MOST Analysis

Mission Statement

The first workshop Unique Value is designed to help the participants to identify and own their unique value so they can present themselves confidently and make a bigger impact. Many women professionals do not fully understand their own unique value, so they don’t have the confidence to present themselves confidently or ask for what they want. During this workshop, we will reveal our unique gifts and the value we offer, so we can work in our brilliance, effectively articulate our value and make a bigger impact as a leader.

---

Objectives

1. Believe Yourself – Knowing your genuine value will benefit you in all facets of your life and career. It will sharpen your decision-making skills and enable you to identify the ideas, people, and issues with which you should align yourself. In this course you will learn 5 key beliefs to adopt to start believing in yourself.
2. Ignite Passion – When we align our career around our gifts/passion we will not only be passionate about what we do, but our co-workers, teammates, and customers will be attracted to us and our passion, we’ll also be able to live a fulfilled and joyful life. Discover how to ignite our passion with the Ignite Your Passion Process.
3. What’s Possible – In this course, we will learn how to turn our goals and dreams into a reality with the Go For It Formula. We will also develop our Performance Management.
4. Mindset Shift – The focus of this lesson is on changing our thinking. When we transform our mindset, we can transform our results
5. Building Confidence – Discover what it looks like to have confidence in the workplace, confidence in communication, how we can boost our productivity and expand our knowledge.
6. Visualize Dreams – We will explore what visualization is, how to visualize and how visualization can transform our lives.
7. Investing in Yourself – Discover why investing in ourselves is so powerful the top 10 ways to invest in yourself.
8. Setting Boundaries – Identify priorities and align values and learn how to create boundaries to honor them. Honor your time with time management skills.
9. Reveal Value – reveal our unique value with a proven powerful method that will transform how we value ourselves and how we articulate what you do allowing us to raise our confidence exponentially.
10. Adapting Value – Discover how to best utilize our unique value and adopt it in the workplace.
11. Stand Powerfully -Learn the 8 ways to confidently stand in your power as a professional capable woman.
12. Your Potential – Activate Your True Potential in 8 Easy Steps.

---

Strategies

1. Engage and elicit expectations for the course, introduce the concept of unique value and take a quiz to assess individuals self-worth, value, money mindset and level of passion.
2. Discuss Key Beliefs and Create Smart Goals
3. Present Ignite Your Passion Process
4. Develop a Career Plan and Vision Statement
5. Share success stories to help build confidence
6. Practice and learn how to adapt visualization and creative techniques
7. Implement a plan to commit to investing in yourself
8. Identify Priorities and Align Values and how to put specific boundaries in place.
9. Provide coaching around identifying unique value and perform a reveal your unique value exercise that is shared amongst the group.
10. Identify what you love and do well. Create a plan to change including a step-by-step action plan to reaching your true potential.
11. Provide resources and case studies that exemplify new practices for personal growth and productivity.
12. Develop new communication practices and collaboration with employees allowing them to effectively use their gifts and skills.

---

Tasks

1. Go through the Study Guide and Distance Learning lessons first and make notes.
2. Identify the key relationships that need to be managed to ensure project success.
3. Determine needs, critical drivers, concerns, and interests for each relationship.
4. Ensure that these relationships are built and maintained on a regular basis, by soliciting ideas, comments, and assessing value.
5. Schedule a meeting for the participants to meet and discuss the workshop within 30 days
6. Participants to share expectations and possibility exercises through reflection and sharing in small groups during the workshop.
7. Set a deadline for determining and analyzing the time commitment for each of the participants.
8. Participants to demonstrate personal presence, get feedback, and make a plan for further development.
9. Participants to experience the challenges of change and apply learnings to the philosophy of leading change.
10. Participants are to complete each exercise throughout the workshop fully and discuss the process and results with the group.
11. Participants to complete their project by identifying and implementing changes discussed throughout the workshop.
12. Participants to review resources for inspiration and identify at least one new tool for adoption from the provided list.

---

Introduction

The first workshop in our Women Empowerment Leadership Program – Unique Value; focuses on Identifying and Owning Your Unique Value, So You Can Present Yourself with Confidence and Make a Bigger Impact. Many women professionals do not fully understand their own unique value, so they don’t have the confidence to present themselves powerfully or ask for what they want. During this workshop, you will learn how to believe in yourself, ignite your passion, shift your mindset of what’s possible, visualize your dreams, discover the power of investing in yourself, reveal your unique gifts and the value you offer and learn how to stand in your power as a leader, so you can work in your brilliance, effectively articulate your value and make a bigger impact as a leader.

