Developing girls leadership skills

Just how cool is this? The USA Girl Scout equivalent of the GG Educational Framework but done in conjunction with The Disney Channel:

http://www.girlscouts.org/content/dam/girlscouts-gsusa/forms-and-documents/For-Girls/Elena_GS_Leadership_Guide.pdf

Using Elenea of Avalor the 12 page guide covers the girls abilities grade by grade, pre-school to 5th grade, and gives an example of an activity at each grade that could help her develop leadership skills. Its all part of the G.I.R.L initiative which is Trade marked:

Go-Getters
Innovators
Risk-takers
Leaders

Just think what fun you could have with this, incorporating it, into your training!

Future Mapping Template

Future Mapping Template

This is a template for a change management discussion - best used as a group exercise with a glass of wine and a box of chocolates. The idea being that the participants plan how they are going to progress along the change road getting over the hurdles to get to the happy smiley Brownie at the end. There is Lady Baden Powell asking what obstacles need to be overcome on this particular Guiding change journey? There is a  naughty sprite hiding, waiting to jump out and catch the leaders on their journey by surprise! Make your own template to focus on your particular change journey, it really does work, and gets some amazing discussion going!

I enjoy doing leadership & management type trainings - there just isn't enough requests these days. I really need an observed training for my Trainer Renewal this year but all anybody wants at the moment is Safe Space - just got another request in for May. Can't wait for the new training plan.

Change Management at Anglia Commissioners Conference

Wonderful to be back in Anglia Region at the Kents Hill Park Training & conference Centre. At short notice I travelled to Milton Keynes to run 2 x 1h 15 min sessions on Change Management. The remit was to focus on the Kubler Ross Change curve and to look at some techniques to support emotions in relation to the change agenda. The venue and food were very good (some commissioners fitted in an early swim on the Saturday morning) as the venue also contained a spa. The were over 130+ commissioners and Anglia were really well organised.

My first session the commissioners got hung up on IT skills and no matter how many scenarios I presented to steer them in the right direction they kept focussing on the negative - hope they saw the irony of where they got themselves. The session needed to be longer as 75 mins wasn't long enough. For the 2nd session I said at the beginning we were leaving negativity at the door and were assuming a perfect world where everyone had the IT skills and tools they needed to fulfil their role. That did the trick and the session went much more to plan. The powerpoint slide representing all of the known change over the next 18 months did the job, and shocked them so they could experience the 1st stage of the change curve. There were some wonderful examples of  "Bright Spots" being reported on the way out of the change curve e.g stars of the gang show were all bought the new Guide top which they then wore in their units with great success. An ongoing bright spot because the SS leader has called a parents meeting to discuss the new proposed names for Rangers and how they can feed back their feelings. I really enjoyed the 2nd session and didn't deliver all of the plan because they got so involved with the group work.

Anglia's logo for the event was really well used across the weekend.

My training room once set up

Anglia Region Thank you post cards - what a good idea!

First time for everything - GG hand cream!

Another use of the logo

Kents Hill Park training & conference centre

Objective writing

Objectives should always be written with SMART in mind. However there is a really useful Taxonomy of Educational Objectives from 1956 produced by BS Bloom & DR Krathwohl. Whilst maybe rather elderly text, the doing words provide a really useful list of objective writing words to draw from. See photos below:

 

Post Safe Space review

So far its been a busy start to the Training year so this Safe Space training was actually a couple of weekends ago at our residential weekend Gloucestershire organises annually, for the LQ so the vast majority of leaders tend to be in the 16-18yr old group. I usually do the Guide section training but due to another commitment in London I couldn't make the Saturday. Safe Space had been moved to the last session on Sunday to allow other leaders to attend who just needed Safe Space to complete their LQ.

It was fantastic to have access to a proper photocopier in the office at Deer Park as it took a fraction of the time to complete all the copying. I had to lay down the law to ensure we started on time straight after lunch in order to get the full 3 hours training in, to get people on their way by 3.30pm. Although it was a bit disconcerting that the stragglers from lunch who had been up Bubbs Hill to find a phone signal, then came in late, and started to munch on sandwiches through the start of the training.

I feel I have the content down now virtually verbatim in synch with the power point slides. It helped staying over the night before as I took possession of a table and laid  out everything in the right order - although the GG Handbook kept being "borrowed" and  I forgot to pack the Free Being Me leaders pack which I use to plug the role of Peer Educators.

The session went really well with plenty of interaction on the group sessions - as usual there was loads of contribution on the cyber bullying section, and the more mature of the participants benefited from what the younger ones were saying.

I didn't do the Safe Space evaluation form as I was more intent on getting the one stop weekend (which is the name for the LQ weekend) returned. Feedback on those for Safe Space were all positive.
I had just made notes the day before on the revised Safe Space scheme panned for April - it will be interesting to see what the final content looks like.

Empathy Mapping as a way of doing Change Management

This is an example of an empathy map I did around my Trainers Renewal which is due this year. I'm using it as an example in a forthcoming commissioners training as it really illustrates the benefit of taking control of emotions. Empathy mapping is based on what people think , feel, see & hear in order to do things differently. A very handy technique for change management.

Leaders Party Game

Prize in the Christmas challenge game

In order to get the conversation going over the Xmas meal and a look back on a year's worth of guiding in the District I set everyone the Girlguiding Essex North East Growing Guiding challenge 2016. I checked first that there was still a stock of the badges available to buy! Leaders had to have done 6 clauses from the 6 modules - Access, Excellence, Capacity, Voice, Voyager & Dark Horse.

When the sign off had been completed they could choose a magnet. There were some really good ideas included in the challenge and this suggested new ideas for 2017. Go check it out for yourself:

http://www.girlguidingessexne.org.uk/Challenges+%26+Badges/