'I urgently need a Time Management course, do you know when the next one is?' I wish I had a £1 for every time I have been asked this question. During the 1990s this was either prompted by the amount of money an organisation needed to spend by the end of a financial year or by somebody who felt that having a system for managing time would be the same as inventing a 36 hour day.
In many respects the issue of Time Management and how skills in it can be best developed is one which vividly illustrates the short-comings of a course-based approach to training and professional development generally.
In a perfect world we would all have permanent and easy access to an infinite list of tailor-made training courses covering every single conceivable development need. In reality tutored courses are expensive to provide and extremely limited in flexibility. The relatively modest programmes available are often designed to be of general support to the widest number of participants, and in practice can rarely be made an exact fit with the requirements of an individual.
Time Management is a typical case in point. There are as many systems for managing time as there are approaches to working - almost infinite - and for the individual wanting help with organising themselves there is no telling which will be the most effective. And the chances of landing on a seminar describing an ideal one for yourself are pretty slim. In the same way, few courses, however relevant their title, will go directly to the heart of your own problems or planning needs. If they did there is a strong likelihood that they would be on the wrong day, too expensive, too far away, or over-subscribed.
To address this it may be necessary to focus in a little more detail on the individual - how long can they be away from their busy workload? Where in the country are they based and how far can they travel? How much money are they able to spend? All of these factors are likely to vary from individual to individual and have a bearing on the final outcome. And most importantly of all, what development support will be most effective in meeting the specific reasons for wanting training in the first place?
The various needs of individuals actually feature at a much earlier stage in the process of addressing development needs. The key to effective training and development begins with a clear identification of needs, and the following questions are offered as a way of helping this process:
What are you looking to achieve?
Training is always going to be most productive (and cost-effective) if you are clear as to why you are doing it, and what you will be able to achieve as a result. The alternative approach - looking at outcomes as a by-product of training - makes little practical sense, but in truth it is what many people do. Don't sign up to courses just because they sound 'interesting' or because you have heard the trainer is good.
What do you need to learn to achieve this?
Looking at what you need to be able to do gives a clear focus to what you need to know and why. This makes it easier to target your effort and resources, and can help you avoid trying to learn more than you need, or undertake learning which covers a lot of familiar ground. For example, it is not necessary to learn all aspects of a computer package if you only need to use the package to write letters and reports. If you need to use the rest in a few years time, learn it then when the package will have been updated anyway.
How do you learn best?
We all have our own preferred style of learning. Some people learn most effectively in classrooms, and find the support of a nearby tutor essential, though this is not everyone's preference. Some people learn just as well from books, videos or CD Roms, other people can do just as well by being given time to experiment. Others will only really learn when they have a tangible practical reason for learning something which they will quickly apply in a real-life setting. And so on. There are many, many learning opportunities available, some less formal than others. All have different resource requirements (time and purchase of materials can sometimes effectively replace course enrolment fees), and the trick is to match the learning 'mode' to the clear objective, ensuring that it is both an effective way of meeting the outcome, and conducive to the learning style of the participant.
What other commitments do you need to work around?
It is important to consider your current workload, working hours and personal commitments to identify what is realistic and achievable. There is no point in stretching yourself too far by signing up for a weekly class that you know is at a time you are unlikely to be able to make more than one week in three.
Working freelance or as a member of a small team can often be a very isolated existence. The focus of time and attention is primarily on the delivery of projects or setting up the next project and so time for reflection and consideration of personal and professional development is rarely given the time and attention it deserves.
Ten years ago I was involved in a research project looking at the training and development needs of community dance workers, where people involved were interviewed at length about the development they had undertaken which had shaped the way in which they worked. At the end of the interviews I found that as I tried to thank people for their time, they wanted to thank me for listening and ultimately licensing them to spend the time reflecting on their development to date and taking time to consider future development. The opportunity to discuss development issues with another person was beneficial. Reflected in this research was the high incidence of mentoring amongst dance workers, where more established practitioners had given their time freely to develop and support others who were not so established.
Successful mentoring relationships depend on a combination of the personal relationship between the two parties and the ability of the mentee to open up to the mentor and the mentor to get under the skin of the issues the mentee brings to the relationship. All of this needs to be structured in a way which will move the mentee forward. Although there has been a tradition of mentoring within community dance, not every practitioner is fortunate enough to know somebody they can approach to act as a mentor and not every freelancer is in the position to give freely of their own time. In recognition of this there are now a number of schemes which either directly support mentoring relationships or which incorporate a mentoring element as part of the wider initiative. Within the East Midlands, for example Arts Training Central manages the East Midlands Arts funded mentoring scheme which provides a structured framework within which a mentoring relationship can take place. To date there have been four dance practitioners on the scheme and each one at a very different stage of their career.
Those at the early stages of their career find the opportunity to look at issues with a practitioner who has taken a similar path to their own helps them avoid some of the pitfalls and recognise that they are not the only person to have faced particular hurdles. More experienced practitioners have found a mentoring relationship a valuable mechanism for assessing future career development. One practitioner with over twenty years community dance experience described her mentoring relationship as, 'a really special experience, I've learned so much, been more inspired than for years.'
The central focus of the Mentoring Programme and the other programmes run by Arts Training Central (ATC) are the individual needs of the learner. This autumn, two new development programmes were launched, both funded by the Regional Arts Lottery Programme - ArtStart and AtTaChment - which provide an ATC advisor to work with a small organisation or individual freelancer to support their business development over a six to 12 month period. Development objectives are identified and agreed at the outset and an action plan for achieving them is established. One young dance company are benefiting from office space and access to resources combined with the support of an advisor to help them develop the structures and systems that the company needs to have in place in order to grow and develop in the long term.
This learner-centred, individualised approach to development has been a successful central feature to Arts Training Central's work for a number of years. As part of a Metier-led European Social Fund funded project in the late 1990s we were able to focus development support for practitioners entirely around their own personal and professional development objectives, resulting in an individualized training action plan. The plan highlighted the identified needs and matched the needs with solutions appropriate to the learner's objectives, preferred learning style and other commitments.
The initiative attracted a number of dance workers, often on the recommendation of a colleague already taking part. One practitioner who had been working in dance for many years came to join the programme, initially because another longstanding dance worker had suggested that it may be beneficial. Through a combination of books, articles, websites, formal training sessions and one to one coaching she was able to identify a way of reducing the number of days when she did demanding dance work by taking a part time arts development post that provided a regular income. The process enabled her to look at the skills she had developed from years of experience in community dance, match these to a likely job role and address any identified gaps. Three years on she continues to combine artform work with the part time job, and continues to take time to consider her personal and professional development needs. In doing so she is clear about what she wants to achieve and the best way of doing that to meet her own objectives.
Arts Training Central's website www.artstrainingcentral.co.uk has a section of articles and hints and tips on training and development along with links to artform sites and sites of training providers or contact info@artstrainingcentral.co.uk