Each month of the Women Empowerment Program, we will dive deep into a component of the Women Empowerment Business Transformation Process. Our objective is to implement a process that will provide the women in your organization with high-level skills, tools, and support, so they can reach their true leadership potential. This profound shift will dramatically change the environment and culture of your organization and is essential for future success. As you advance through the course, we will guide you through the flowing process to reshape how women are currently seen, treated, and represented within your company. We start with Mindset Shift, Leadership Development, Personal Presence, Advanced Communication and Presentation Skills and end with Creating and Implementing Your Success Action Plan.

---

History

In order to own our unique value, we must have a healthy self-worth. Self-worth is an emotional reaction to one’s own self-evaluation. It’s a sense of trust in our own abilities and attributes.

This feeling is so fundamental to our functioning that we’ve given it a variety of names. There’s self-esteem and confidence, as well as self-evaluation and self-appraisal. All of these, however, appear to work in feedback loops that either increase or decrease self-worth.

For better or worse, our early experiences lay the groundwork for our sense of self-worth. The ability to recognize and control emotions is what leads to the affective construct of self-worth, which then leads to the cognitive construct. Our self-worth enable us to make sense of our experiences, believe in our abilities, and develop an authentic identity based on our talents and beliefs.

---

Current Position

Despite the fact that women have made great progress in the workforce, there is no doubt that they are still finding it difficult to advance up the corporate ladder. Women from low-income backgrounds face enormous challenges to entering and succeeding in the workforce all around the world. They often have fewer job opportunities, higher safety risks, and less political representation than men.

We should celebrate the significant gains women have made in the workforce as we commemorate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Over the last century and a quarter, their entry into paid work has been a crucial driver in the world’s prosperity.

We have gained significant benefits from the growing role of women in the economy. However, data suggests that hurdles to women’s continuous advancement still exist. The magnitude of these hurdles should prompt us to consider how structural issues, such as a lack of equal opportunity and difficulties between work and family life, are preventing women from progressing.

Despite this development, it appears that many women are still unable to fulfill their objectives. Although the wage gap between men and women has narrowed in recent years, it remains large; women working full-time still earn roughly 17% less per week than males. Even when we compare men and women in the same or similar occupations with virtually equivalent backgrounds and experience, there is approximately a 10% difference in pay.

Women continue to be underrepresented in many industries and occupations; and too many women struggle to balance work and family obligations.

Barriers to equal opportunity and workplace policies and customs that do not promote a reasonable work-life balance have slowed progress. If these barriers persist, we will waste the potential of many of our female citizens and suffer a significant loss in our economy’s productive capacity at a time when population, aging and low productivity growth are already impacting on economic growth.

According to recent data, even while women currently enroll in professional institutions in approximately equal numbers as men, they are still significantly less likely to reach the top echelons of their fields.

---

Future Outlook

Continued development would help our workplaces and families, as well as women themselves. However, a number of issues appear to be holding women back, including the difficulty women face in balancing their careers with other elements of their lives, such as child-care. When considering solutions, we should examine changes to work conditions and policies that benefit all workers, not just women. Pursuing such a plan would be consistent with the increase in women’s participation in the workforce, which has benefited not only their own self-worth and well-being but the welfare and prosperity of our society as a whole.

With the right support, many women have been able to change their destiny by taking control of their futures by being courageous enough to follow their dreams. This requires them to do the work. Which is to transform their belief system and to get clear on what makes them unique and how they can use those unique gifts to be fulfilled in their lives and careers and make an impact.

Empowering the next generation to be better leaders and citizens of society is more vital than ever, from mentorship and advocacy to resources and investment. The concerns raised by the epidemic aren’t going away anytime soon, which is why it’s critical that we provide our future women leaders with the tools they need to effect constructive social change and avoid repeating the mistakes of previous generations. The future has already arrived, and now is the moment to invest in it.

In today’s business climate, it’s critical for companies to have a procedure that explicitly promotes and empowers women. Especially when it comes to helping them understand their unique value. Only a proven system that guarantees all women have access to what they need to succeed can bring about change in this area. As a result, company culture, employee retention, productivity, and profitability will all benefit.

---

Executive Summary

The first workshop in our Women Empowerment Program – Unique Value; focuses on Identifying and Owning Your Unique Value, So You Can Present Yourself with Confidence and Make a Bigger Impact.

