5 Responses

1. Welcome!

   Hi Janey

   Welcome to our community! I’m sure one or more of our members will be along shortly to respond to your query, and don’t worry they’re a lovely bunch so should be gentle with you.

   I am the community manager here so let me know if you need any advice or tips on how to get the most out of TrainingZone.

   Thanks and enjoy!

2. parameters; yours and theirs….

   Hi Janey

   Welcome!

   Two hours isn’t a lot of time to cover anything especially when you could end up with "group therapy" (and you haven’t mentioned the size of group…imagine 12 unemployed people all wanting to ventilate about their stressful lives!)

   My suggestions therefore would be to

   a) Clearly set the parameters of the two hour session; what we are aiming to achieve and what we are not aiming to achieve.

   b) Personally I love the concept that "stress isn’t what happens to you, it is about how you handle/react to it"…ie for some of your people, attending a job an interview will be stressful, for others it will be viewed as a massive opportunity, for some of them being made redundant will have been stressful for others it will have been a blessed relief.  The fact that they have an element of choice in their reaction to events is very de-stressing and empowering for many people….when they realise it!  Linked to this one of the biggest problems for many unemployed people is that they have "too much" time to dwell on their problems….this causes them to feel stressed.  Keeping busy with jobsearch, self employment activity, learning and development, networking and community action may well help as well as contributing to their job hunting options.

   c) My experience of dealing with unemployed people suggests that many have pressures on their lives (that they find stressful) that are intensely personal, eg spouse walks out on them because they can no longer provide.  You need to ensure that this isn’t going to be shared, or if it is that you know how to manage it.

   d) You will probably have to work to stop any interaction in this session from turning into a BMW…..this is "Bitch, Moan and Whine"…."the Bl**dy managers who made me redundant", the "b**tards at the Jobcentre who make my life a misery with their endless snooping and chasing", the "d**m kids who can’t accept that money is tight", the "moron interviewer who didn’t give me the job" etc etc etc.  This may be cathartic but with only two hours you are going to need to keep this to a minimum. 

   e) in the absense of being able to get more time you might be well served to set them some self managed homework; further reading or self questioning.

    

   I hope this helps a bit

   Rus Slater

   http://www.coach-and-courses.com

    

    

3. Ta

   Morning Russ

   Thank you for your reply, this is very useful. I think I will add no BMW to the ground rules (unless of course its a constructive BMW with a solution!).

    

   Have a great day, Janey

4. Short Courses

   Hi Janey,

   You could try Power Hour:-

   http://www.power-hour.co.uk/

   They do short, good quality training sessions that may fit your requirments.

   Good luck

   Simon

5. Keeping it focused and practical

    Hi janey – welcome to TZ!

   I agree with Rus that 2 hours is a very limited time so you will have to be very clear about objectives and outcomes for the session. For example, I usually run a one day stress awareness course which covers the following:

   • What is stress?
   • The difference between "good" and "bad" stress
   • The causes of stress
   • The symptoms, effects and impact of stress
   • Assessing your own stress levels
   • Identifying our own stressors
   • How to manage stress through reducing or controlling the stress factors (including time-management, self-management, assertiveness etc)
   • How to increase your ability to cope with stress (including living a healthy lifestyle, and relaxation techniques)

   A really important factor to note is that stress occures when the demands on a person exceed that person’s resources or ability to cope. (and as Rus says – this will be different for different people). In light of this, there are two approaches to stress management:

   1) reducing the pressure (such as learning how to manage time better, learning how to be more assertive and say no, finding less stressful ways of doing things)
   2) increasing the ability to cope (such as relaxation techniques, learning to put things in perspective, living a healthy lifestyle etc).

   I would suggest that for your short workshop you should focus on giving people some really useful, usable, practical tools to achieve either one or the other of these two approaches, rather than trying to cover everything and just skimming over things.

   I would be very happy to share ideas/techniques etc with you if that would be helpful. Feel free to contact me at nicki@salt-box.co.uk or via my website at http://www.salt-box.co.uk

   Warmest wishes

   Nicki