MOST Analysis

Mission Statement

Finding a balance between life and work can be extremely challenging. The only way to navigate this effectively is to be grounded in your values and have clarity around your priorities. During this workshop, we will guide you through a process of identifying your values and narrowing them down to your “core values” and how to get clear on your priorities, so you can live joyfully, be more productive and make a bigger impact. You will get to discover how you can be an inspiration to others, how you can make a meaningful, powerful, and lasting contribution to humanity by serving a greater cause than your own – this is the legacy you can leave others.

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Objectives

1. Defining Values – Our values are the standards by which we live by – the things that you hold dear in your daily life and work. They (should) determine our priorities, and they’re probably the indicators we use to see if our life is going the way we want it to. When our actions and behaviors reflect our values, life is usually good – we’re satisfied and content. However, when these do not align with our personal values, things feel… off. This can be a major source of dissatisfaction. In this course we uncover how to define your values so that our decisions moving forward can align with them allowing for harmony and joy.
2. Your Why – Our why is what defines us. It is what drives us and motivates us every single day. d. It makes you the best person we can be. In this course we will clarify our why and how to use it as a guide for happiness.
3. Passion vs. Purpose – In this lesson we will take a look at the difference between passion and purpose. Our passion fuels us and is personal our purpose bigger than ourselves and is about serving others. Having a purpose in life is associated with all kinds of benefits. Research suggests that purpose is tied to having better health, longevity, and even financial success. It feels good to have a sense of purpose, knowing that you are using your skills to help others in a way that matters to you. This lesson allows you to reveal your purpose.
4. Prioritizing Priorities – Having a system in place to identify our priorities in our lives and at work is essential. For most people, their priorities are in a constant state of flux, shifting with the various demands that crop up on a daily basis. In order to prioritize your daily tasks effectively, you’ll need a clear picture of the bigger goals and values in your life. In this course we will go through a highly effective process to map out our priorities so we can be more productive and fulfilled.
5. Personal Boundaries – Once we have identified our values and priorities it is crucial to create boundaries to honor and protect them. In order to become an expert at setting and being comfortable with personal boundaries, you have to practice. Luckily, in this course we have 9 amazing ways for you to get started and to start reclaiming your own life with establishing clear personal boundaries.
6. Relationship Boundaries – Boundaries in relationships can help us by enhancing our sense of self. They enable us to separate our identity, feelings, and needs from those of our partners, family, friends, and colleagues. Boundaries aid in the development of healthy relationships by outlining needs and respecting limits. In this course we will take a deep dive into how to create boundaries in all of your relationships.
7. Workplace Boundaries – Many professional women especially millennials have found themselves in a precarious position as a result of corporate oppression, professional duress, and social anxiety. All we can do for the time being is maintain a healthy boundary so they can avoid overwork, burnout, and stress. Setting professional boundaries at work entails developing healthy professional practices for yourself. These boundaries can often help you stay productive and happy at work while also allowing you to better separate your work and personal lives. Learn exactly how to do this in this powerful course.
8. Yes or No – Knowing when to say Yes and when to say know can be difficult at times. In this course, we will reveal some guidelines you can follow to help make your decision easily and confidently.
9. Success Environment – Is your workplace designed for success? You may not realize it, but your surroundings play a significant role in your success. Your surroundings and what (or who) occupies those surroundings comprise your environment. Setting up your environment for success will make it much easier to embrace new opportunities and drive true success for yourself, your business, and your future. Find out exactly how in this riveting lesson.
10. Workplace Habits – Successful people frequently attribute their success to specific habits. Some actions, when practiced on a daily basis, can assist us in maintaining focus and completing workplace tasks. In this course, we will look at six examples of good workplace habits that we can cultivate in order to be more productive and advance in our careers.
11. Finding Fulfillment – Each individual has their own path, their own definition of happiness. Work is what we spend the majority of our adult lives doing. It is important to make sure that your work allows you to utilize your gifts and talents as well as meet your financial goals. In this course we will cover the 4 pillars to find fulfillment in life and the key steps to finding fulfillment at work.
12. Making a Difference – Many people believe that they lack the ability to make a difference in the world. The truth is that each of us has been placed in this world to contribute and make a difference in our own unique way. It doesn’t have to be anything out of the ordinary. It simply has to be something you do with the intention of ‘doing good.’ In this course we reveal ways that you can make a difference in the world by being uniquely you!