Although women today have made many strides in their personal development, many women professionals still do not fully understand their own unique value, so they don’t have the confidence to present themselves powerfully or ask for what they want. There is so much opportunity available to better support women in the workplace. During this workshop, we will reveal what we can do to start believing in ourselves, ignite our passion, shift our mindset of what’s possible, visualize our dreams, discover the power of investing in ourselves, reveal our unique gifts and the value we offer and learn how to stand in our power as a leader. This allows us to work in our brilliance, effectively articulate our value and make a bigger impact as a leader.

---

There are 12 courses (or focus areas) in the Unique Value Workshop.

Here are the areas we will cover:

1. Believe Yourself – Did you know that our value is directly related to our belief in ourselves? We can’t value ourselves unless we first believe in ourselves. This implies that we must believe the following: – You are a gifted and talented individual, you are passionate about your work, you have clear objectives and goals, you can execute your plan and achieve results, you have the ability to accomplish something extraordinary — or even impossible.

Our potential holds our value.

We’ll never appreciate our potential if we treat ourselves like garbage. Our genuine worth and value is found in our potential. We won’t be able to determine our worth unless we know what we’re capable of. Our potential is intangible, and a large part of it is determined by our attitude. If we have a keen thinking and are disciplined, we will achieve incredible results and most likely exceed our potential. It’s not where we are right now that decides our worth, but where we’re going.

Knowing our value is useless if we don’t know how to express it. We must confidently communicate our value in a respectful manner and leave our ego out of the equation.

“Instead of ego, believe in yourself and that you are enough.”

Knowing your genuine value will benefit you in all facets of your life and career. It will sharpen your decision-making skills and enable you to identify the ideas, people, and issues with which you should align yourself. In this course you will learn 5 key beliefs to adopt to start believing in yourself.

---

2. Ignite Passion – Are you feeling stuck or living your life on auto pilot? The truth is, that is a choice -we can choose to live a sub-standard life, or we can choose to live a life full of passion. We are all unique, we have our own set of God-given talents, skills, education, and experiences. When we start getting clear on what our gifts are and what we’re passionate about- this is when the magic happens- this is when we can discover our brilliance. People who create the life of their dreams and live their passion typically have these things in common: they’re following a burning desire that no longer allows them to ignore their passion, and they’re 100 percent committed to making significant changes and starting to take responsibility for their actions and their results.

When we align our career around our gifts/passion we will not only be passionate about what we do, but our co-workers, teammates, and customers will be attracted to us and our passion, we’ll also be able to live a fulfilled and joyful life. In order, for us to ignite this passion, we must get clear on what we truly want. Discover how to ignite our passion with the Ignite Your Passion Process.

---

3. What’s Possible – What’s possible for you, your resilience, your leadership, your work culture? We can change the game of life by focusing on the solution or what is possible versus the problem. The great news is that we always have a choice to make – we can create our own destiny. In this course, we will learn how to turn our goals and dreams into a reality with the Go For It Formula.
We will also develop our Performance Management. As part of performance management, it’s usual to work with a manager to build a career plan. This allows an employee or manager to discuss their aims with their boss or management and receive suggestions on how to achieve their objectives.

---

4. Mindset Shift – The #1 belief that holds people back is “I’m not ready.” We have a way of producing all the reasons why we can’t accomplish something versus taking action on our goals What we see as possible, determines our success. If we see an opportunity, then we are ready. It is important to always expand our possibilities since possibilities create opportunity.

The focus of this lesson is on changing our thinking. When we transform our mindset, we can transform our results. Together, we will assess our self-worth and how it directly impacts our net-worth and we will learn my 5 Easy Steps to increase your Self-Worth. We will also go through my 7 Mindsets to Adopt, so you can transform your life.

---

5. Building Confidence – People that are self-confident appear to be at ease with themselves and their work. They invite others to trust them and instill confidence in them. These are all desirable qualities to possess. But being confident in ourselves isn’t always simple, especially if we’re naturally self-critical or if others put us down. There are, thankfully, steps we can take to boost and maintain our self-confidence which we will cover in this course.

There is a distinct difference between those who drive towards their goals and get what they want in life and those who can’t. We will uncover the difference. We will discover what it looks like to have confidence in the workplace, confidence in communication, how we can boost our productivity and expand our knowledge. We will also gain access to the 5 Tips to help build your confidence.

