Some examples of client work

People Development Programme for Pentland Brands - a group of large portfolio of international sports, fashion and outdoor brands

People development is one of the core values of this company. Maryanne runs 2 courses within their programme:

Best Practice Presentation Skills Course

In Best Practice Presentation Skills I work with a group of five people over one day. The participants come from across the brands so it's a networking session for them as well as a skills development day as often no-one in the group knows each other.

We work on building confidence in presenting through delivery as well as preparation of structure, using visual aids (slides/products/designs/mood boards) and handling questions. The course has a balance of theory and practice using video replay for feedback and giving each participant plenty of opportunities to practice the skills they learn throughout the day.

Key benefits of a group programme are:

• More pressure presenting amongst peers
• Group feedback and discussions

Bite Size Emails and Memos

The People Development team recognised a need for a course in written communication - focussing on emails. We designed a bite sized (2hr) session for a group of 6 to meet this need. Again a mixture of theory and practice is used with materials the participants bring to the session and send to us in advance.

 'I really enjoyed the course, gained confidence and found better ways to conducting meetings and building presentations.'

Case Study: Pitching to Win for Noble Group 

Maryanne Johnston was asked to design and run a 'Pitching to Win' programme with teams across the bank in their Edinburgh and London offices (approx 60 people), including administration staff (who help prepare presentations).

The Bank's aim was to re-work their pitch strategy, minimise preparation time, raise the bar on everyone's communication skills and ensure their core brand values were coming across consistently.

We split everyone into 10 groups of 6 and ran 2 half day sessions (2 weeks apart) for each group covering delivery and preparation of pitch presentations.

Benefits of running half day sessions:

Better for long term learning and development

• Time between sessions gives opportunity to practice techniques
• More time efficient for client
• Less 'info overload' through the course with content being split in half
• Shorter periods away from desks

Everyone had several opportunities to practice presenting both individually and as teams using case studies prepared by the Marketing team.

Into the future, the Bank's plan is that Maryanne will be brought in when there are significant pitches or other presentations taking place to ensure teams are consistently playing at the top of their game.