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Strategies

1. Learn and implement the steps to defining one’s values and then narrowing them down to 3 core values.
2. Process to discover our Why, what motivates us then, creating our Why Statement.
3. Discover 7 strategies to finding our purpose. Including an activity to build team cohesiveness and creative thinking.
4. Learn keys to prioritize our priorities.
5. Adopt tips in setting personal boundaries to honor and protect our priorities.
6. Learn powerful ways to identify and then separate our feelings and needs from our partner, family, friends, and colleagues by setting relationship boundaries.
7. Develop healthy professional practices by setting workplace boundaries.
8. Guidelines to knowing when to say Yes or No.
9. Steps to create our environment for success including selecting a business bestie.
10. Cultivating success habits to become more productive and advance our careers.
11. Implement the 4 pillars to find fulfillment life and 7 key steps to finding fulfillment at work.
12. Identify ways to give back and make an action plan to facilitate it.

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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 feedback 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 fully, actively participate in all of the group exercises and be willing to 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.

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Introduction

In the Values and Priorities workshop we dive deep into how clarifying our values and establishing what our priorities are can change our life for the better. It allows us to live a life of integrity and fulfillment.

Values are words that embody what is important to us, providing an answer to the question “What do I value most in my life?” Here is a great definition:

Values are the characteristics of a fully lived life from the inside out.

Even if they are complex and intangible higher-level functions, they are our personal rules and standards. They frequently reflect our views on what is good and bad, right, and wrong. Similarly, they guide our every decision, and their satisfaction or violation can elicit strong emotional reactions.

According to Tony Robbins, values “are like a compass that directs your life.” They motivate and demotivate, and they justify behavior. They frequently refer to emotional states:

• happy
• satisfied
• successful
• compassionate
• loving
• fulfilled

These are our “must-haves” in life, because when we live according to what we most value, we can see that this is the foundation for our beliefs. When our choices are in sync, we experience congruence – “life is good” – and are fulfilled. If we do not meet this standard, we may become angry, fearful, or sad.

We can prioritize our values into core values by selecting our top 3 values. Having the right core values can help us make better decisions, be more productive, achieve more, and, perhaps most importantly, love and be loved. They’re quite significant. And studies have shown that core values have a slew of other advantages.

Priorities are the things that matter to us most. In this workshop, we uncover a powerful process to start identifying our priorities. To effectively manage our time and know what matters while progressing toward your goals, we must have a clear list of priorities. If we take on too many tasks on a regular basis, you may eventually become stressed.

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History

Values are so deeply ingrained in our language, thought, and behavior patterns that philosophers have been fascinated by them for over a thousand years. Nonetheless, they have proven to be so quick-silvery” and complex that, despite their crucial role in human motivation, we are still horribly ignorant of the laws that govern them. (Toffler, 1969)

One of the most perplexing anomalies in the field of consumer research has been the lack of focus on human values. This is especially perplexing given that most serious students of human behavior have long argued that values play an important role in personal, social, and cultural activity. When attitude researchers have used the term “values,” it has frequently been confused with the concept of product attributes. While a few recent studies have found a significant relationship between values and consumer behavior (Scott and Lamont, 1972; Vinson and Munson, 1976; Henry, 1976; Vinson, Scott, and Lamont, 1977), consumer researchers have generally taken a hands-off approach to the value construct.

Marketing practitioners have become highly skilled at creating advertising and mass communication appeals that include allusions to important human values. Indeed, we would argue that marketing appeals have historically been highly value oriented. These individuals to understand what most marketing academics do not: human values play an important role in consumer behavior.

What could account for the disparity between what marketers do and what academics study? One plausible explanation is that academics have almost entirely focused their attention and technical skills on consumers’ more rational beliefs about tangible product attributes and marketing characteristics such as color, price, taste, and availability. A counterargument, but much less widely held, is that practitioners may have forged ahead for years. According to attitude studies, practitioners are appealing to deep, emotion-laden values and providing powerful stimulation to sales.

Maslow advanced his hierarchical groupings of needs in the mid-1950s into those concerned with safety, security, love, self-esteem, and self-actualization (Maslow, 1954). Morris (Handy, 1970) discussed value theory in depth and created a list of thirteen “ways to live,” which were conceptions of the good life that respondents were asked to rate in terms of liking.

If we go back in time, specifically to the 14th century, we can find the first use of the Middle French and Latin equivalent of priority word.

Late 14c., prioritie, “state of being earlier (than something else), prior occurrence or existence,” from Old French priorite (14c.) and directly from Medieval Latin prioritatem (nominative prioritas) “fact or condition of being prior” (source also of Spanish prioridad), from Latin prior (see prior (adj.).