---

6. Visualize Dreams – Visualization is a powerful tool to assist you in reaching your goals. The Law of Attraction and the power of vision go hand in hand. The concept is to envision an image in your mind that will be drawn to you if you visualize it often enough. You probably already do this without even realizing it! When you focus on what could go wrong, things tend to go wrong, reinforcing the inclination to focus on what could go wrong… because it has in the past! You may, however, harness that great creative ability for your own gain. In this lesson, we will show you a proven method how. We will explore what visualization is, how to visualize and how visualization can transform our lives.

We also will go through the Law of Attraction and how we can use it as a powerful tool to attract what we want. Finally, we will go through the 6 Ways to Help You Visualize Success.

---

7. Investing in Yourself – Investing in ourselves is the best return on investment we can have. Whether it’s building our career, learning a new skill, working on our creativity or personal development; we need to give to ourselves first before we can give to others.

So, it’s not always money that’s required, when investing in oneself, time and energy are just as important. Investing in yourself, requires learning how to maximize the unlimited potential that lies within your mind and body.

Why is investing in yourself so powerful?

Investing in yourself sends a powerful message to yourself and the world. The message is: The value and potential that I possess, is important enough to me that I’m going to give it the energy, space, and time to grow and create results. In this lesson, you will discover the top 10 ways to invest in yourself.

---

8. Setting Boundaries -Setting boundaries is essential to maintain our happiness and to be fulfilled in our life. In this lesson, we will identify our priorities and learn how to align with your values. We will also go through a process of how we can set up firm boundaries so we can thrive in our work environment. Finally, we will learn time management skills so we can effectively manage our time leading to massive productivity.

---

9. Reveal Value – Our unique value is made up of many things- our unique God-given talents, our skills, our education, and our experiences. So, in this case, there is no one else like us. We are each amazing and unique. Co-workers will want to work with us because of who we are and what you bring to the table that is different than everyone else. That is why there is truly no such thing as competition, especially if we build our career based on our unique gifts/passion. In this lesson, we will reveal our unique value with a proven powerful method that will transform how we value ourselves and how we articulate what we do allowing you to raise our confidence exponentially.

---

10. Adopting Value – Now that we’re clear on our unique value, it is important to know how to best utilize our unique value and adopt it in the workplace. In this lesson, we will explore our past experiences that allowed us to use our gifts. We will also address key areas such as Role on a Team, Key indicators, Learning Style, Social Orientation, Relationship Patterns, and End Goals and how your unique value can be properly utilized in each area. It’s crucial to keep in mind that our gifts and talents will develop and become more apparent with time and additional life experience will, in most situations, aid in sharpening your awareness of our strengths and talents.

---

11. Stand Powerfully – When we hear the word “power,” we may think of control over other people, or money, or even forcefully influencing the course of events. That is one dictatorial definition of power, but there is another: the ability to act in an effective manner. There’s the power of speech, for example, or the ability to ask for what we want, or the simple ability to say no to what you don’t want and yes to what you do. So, what does it mean to stand in your power? It implies that you value what is most essential to you. It indicates that you are aware of who you are, what you are capable of, and why you make the choices you do. Nothing can shake the foundation of who we are or rock our boat. In this lesson, you will discover 8 ways that you can confidently stand in your power as a professional capable woman.

---

12. Your Potential – In this last lesson, we will discover the exact steps to take to live up to our true potential. Many individuals anticipate there will be more obstacles in life and continue on their path with their head down, dreading failure. Or they let one person’s negativity affect their attitude when an unhappy customer takes out his or her aggravation on them. Or they may carry the rejections into their next sales pitch when the “noes” outnumber the “yeses” in sales. If you resonated with any of these statements, you risk not only suffocating your intrinsic potential, but also never discovering who you truly are or what you can become. It’s all too easy to allow life’s difficulties sap our energy, deplete our motivation, and give us a pessimistic attitude, but there is a method to keep challenging situations and negative ideas from getting in the way of your success and pleasure. We can be intentional with our plans moving forward. In this final course of the workshop, you will discover How to Activate Your True Potential in 8 Easy Steps.

---

Impact for Positive Change

At the conclusion of each workshop, we will focus our collective attention on how you, as a leader, will put what we’ve learned into practice in your company. Impact for positive change not only requires putting what you’ve learned into practice but also taking action to make a significant difference. That starts with a strong desire to change and reflection on what you’re going to do differently. It’s also crucial to consider how you’ll involve people in your organization in the discussion about what you’ve learnt and make requests for what you need from them in order to succeed. Not only will your formal team be involved, but so will your cross-functional colleagues. How would you collaborate to ensure all the women in your company have everything they need to succeed?

