Accredited Materials - New Partner

We are extremely pleased to announce that Trainer Bubble have recently partnered with the Institute of Commercial Management (ICM) who have reviewed and accredited our training materials. ICM are an internationally recognised examining and awarding body for business and management students and, as part of this accreditation, ICM will provide certification for participants that complete a Trainer Bubble training course. Visit us now to find out more at Trainer Bubble.

Trainer Bubble will also be providing training materials to support ICM's social and economic development programmes overseas.

We are very proud to be part of this initiative. We would like to personally thank the team at ICM who have supported us throughout the entire partnership process. We are happy to be working with such a professional organisation.

Influencing Skills - Social Proof

The principle of social proof states that one important method people use to decide what to believe or how to act in a situation is to look at what other people are believing or doing.

Our need to revert to this behaviour usually happens in two instances. These are:

• Similarity – people are more likely to follow the lead of others that are similar



• Uncertainty – when people are unsure and the situation is ambiguous they are more likely to follow actions of others to determine what is correct

Social proof is inherent in many aspects of our life and is certainly growing with the advent of the internet and other technical advances. The use of reviews by many websites, including Amazon is an example of social proof in action. More recently, Blogs have become a method of creating a following of like-minded people.

Social proof can be an extremely powerful tool in the marketing of a company’s products and services. After all, if your current customers (who happen to be a lot like me) are so happy with your products, then surely I will be too?

Social proof and it's application for influencing skills is discussed in some depth in our training materials,'The Power of Influence', which you can purchase from our website Trainer Bubble.

HSE gets tough on Stress Management

Employers are being urged to improve their management of stress at work issues after it emerged that the Health and Safety Executive issued an improvement notice for stress against the Lincolnshire NHS Trust.

This latest improvement notice shows that the HSE will not shy away from taking action when employers fail to meet their stress management obligations under the health & safety laws.

You should always take the health of your staff seriously and stress is often an area that is overlooked as the symptoms are not always physically displayed. Of course, this does not make stress any less important and we have an obligation to ensure that staff who become subject to stress issues are treated with the respect and care they deserve.

Recent statistics confirm that work-related stress is widespread in the UK working population and is not confined to particular sectors or high risk jobs or industries.

An annual absence survey carried out last year by CBI/AXA, found that non work-related stress, anxiety and depression was the most common cause of long-term absence. Government guidelines on how to manage it and a growing pile of evidence on tackling stress have not solved the problem.

Another report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists adds that sickness absences due to mental health problems such as stress are likely to be longer than those caused by physical health problems, accounting for 47% of long-term absence.

It is important that all businesses take the subject of stress management seriously. Ensuring staff are aware of stress issues and how to cope goes some way to ensuring they are better prepared to cope with stressful situations. Add to this a clear policy on stress and a structured method of working and levels of workplace stress can be reduced.

Make your staff aware of Stress Management and methods of coping with stress by delivering the Trainer Bubble training course materials on Stress Management.

Ridiculous Customer Complaints - A fun activity

I recently came across 20 ridiculous customer complaints. A list made up from research by Thomas Cook and ABTA.

Having looked at the complaints and laughing a lot, it occurred to me that this might make a fun activity to carry out during a customer care or complaint handling training session. You simply provide the participants with the list of ridiculous complaints and ask them to come up with the best response possible by way of feedback. This will test their ability to respond to customer demands as well as providing a bit of fun to the training session.

Here's the list...

1. A tourist at a top African game lodge overlooking a waterhole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate".
   
2. A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she’d been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the “do not disturb” sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room
   
3. "The beach was too sandy."
   
4. A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.
   
5. "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."
   
6. "We bought 'Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake."
   
7. "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."
   
8. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it only took the Americans three hours to get home."
   
9. "My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."
   
10. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."
    
11. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?"
    
12. "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners."
    
13. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."
    
14. "We had to queue outside with no air conditioning."
    
15. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."
    
16. "I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."
    
17. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."
    
18. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned."
    
19. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."
    
20. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."

This training game and many other training resources and course materials can be found at Trainer Bubble.

Structuring a Difficult Message - Communication Skills

When news is communicated, it helps if there is a structure to the various elements of the news. If we structure the communication in a logical manner, we will ensure that people clearly receive the message and that there is less likelihood of misunderstanding or ‘Chinese whispers’. The order of giving the news is:

Context – What you are going to be talking about
The headline - The heading of the subject matter
The detail – The detail
The reason for the news – What’s caused it
The rationale – What led to the reason, the background behind it
The consequences – What this actually means to the individuals, what will happen
Alternative actions – What, if any, other actions can be taken

For example:

Context:

I want to talk to you about the office.

The headline:

The office is closing.

The detail:

The office is closing and merging with the office ten miles away.

The reason for the news:

It will save money by operating out of one office rather than two.

The rationale:

We’ve looked at how the loss of business is affecting us and there are a number of sites around the country where the operation can be combined.
This will save costs by reducing the number of sites we have to maintain.

The consequences:

You will need to consider any additional travelling time and distance. You will need to consider how this will affect your home life. You need to consider whether or not you want to stay with the company.

Alternative actions:

As well as staff being offered the opportunity of moving to the other office, which is being enlarged, there will be options to move to other offices if more convenient. There is also a voluntary redundancy option.

This article was adapted from the training materials for the 'Communicating Difficult Messages' workbook, which forms part of the training materials by Trainer Bubble. Visit our website to view this great resource www.trainerbubble.com

Self-Management - Living in the Gap

We are consistently making decisions based on values. When they are challenged or we perceive them to be in danger, our emotions will step to their defence and this can sometimes make us become seemingly irrational, particularly in the eyes of others, who may not appreciate or even understand our value system.

Self-management is all about being able to think clearly and remain focused even when you are experiencing strong emotions. Human beings are great story makers and will fill gaps in knowledge by interpreting things according to our own emotions and beliefs.

When something happens we have the true event, the actual facts of the situation. We then take this information and interpret it via our values, beliefs and attitudes. Often this will alter the true event and amounts to, ‘What we made it mean.’

Think back. How many times have you misinterpreted a situation and allowed your emotions to provide conflicting information to the real event? This often occurs because we don’t take time to ‘keep our emotions in check’ and will respond or react immediately.

There is an alternative, which we call, ‘Living in the Gap’. This means taking the time to re-assess the situation and not jump to conclusions based on how we interpret things. This is a demonstration of self-management.

Hold your hand up in front of you now, imagine your left has written on it, 'What happened' and your right has 'What I made it mean', that bit between, is the gap. That's the moment when you have the chance to pause...and not act. The moment you usually miss because you're too hot under the collar to notice. The time when you should have stopped to think.

This method can make a huge difference to your life when used effectively. It can be as basic as not hitting 'enter' on that email that you are sending in response to a seemingly rude one from your boss, or stopping for a breath and a think before you hurl abuse at a colleague who’s said the wrong thing. There’s no difficult process to it and no rules, just a simple method of managing those emotions!

So, next time you feel your temperature rising...stop...and live in the gap.

This article is adapted from an excerpt in the Trainer Bubble training materials on 'Emotional Intelligence at Work'. Visit our site today to view it.