Development Training

Consulting skills training together with MC2 Institute

Since 2005, Nicolai Andler offers consulting skills training. This is partly based on his book ‘tools for project management, workshops and consulting’ that contains over 120 different tools to choose from.

In 2010, he partnered up with Prof. Dr. R.-Dieter Reineke and became a managing partner in the Swiss based company MC2-Institute. Prof. Dr. Reineke is a lecturing professor at the School of Business - Institute of Management of the Swiss University FH NW and an experienced consultant with projects in over 40 different countries.

Together with Prof. Dr. Reineke, Nicolai provides training and up-skilling seminars to corporates, in-house consulting units as well as other training institutions like the German Management Consulting Association BDU.

Together with Prof. Dr. Reineke, they design consulting skill- and training programs and deliver classroom-based training to various consulting companies. Typical clients can range from project offices, smaller boutique consultancies to in-house consulting units and medium sized consulting companies and corporate universities that require a ‘skills injection’ through tailor made consulting skills training. The training delivery through a mobile e-learning solution is being developed currently and will be made available in 2013.

MC2 Institute currently delivers consulting skills training to the members of the German Management Consulting Association (www.bdu.de).

The consulting skills training consists of a collection of topics and techniques to meet the specific needs of the client. The available ‘portfolio of topics’ are:

• Project planning and initiation
• Project scoping and definition
• Situational diagnostics techniques
• Information gathering techniques – questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, etc
• Creativity techniques -
• Information consolidation techniques for qualitative and quantitative analysis
• Strategic and market analysis techniques
• Technical systems analysis tools
• Decision making techniques
• Implementation planning  techniques
• Change Management approaches and tools
• Presentation and storyboarding techniques
• Workshop facilitation
• Motivation, team dynamics and conflict resolution

Personal- and organisational development

Nicolai Andler designs and delivers personal- and organisational development workshops to clients from various industries. The clients range from entrepreneurial SMEs, companies, non-profit organisations to parastatal

Partly based on his book ‘tools for leadership, coaching and change management’ with over 100 tools as well as his vast coaching experience and three different coaching educations, Nicolai Andler offers – together with his associates - various personal- and organisational development programs.

Self Mastery and emotional intelligence (EQ)

Since 2008, Nicolai Andler and his associates deliver this training program that focuses on the development of emotional intelligence (EQ) in individuals in an organisational context.

Emotional intelligence is defined as a kind of intelligence or skill that involves the ability to perceive, assess, understand, interact, work and positively influence your own and other people's emotions.

Emotional intelligence (EQ) consists of four ‘building blocks':

1. Self-awareness - knowing your internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions
2. Self-management - managing your internal states, impulses, disruptive urges and resources
3. Social awareness - how people handle relationships and awareness of others’ feelings, needs, and concerns
4. Relationship management/ organisational awareness - social skill of inducing desirable responses in others.

Nicolai Andler (c) 2012

The training typically covers the following EQ topics and the learnings around them:

• Self awareness - linking your feelings, your inner voices in your head and your thinking, your values and belief system to the resulting behaviour.
• Accurate self-assessment - knowing one's strengths and limits
• Assertiveness – Learn to practise appropriate assertiveness and professional conduct.
• Self-confidence – Learning to become present, have a presences and display a sureness about yourself and what you do.
• Emotional self-control – You can identify distressing feelings and keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check when they surface
• Conscientiousness – learning to maintain standards of integrity and taking responsibility for yourself. Integrity means to keep your promises and commitments with yourself and others
• Adaptability – learning to handle unforeseen changes, multiple requests and shifting priorities efficiently and effectively without ‘getting into a spin’.
• Achievement orientation  – You demand the best you can be of yourself. You question your approach to improve your performance and to find smarter ways of working with fewer risks
• Empathy – learning to sense, feel and understand others’ perspective and what the person is going through without jumping to the rescue.
• Organisational / political awareness – learning to understand the politics and drivers that influence opinions and actions of others. You ‘get what’s going on’.
• Conflict management – learning to handle difficult people and tense situations with tact and diplomacy; and to encourage factual and open discussions and deescalate stalemate situations.
• Leadership - learning to motivate others for a shared vision and goals and support others in their delivery and hold them accountable whilst leading by example yourself.
• Change catalyst - You recognise the need for change and are prepared to question the status quo. You follow the principle: ‘be the change you want to see in others’.
• Team work/ collaboration – learning to work with others toward shared goals and to create group synergy in pursuing collective goals. You will learn to motivate team members to active participation whilst creating a team identity, commitment for a higher goal and team spirit.
• Developing others – the ultimate level of emotional intellligence. Becoming able to sense the development needs of others and bolstering their abilities, aknowledging and rewarding other’s strenghts, accomplishments and successes. Learn to express appropriate appraisal and give meaningful feedback. Get to know how to encourage, coach and mentor others in a supporting and challening way that has another person’s interests at heart.

EQ development is not done over night and therefore the training normally consists of a combination of didactic intervention methods over a period of time to help with the experiential learning and internalisation process.

Didactic intervention methods like:

• Interactive workshops - for knowledge transfer and experiential learning
• Small work group sessions - to develop better understanding and internalisation of content
• Individual feedback sessions - to work through personal, more sensitive topics
• Peer – learning group sessions – to empower and make team members self-sufficient problem solvers
• Individual coaching sessions - to embed learnings, tailor learning programs and next steps and monitor progress of individual

In most cases, the training is adjusted to the development needs of the individuals, groups and organisation. Meaning the skills level, organisational hierarchy, type of work resonsibility and tasks, gender and cultural aspects and industry specifics to consider before designing the most appropriate mix of content and didactic intervention methods.

Leadership and team working skills development

Since 2009, Nicolai Andler and his associates design and implement tailor-made leadership development training programs for middle and senior management level.

This training program focuses on the development of management and leadership skills for middle and senior management in organisations.

Leadership in organisations is essentially about getting the job done through people, whatever the job is. This implies that circumstances usually dictate the most appropriate leadership style or approach.

Nicolai believes that effective leadership in organisations generally requires a good understanding of:

• Yourself
• Your organisation
• Your role within the organisation
• Interpersonal communication skills

Objectives of this leadership development programs are:

• Assessment of specific functional and managerial skills requirements of each position through best practice and company-specific questionnaires to great a skills base line
• Support middle and senior management with the required clarification and (re-)definition of roles, job descriptions, accountabilities, and performance measures.
• Develop a clear and sound understanding of each other’s role and function within the organisation.
• Improve on unclear job descriptions and adjust the performance measurement approach
• Ensure that every employee knows what is expected of her/him.
• Help managers to address and resolve team conflicts.
• Based on a skills gap analysis, develop individual development/ learning plan

Didactic intervention methods used:

• Skills assessment questionnaires and on-the-job observations - using a 360º degree feedback format with each participant to assess relevant leadership competencies and identify those areas requiring development. This information will be used when setting up a learning contract for each participant. Also get an understanding of the dynamics participants face during a typical working day.
• Workshops on selected leadership competencies - primarily to create awareness of critical leadership competencies; cover those leadership competencies required to perform effectively and found to be relevant by the participant
• Individual one on one coaching sessions - aimed at providing individual support in the ongoing development of those leadership competencies found to be relevant for each participant.
• Peer – learning group sessions – to empower and make team members self-sufficient problem solvers
• Follow-up Leadership Competency Questionnaire on completion of coaching to document and evaluate the impact of the leadership programme

Use the contact form to contact Nicolai and get a tailor made development program designed and implemented for you.