---

Curriculum

Women Empowerment – Workshop 1 – Unique Value

1. Believe Yourself
2. Ignite Passion
3. What’s Possible
4. Mindset Shift
5. Building Confidence
6. Visualize Dreams
7. Investing in Yourself
8. Setting Boundaries
9. Reveal Value
10. Adapting Value
11. Stand Powerfully
12. Your Potential

---

Distance Learning

Introduction

Welcome to Appleton Greene and thank you for enrolling on the Women Empowerment corporate training program. You will be learning through our unique facilitation via distance-learning method, which will enable you to practically implement everything that you learn academically. The methods and materials used in your program have been designed and developed to ensure that you derive the maximum benefits and enjoyment possible. We hope that you find the program challenging and fun to do. However, if you have never been a distance-learner before, you may be experiencing some trepidation at the task before you. So we will get you started by giving you some basic information and guidance on how you can make the best use of the modules, how you should manage the materials and what you should be doing as you work through them. This guide is designed to point you in the right direction and help you to become an effective distance-learner. Take a few hours or so to study this guide and your guide to tutorial support for students, while making notes, before you start to study in earnest.

Study environment

You will need to locate a quiet and private place to study, preferably a room where you can easily be isolated from external disturbances or distractions. Make sure the room is well-lit and incorporates a relaxed, pleasant feel. If you can spoil yourself within your study environment, you will have much more of a chance to ensure that you are always in the right frame of mind when you do devote time to study. For example, a nice fire, the ability to play soft soothing background music, soft but effective lighting, perhaps a nice view if possible and a good size desk with a comfortable chair. Make sure that your family know when you are studying and understand your study rules. Your study environment is very important. The ideal situation, if at all possible, is to have a separate study, which can be devoted to you. If this is not possible then you will need to pay a lot more attention to developing and managing your study schedule, because it will affect other people as well as yourself. The better your study environment, the more productive you will be.

Study tools & rules

Try and make sure that your study tools are sufficient and in good working order. You will need to have access to a computer, scanner and printer, with access to the internet. You will need a very comfortable chair, which supports your lower back, and you will need a good filing system. It can be very frustrating if you are spending valuable study time trying to fix study tools that are unreliable, or unsuitable for the task. Make sure that your study tools are up to date. You will also need to consider some study rules. Some of these rules will apply to you and will be intended to help you to be more disciplined about when and how you study. This distance-learning guide will help you and after you have read it you can put some thought into what your study rules should be. You will also need to negotiate some study rules for your family, friends or anyone who lives with you. They too will need to be disciplined in order to ensure that they can support you while you study. It is important to ensure that your family and friends are an integral part of your study team. Having their support and encouragement can prove to be a crucial contribution to your successful completion of the program. Involve them in as much as you can.

Successful distance-learning

Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes or workshops, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. But unlike traditional internal training courses, it is the student’s responsibility, with a distance-learning program, to ensure that they manage their own study contribution. This requires strong self-discipline and self-motivation skills and there must be a clear will to succeed. Those students who are used to managing themselves, are good at managing others and who enjoy working in isolation, are more likely to be good distance-learners. It is also important to be aware of the main reasons why you are studying and of the main objectives that you are hoping to achieve as a result. You will need to remind yourself of these objectives at times when you need to motivate yourself. Never lose sight of your long-term goals and your short-term objectives. There is nobody available here to pamper you, or to look after you, or to spoon-feed you with information, so you will need to find ways to encourage and appreciate yourself while you are studying. Make sure that you chart your study progress, so that you can be sure of your achievements and re-evaluate your goals and objectives regularly.

Self-assessment

Appleton Greene training programs are in all cases post-graduate programs. Consequently, you should already have obtained a business-related degree and be an experienced learner. You should therefore already be aware of your study strengths and weaknesses. For example, which time of the day are you at your most productive? Are you a lark or an owl? What study methods do you respond to the most? Are you a consistent learner? How do you discipline yourself? How do you ensure that you enjoy yourself while studying? It is important to understand yourself as a learner and so some self-assessment early on will be necessary if you are to apply yourself correctly. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself as a student. List your internal strengths and weaknesses as a student and your external opportunities and threats. This will help you later on when you are creating a study plan. You can then incorporate features within your study plan that can ensure that you are playing to your strengths, while compensating for your weaknesses. You can also ensure that you make the most of your opportunities, while avoiding the potential threats to your success.