From c. 1400 as “precedence in right, place, or rank.” In 1897 Century, Dictionary wrote “Priority is the state or fact of coming first in order of time; what little use it has beyond this meaning is only a figurative extension,” but in 20c. the sense shifted toward “fact or condition of coming first in importance or requiring immediate attention; thing regarded as more important than another or others.” Wyclif (early 15c.) renders prioritas into (Middle) English as furtherhead.

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Current Position

Today, there has been a large emphasis on the importance of understanding our own personal values and identifying our priorities in order to live a happy life.

In marketing literature, there are numerous indications of a growing interest in personal values, as opposed to product and marketing attributes. The “Second Washington Social Indicators Conference to Explore Business Response to New Values” is one example (Marketing News, 1973). Furthermore, there appears to be a growing body of research on the subject.

Scott and Lamont (1972) demonstrated that global values, product evaluative and descriptive beliefs, and domain-specific values are three distinct but cognitively related variables. Along the Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck lines, Henry (1976) finds significant associations between automobile ownership and personal value orientations. Vinson, Scott, and Lamont (1977) extend Rokeach’s paradigm by seeing values as existing at two distinct levels.

The first level of values, known as “global” values, includes both instrumental and terminal values. The second level is concerned with values that refer to desired product attributes as well as market transactions and behaviors. They are cognitively separate but related to global values, as well as descriptive and evaluative beliefs, and are referred to as “market-specific” or “domain-specific” values.

Any object of interest to a consumer may be defined as a consumer value if it meets the criteria outlined above. It can include any generalized person-centered end-state of existence, mode of behavior, pattern of ideas, grouping of people, biological condition, or direct benefit that is highly valued by the consumer or perceived to be valued by others important to him. He employs it as a criterion for assessing a wide range of other values, objects, activities, and people. It is a long-lasting belief shared by the consumer and many, but not all, other members of his subculture or society. It is acquired and modified early in life through personal, social, and cultural learning, and it plays a critical role in his decision-making.

The concept of priorities is widely used in our day-to-day corporate world, and thus in our personal lives. The issue is that we are losing our ability to discern what is truly important and trying to bend reality as if we could handle more than one priority task at the same time, or perhaps we do not want to appear careless about a task that is currently not a priority. So, our brilliant idea is to label all of our activities as “priority xyz tasks.”

It turns out that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to make trade-offs between options that appear to be all “priorities.” So, we unconsciously try to do everything, and the result is overwhelm. That is why it is essential to have a proven process to identify clear priorities one at time and develop a plan to accomplish each task.

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Future Outlook

When we consider our values in all things especially in decision making, we can be sure to remain in integrity and be in alignment with what we know is right. We will approach decisions with clarity and confidence knowing that we’re making the best choice for our current situation.

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.” – Mahatma Ghandi

Making decisions based on our values is not always easy, but it is always right. Identifying and understanding our values is a challenging yet important exercise. Our values are a central part of who we are and who we want to become. Becoming more aware of these important factors in our life, will allow us to use them as a guide to make the best choice in any situation. Some of life’s most difficult decisions are really about determining what we value most. When many options seem reasonable, it’s helpful and comforting to rely on our values and to use them as a strong guiding force to point us in the right direction.

When we’re getting clear on who we want to work with and how we want to serve them, it is necessary to base this on our priorities and our values to remain in integrity and be fulfilled through our work.

Putting our priorities and values first, in everything you do, will allow us to live a life of joy, abundance and peace.

Creating boundaries in all areas of our lives will allow us to honor and protect what we hold dear.

Successful leaders must be passionate about what they do, what they want to do, and why they want to do it. This will propel us towards a goal even when it appears impossible, but this is only true for those who lack passion.

Making sure our values and priorities are considered in everything we do and having a system to identify honor and protect them is crucial to our success as a human and a professional.

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Executive Summary

Clarifying our values and establishing what our priorities are can change our life for the better allowing us to live a life of integrity and fulfillment. Values are our personal rules and standards. They frequently reflect our views on what is good and bad, right, and wrong. Similarly, they guide our every decision, and their satisfaction or violation can elicit strong emotional reactions. When we get clear on what our values are we can use them to guide us in life and help in our decision making.

Priorities are the things that are most important to you. This workshop will teach a powerful process for identifying our priorities. We must have a clear list of priorities in order to effectively manage our time and know what matters while progressing toward our goals. It is common to become stressed if we take on too many tasks on a regular basis.

Setting boundaries in all aspects of our lives will allow us to honor and protect what is important to us.

When we are clear on our values, our passion, our why and our priorities we become unstoppable.

