What do you eat when you have come back from an evening event?

Chrissie Gibson of Connectivity Associates ran a workshop for the second year running to demonstrate the importance of business networking to finding out opportunities for projects, funding and jobs.

The Academy staff were very grateful “HUGE thanks Chrissie for running your excellent networking skills for our students yesterday! Thanks again”.

It might be that they are trying to lower expectations so that the audience will actually end up being pleasantly surprised. However, the message it can send is “I’ve not given this presentation much time – I’ve not thought it to be important – You, the audience are not very important.”

So, do your best. Devote enough time to your preservation and planning. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just clear and delivered with enthusiasm.

A presentation which starts with an apology is devalued.
Certainly don’t apologise.
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Contact Mike if you would like to discuss a particular case.

I was helping the students to use business networking to find out about job opportunities and to get themselves known within their business community. The students were from the UK and from China. We explored who they might want to meet and talked about the best networking opportunities for them.

John Lees in the Harvard Business Review believes that that on average about one-third of jobs are filled through word of mouth connections. Consequently, networking is about “expanding your horizons, meeting new people, and about discovery” if you want career success. The conclusion is that Business Networking is an essential tool for finding new employment for students and for anybody looking for a job.

Solution: if you have a lot of data, try converting it to a graph or other picture. If you need the detail, use a handout.

The speakers had all been affected by terrorism. One speaker had been on the tube at King’s Cross on 7/7, another had lost her leg in the IRA bombing of the Victoria Station, London in 1991, the third speaker had been a police officer on duty when a bomb went off outside Harrods in December 1983 and the fourth lost his son in the bombing of Sharm el Sheikh. They all told their stories about how they were dealt with by the authorities, the health professions, their employers, colleagues and family. Some experiences were good, some less so. In every case, their lives were completely changed by the incident.

The workshop was really useful for the emergency staff, who rarely know the ‘end of the story’ once they have helped people in the immediate moment of an incident. The testimonies were very powerful. Some key lessons were

• The trauma does not go away after six months. It can go on forever, but manifest itself in different ways.
• People need emotional support and well as physical attention.
• Family, friends and colleagues can also experience problems but this is not always acknowledged.
• Many GPs have not had training to deal with this type of case.

Quote from a participant “It’s all about them (the victim), not about what we think they want.”

The Foundation for Peace carries out excellent training for professionals dealing with critical incidents and also training in Conflict Resolution and Leadership.

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