Accepting responsibility as a student

Training programs invariably require a significant investment, both in terms of what they cost and in the time that you need to contribute to study and the responsibility for successful completion of training programs rests entirely with the student. This is never more apparent than when a student is learning via distance-learning. Accepting responsibility as a student is an important step towards ensuring that you can successfully complete your training program. It is easy to instantly blame other people or factors when things go wrong. But the fact of the matter is that if a failure is your failure, then you have the power to do something about it, it is entirely in your own hands. If it is always someone else’s failure, then you are powerless to do anything about it. All students study in entirely different ways, this is because we are all individuals and what is right for one student, is not necessarily right for another. In order to succeed, you will have to accept personal responsibility for finding a way to plan, implement and manage a personal study plan that works for you. If you do not succeed, you only have yourself to blame.

Planning

By far the most critical contribution to stress, is the feeling of not being in control. In the absence of planning we tend to be reactive and can stumble from pillar to post in the hope that things will turn out fine in the end. Invariably they don’t! In order to be in control, we need to have firm ideas about how and when we want to do things. We also need to consider as many possible eventualities as we can, so that we are prepared for them when they happen. Prescriptive Change, is far easier to manage and control, than Emergent Change. The same is true with distance-learning. It is much easier and much more enjoyable, if you feel that you are in control and that things are going to plan. Even when things do go wrong, you are prepared for them and can act accordingly without any unnecessary stress. It is important therefore that you do take time to plan your studies properly.

Management

Once you have developed a clear study plan, it is of equal importance to ensure that you manage the implementation of it. Most of us usually enjoy planning, but it is usually during implementation when things go wrong. Targets are not met and we do not understand why. Sometimes we do not even know if targets are being met. It is not enough for us to conclude that the study plan just failed. If it is failing, you will need to understand what you can do about it. Similarly if your study plan is succeeding, it is still important to understand why, so that you can improve upon your success. You therefore need to have guidelines for self-assessment so that you can be consistent with performance improvement throughout the program. If you manage things correctly, then your performance should constantly improve throughout the program.

Study objectives & tasks

The first place to start is developing your program objectives. These should feature your reasons for undertaking the training program in order of priority. Keep them succinct and to the point in order to avoid confusion. Do not just write the first things that come into your head because they are likely to be too similar to each other. Make a list of possible departmental headings, such as: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing and Production. Then brainstorm for ideas by listing as many things that you want to achieve under each heading and later re-arrange these things in order of priority. Finally, select the top item from each department heading and choose these as your program objectives. Try and restrict yourself to five because it will enable you to focus clearly. It is likely that the other things that you listed will be achieved if each of the top objectives are achieved. If this does not prove to be the case, then simply work through the process again.

Study forecast

As a guide, the Appleton Greene Women Empowerment corporate training program should take 12-18 months to complete, depending upon your availability and current commitments. The reason why there is such a variance in time estimates is because every student is an individual, with differing productivity levels and different commitments. These differentiations are then exaggerated by the fact that this is a distance-learning program, which incorporates the practical integration of academic theory as an as a part of the training program. Consequently all of the project studies are real, which means that important decisions and compromises need to be made. You will want to get things right and will need to be patient with your expectations in order to ensure that they are. We would always recommend that you are prudent with your own task and time forecasts, but you still need to develop them and have a clear indication of what are realistic expectations in your case. With reference to your time planning: consider the time that you can realistically dedicate towards study with the program every week; calculate how long it should take you to complete the program, using the guidelines featured here; then break the program down into logical modules and allocate a suitable proportion of time to each of them, these will be your milestones; you can create a time plan by using a spreadsheet on your computer, or a personal organizer such as MS Outlook, you could also use a financial forecasting software; break your time forecasts down into manageable chunks of time, the more specific you can be, the more productive and accurate your time management will be; finally, use formulas where possible to do your time calculations for you, because this will help later on when your forecasts need to change in line with actual performance. With reference to your task planning: refer to your list of tasks that need to be undertaken in order to achieve your program objectives; with reference to your time plan, calculate when each task should be implemented; remember that you are not estimating when your objectives will be achieved, but when you will need to focus upon implementing the corresponding tasks; you also need to ensure that each task is implemented in conjunction with the associated training modules which are relevant; then break each single task down into a list of specific to do’s, say approximately ten to do’s for each task and enter these into your study plan; once again you could use MS Outlook to incorporate both your time and task planning and this could constitute your study plan; you could also use a project management software like MS Project. You should now have a clear and realistic forecast detailing when you can expect to be able to do something about undertaking the tasks to achieve your program objectives.