There are 12 courses (or focus areas) in the Values and Priorities Workshop.

Here they are:

1. Defining Values – Our values are the standards by which we live by – the things that you hold dear in your daily life and work. They (should) determine our priorities, and they’re probably the indicators we use to see if our life is going the way we want it to. When our actions and behaviors reflect our values, life is usually good – we’re satisfied and content. However, when these do not align with our personal values, things feel… off. This can be a major source of dissatisfaction. In this course we uncover how to define your values so that our decisions moving forward can align with them allowing for harmony and joy.

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2. Your Why – Our why is what defines us. It is what drives us and motivates us every single day. d. It makes you the best person we can be. In this course we will clarify our why and how to use it as a guide for happiness.

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3. Passion vs. Purpose – In this lesson we will take a look at the difference between passion and purpose. Our passion fuels us and is personal our purpose bigger than ourselves and is about serving others. Having a purpose in life is associated with all kinds of benefits. Research suggests that purpose is tied to having better health, longevity, and even financial success. It feels good to have a sense of purpose, knowing that you are using your skills to help others in a way that matters to you. This lesson allows you to reveal your purpose.

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4. Prioritizing Priorities – Having a system in place to identify our priorities in our lives and at work is essential. For most people, their priorities are in a constant state of flux, shifting with the various demands that crop up on a daily basis. In order to prioritize your daily tasks effectively, you’ll need a clear picture of the bigger goals and values in your life. In this course we will go through a highly effective process to map out our priorities so we can be more productive and fulfilled.

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5. Personal Boundaries – Once we have identified our values and priorities it is crucial to create boundaries to honor and protect them. In order to become an expert at setting and being comfortable with personal boundaries, you have to practice. Luckily, in this course we have 9 amazing ways for you to get started and to start reclaiming your own life with establishing clear personal boundaries.

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6. Relationship Boundaries – Boundaries in relationships can help us by enhancing our sense of self. They enable us to separate our identity, feelings, and needs from those of our partners, family, friends, and colleagues. Boundaries aid in the development of healthy relationships by outlining needs and respecting limits. In this course we will take a deep dive into how to create boundaries in all of your relationships.

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7. Workplace Boundaries – Many professional women especially millennials have found themselves in a precarious position as a result of corporate oppression, professional duress, and social anxiety. All we can do for the time being is maintain a healthy boundary so they can avoid overwork, burnout, and stress. Setting professional boundaries at work entails developing healthy professional practices for yourself. These boundaries can often help you stay productive and happy at work while also allowing you to better separate your work and personal lives. Learn exactly how to do this in this powerful course.

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8. Yes or No – Knowing when to say Yes and when to say know can be difficult at times. In this course, we will reveal some guidelines you can follow to help make your decision easily and confidently.

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9. Success Environment – Is your workplace designed for success? You may not realize it, but your surroundings play a significant role in your success. Your surroundings and what (or who) occupies those surroundings comprise your environment. Setting up your environment for success will make it much easier to embrace new opportunities and drive true success for yourself, your business, and your future. Find out exactly how in this riveting lesson.

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10. Workplace Habits – Successful people frequently attribute their success to specific habits. Some actions, when practiced on a daily basis, can assist us in maintaining focus and completing workplace tasks. In this course, we will look at six examples of good workplace habits that we can cultivate in order to be more productive and advance in our careers.

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11. Finding Fulfillment – Each individual has their own path, their own definition of happiness. Work is what we spend the majority of our adult lives doing. It is important to make sure that your work allows you to utilize your gifts and talents as well as meet your financial goals. In this course we will cover the 4 pillars to find fulfillment in life and the key steps to finding fulfillment at work.

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12. Making a Difference – Many people believe that they lack the ability to make a difference in the world. The truth is that each of us has been placed in this world to contribute and make a difference in our own unique way. It doesn’t have to be anything out of the ordinary. It simply has to be something you do with the intention of ‘doing good.’ In this course we reveal ways that you can make a difference in the world by being uniquely you!

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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 business. Impact for positive change means putting what you’ve learned into practice and 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 will you be collaborating to ensure all the women in your company have everything they need to succeed?

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Curriculum

Women Empowerment – Workshop 3 – Values & Priorities

1. Defining Values
2. Your Why
3. Passion vs. Purpose
4. Prioritizing Priorities
5. Personal Boundaries
6. Relationship Boundaries
7. Workplace Boundaries
8. Yes or No
9. Success Environment
10. Workplace Habits
11. Finding Fulfillment
12. Making a Difference

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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.

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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.

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Support available

You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicate with them as m