noticed over the years that there were always one or two people in the room who just looked like they'd rather be at the dentist having a root canal done than be in the room delivering a presentation.
I talked to Christine about that and she said, ‘Why don't we run a course for those people?’. So that's how the Presentation Skills for the Reluctant Presenter started. That was 12 years ago, and the courses are still filling up. It's one of my favourite courses to run. It's been really satisfying meeting people over the years, realising they're not alone.
One of our frequently asked questions that delegates ask is, ‘Will there be roleplay on the course?’ If you've got a room full of reluctant presenters, how do you approach encouraging participation?
Well, I think the key to unlocking that is in the science. What happens is people personalise that experience and think it's to do with themselves and get this kind of ‘overwhelm’. Actually, it's just a physiological reaction to a perceived threat, an innate hardwired system that we all learned about in GCSE science that's just kicked in. It's a normal, protective, evolutionary function. It’s just not helpful when you're wanting to present.
So actually, what you're experiencing has nothing to do with you, your skills, competence, or your personality, it's just to do with the chemistry. What you learn to do on the course is discover how to control the body chemistry and how to make sure that this flight/fight system doesn't get switched on, or if it does get switched on: how to switch it off.
That ‘brain fog’ that we can experience has to do with your frontal cortex, which is the bit that enables you to make complex decisions and think strategically. That shuts down by 60% when you're in fight-flight mode. That's why when you stand up and suddenly you can't remember what your next slide is, or somebody asks you a question and you really can't think to even answer it. It's not because of your cognitive capability, it's just because of what's happening chemically in your body.
So my approach is about teaching people what's actually happening. It gives people a sense of control. The main thing about regaining a sense of control is understanding what's going on and learning techniques that will work. The critical focus of the course is about arming people to be able to deal with those circumstances, even if the worst happens.
One of the things that happens around fear and anxiety, is if we have a bad experience with something, we will just avoid it in future. Why would we go and pet the dog when last time we got bitten? We know from the psychology of anxiety, that if you avoid a fearful stimulus, it gets more and more frightening. You can get so boxed in by your own anxieties that you become a kind of prisoner of your own fears. And so, the way out is to face it in a really supportive environment, with people who are your friends for the day, your cheerleaders who are on your side.
Looking at one of the other courses, How to Be a High Impact Introvert at Work, it continues to attract a lot of interest. Increasingly, we know that workplaces have become much more extrovert-biased over the last 30 years. Yet introverts are far more likely to be the ones who come up with the best problem-solving solutions, the best innovations, and the most creative ideas. If they can't get a word in, or they're not seen and heard, then that's to the detriment of all organisations. You're not going to have the best brains on your projects unless you allow them to speak!
If you consider yourself a more reflective personality and want to advance professionally, you're going to have to learn a few tricks and hacks to get yourself seen and heard when you want to. This course offers people those hacks, some easy ways to take that step forward and make your voice heard in the meeting.
We know that training is one way that people get better at what they do. But what you get on a course is an amazing alchemy between the community of people that are there, all their personalities and experiences that they bring into the room and the chemistry that they develop. Then you've got the content of the course; the ideas, techniques and structures that help all of us. And then you've got the trainer. So you've got three elements. It's the combination of those three things which is what creates the magic on a training course.
That's why I love training. It's different every time, you've got a different combination of people, bringing different experiences to bear. So I've always got things to learn, as well as things to pass on.
What kind of challenges do you come up against as a trainer in this field?
Early on in my career as a trainer, there were constant challenges. I would make errors and misjudge things. The great benefit of doing something for a long time is that you've made so many mistakes, that you learn a lot about how to avoid them. I'm in that lucky position that, day to day, I tend not to bump up against really serious problems.
I’d like to turn it around and discuss the best thing.
The thing that lifts your heart, is when you've got the right people at the right time on the right topic. And you've got this group of people that you know just are going to have such a brilliant day together. It's going to be so memorable and so helpful for them. The worst nightmare is you've got the wrong people at the wrong time on the wrong topic!
I think The Hub Events are good at avoiding that. They talk to clients and are really good at knowing what the training contains. And they talk that through with their clients and we put outlines up there so prospective attendees can email and find out more. You can have a really well-designed course, but if it's in front of the wrong people, no one's going to have a very nice day. I think getting the right people on the right course is the most important thing, that’s the challenge.
Do you have any personal favourite parts of the day?
It’s something to do with the alchemy that I talked about earlier. That chemistry you can just feel in the room, that people are having ‘penny-dropping’ moments and they suddenly see something that they hadn't seen before. It might be about themselves, it might be other people or it might be about what happens in their workplace. When those moments happen, you can just see that the world has become more straightforward for them, and they suddenly see a path to get them where they need to be. That's just the biggest privilege to be around people, providing an environment as a catalyst for that to happen, I really love that moment.
How do you know you've done a good job?
I think you can waste so much time on training having a good time but not actually making any difference when you get back to work. The focus of the courses I run is always, as you go through the day, ask yourself what are you going to pick up that you can use. I always get people at the end of the course to write three clear commitments about how they're going to use what they've learned, specifically, who they're going to use it with, when they're going to use it and be to very, very specific about their workplace.
You can have a lovely day and have a nice time but that's not going to change things back at work, it's you that has to do it. You've got to put the stuff into action. For me, that's when I know I've done a good job. When people have got a good list of stuff to do when they get back.
What do you think are the three most important characteristics a trainer needs to have?
Number one is a sense of humour. You need to be able to have a laugh and have fun on a course.
Number two is a sense of conviction. You have to believe what you're training people in, it has to matter to you.
And then the third one is a sense of curiosity. You've got to be really interested in the people on your training course, and interested in their workplace, what they do, and what their world is like.
Finally, what are your top three tips for somebody coming on a course?
Absolutely cracking question. But, I've got four answers rather than three!
One: come expecting to have fun, expecting it to be a refreshing day that you're going to enjoy.
Two: ask a good question. Think of a good question and ask it to put the trainer on the spot.
Three: be honest. Don't put on an act and think you've got to try and impress people with how good a manager you are. Just be yourself.
And the fourth one is to know why you're going on the course and why that topic matters to you. And if you've been sent on the course, find a reason why this topic is important to you. Don't come to fulfil someone else's agenda. Make it yours.
Shona runs a series of courses for us here at The Hub Events, including - Assertiveness at Work, Building Your Resilience at Work, Presentation Skills for the Reluctant Presenter, How to Be a High Impact Introvert at Work, Influencing Without Authority and Presenting Effectively.
If you want to know more about how The Hub Events can help your organisation learn, inspire and thrive, get in touch today! You can find out more about Shona and our other amazing trainers here.