Performance management

It is one thing to develop your study forecast, it is quite another to monitor your progress. Ultimately it is less important whether you achieve your original study forecast and more important that you update it so that it constantly remains realistic in line with your performance. As you begin to work through the program, you will begin to have more of an idea about your own personal performance and productivity levels as a distance-learner. Once you have completed your first study module, you should re-evaluate your study forecast for both time and tasks, so that they reflect your actual performance level achieved. In order to achieve this you must first time yourself while training by using an alarm clock. Set the alarm for hourly intervals and make a note of how far you have come within that time. You can then make a note of your actual performance on your study plan and then compare your performance against your forecast. Then consider the reasons that have contributed towards your performance level, whether they are positive or negative and make a considered adjustment to your future forecasts as a result. Given time, you should start achieving your forecasts regularly.

With reference to time management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual time taken in your study plan; consider your successes with time-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; consider your failures with time-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to time planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your time expectations. You need to be consistent with your time management, otherwise you will never complete your studies. This will either be because you are not contributing enough time to your studies, or you will become less efficient with the time that you do allocate to your studies. Remember, if you are not in control of your studies, they can just become yet another cause of stress for you.

With reference to your task management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual tasks that you have undertaken in your study plan; consider your successes with task-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case; take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; consider your failures with task-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to task planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your task expectations. You need to be consistent with your task management, otherwise you will never know whether you are achieving your program objectives or not.

Keeping in touch

You will have access to qualified and experienced professors and tutors who are responsible for providing tutorial support for your particular training program. So don’t be shy about letting them know how you are getting on. We keep electronic records of all tutorial support emails so that professors and tutors can review previous correspondence before considering an individual response. It also means that there is a record of all communications between you and your professors and tutors and this helps to avoid any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation. If you have a problem relating to the program, share it with them via email. It is likely that they have come across the same problem before and are usually able to make helpful suggestions and steer you in the right direction. To learn more about when and how to use tutorial support, please refer to the Tutorial Support section of this student information guide. This will help you to ensure that you are making the most of tutorial support that is available to you and will ultimately contribute towards your success and enjoyment with your training program.

Work colleagues and family

You should certainly discuss your program study progress with your colleagues, friends and your family. Appleton Greene training programs are very practical. They require you to seek information from other people, to plan, develop and implement processes with other people and to achieve feedback from other people in relation to viability and productivity. You will therefore have plenty of opportunities to test your ideas and enlist the views of others. People tend to be sympathetic towards distance-learners, so don’t bottle it all up in yourself. Get out there and share it! It is also likely that your family and colleagues are going to benefit from your labors with the program, so they are likely to be much more interested in being involved than you might think. Be bold about delegating work to those who might benefit themselves. This is a great way to achieve understanding and commitment from people who you may later rely upon for process implementation. Share your experiences with your friends and family.

Making it relevant

The key to successful learning is to make it relevant to your own individual circumstances. At all times you should be trying to make bridges between the content of the program and your own situation. Whether you achieve this through quiet reflection or through interactive discussion with your colleagues, client partners or your family, remember that it is the most important and rewarding aspect of translating your studies into real self-improvement. You should be clear about how you want the program to benefit you. This involves setting clear study objectives in relation to the content of the course in terms of understanding, concepts, completing research or reviewing activities and relating the content of the modules to your own situation. Your objectives may understandably change as you work through the program, in which case you should enter the revised objectives on your study plan so that you have a permanent reminder of what you are trying to achieve, when and why.

Distance-learning check-list

Prepare your study environment, your study tools and rules.
Undertake detailed self-assessment in terms of your ability as a learner.
Create a format for your study plan.
Consider your study objectives and tasks.
Create a study forecast.
Assess your study performance.
Re-evaluate your study forecast.
Be consistent when managing your study plan.
Use your Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) for tutorial support.
Make sure you keep in touch with those around you.

---

Tutorial Support

Programs

Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. They are implemented over a sustainable period of time and professional support is consistently provided by qualified learning providers and specialist consultants.

---

Support available

You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicat