Fiona takes over
Following the retirement of Trish Stott at the end of last year, our new course coordinator, Fiona Mee, has taken full charge of the day-to-day management of our training centre at Peasholme House.

Developing People Internationally accreditation workshops
Our intercultural train-the-trainer workshops have proved so successful since their launch last year that we have increased the number on offer for 2008. Three are scheduled to take place in York and the first took place in February with participants from France, Germany, Croatia and the UK, while in March, Jeremy Comfort ran an internal workshop for trainers in the German company, Henkel. Other workshops are being planned in France (two in Paris), Germany - in Ingolstadt, Frankfurt and Konstanz - and two in Switzerland in the autumn. On accreditation, participants gain access to a complete set of intercultural training materials, with extensive video and audio extracts: click on Trainer Training at the bottom of the home page of our website for more information and a registration form: www.yorkassociates.co.uk

The Mindful International Manager
York Associates director Jeremy Comfort and Peter Franklin, Professor at Konstanz University of Applied Sciences in Germany are working on a new York Associates publication, The Mindful International Manager. The aim of YA’s latest book is to distil the best practice we have identified for working internationally over the years into one publication. The book will cover a number of the key competences which appear in the Developing People Internationally virtuous circle, including managing conflict, giving feedback and providing direction. It also looks at underlying cultural issues such as power, time and communication. Aimed at practising international managers, it will be published in the autumn.

York Associates goes green
Earlier this year director Steve Flinders and course coordinator Fiona Mee took part in the York and North Yorkshire Business Environmental Forum green breakfast to discuss ways in which companies can contribute to saving the planet while at the same time cutting costs for the business. This has inspired a collective effort at York Associates to put into place an eco-action plan, the results of which will be quantified and published at the end of the year.

Neighbours
Most course participants at York Associates continue to opt to stay with host families, many of whom have been welcoming clients from all over Europe for a number of years. Yvonne and Bernard Lyons and Lindsay McNamara live next door to each other and have been acting as York Associates host families since 1999. Both their children have now left home and there is plenty of space for their guests. The Lyons have two Yorkshire terriers who have featured in many their guests’ photos although, in contrast, Lindsay’s cat prefers to keep out of the way of cameras. Bernard Lyons has taken countless (generally male) guests to watch our local football team, York City, who are currently languishing in the Blue Square Premier League (our fifth division) where a possible lack of footballing skill is at least generally balanced by the enthusiasm of the spectators. Meanwhile, Yvonne and Lindsay are more likely to take (generally female) guests on a guided tour of York’s shops, almost resulting, on one occasion, in a lost student at the York Designer Outlet. York Associates is forever grateful to the Lyons, Lindsay and all its other host families to the significant extra dimension they provide to the training experience in York.

Telephone training
Telephone training is becoming increasingly popular with some of our clients as a follow-up to their training course in York. Regular sessions of 30 minutes or one hour allow participants to consolidate what they learned in York and to maintain their new-found fluency. Frank Hatke of Bayer Crop Science has been following a telephone course with director Bob Dignen for the past two years with one or two sessions per month on average. Every Sunday at 10.30, regular as clockwork, Frank calls up for feedback on emails sent in advance, to discuss the business issues of the week and to receive counselling on the failure of Bayer Leverkusen to qualify for the Champions League. Frank will be joining us later this year for more face-to-face weekend training and ... more face-to-face counselling.

Communicating Legally
The tally of lawyers who have attended YA training courses has now reached 100. These range from judges to attorneys in private practice, together with many legal counsel from major international corporations. Nick Brieger, who has a UK law degree, has been the trainer on many of these courses. Having such specialist expertise in-house has undoubtedly added value to the training that YA can provide. Comments Nick: "Coming from a legal background helps me to understand not only the legal specialisations that our clients deal with, but also the analytical legal thinking that comes from working in that environment". Nick looks forward to running further legal courses in the coming years. The next Legal Communication group course will take place from 8 to 12 September 2008.

News gathering in English
York Associates was recently invited by the Norwegian Institute of Journalism to organise a two-week course on news gathering in English for a group of journalists working for a range of national and local papers or as freelancers across Norway. The objective of the course was to help participants understand better how Britain’s print media works as well as to improve and practise their news gathering skills in an English language context. The group were warmly welcomed by Bill Hearld, deputy editor of York’s own paper, The Press, and by the editor of The Yorkshire Post in Leeds, as well as paying a visit to the offices of The Press Association in nearby Howden. They also heard about media relations from representatives of York City Council and local employers and about the operations of the Freedom of Information Act from a leading specialist in this field, freelance journalist Heather Brooke. In addition to classroom work, participants also carried out project work which in one case resulted in a double page spread report in one Norwegian paper on Heartbeat - one of Norway’s most popular TV programmes – after two of the participants were able to see a programme being recorded live in Goathland, North Yorkshire. York Associates is looking forward to welcoming more media representatives in the future.

Trade union fact finding mission
Also from Norway we welcomed in May a group of senior trade union officers, officers of the Norwegian Trade Union Confederation and of the Norwegian Workers Educational Association and a Labour member of the Norwegian Parliament, all with a special interest in workplace learning. With the help of the Yorkshire and Humberside TUC we were able to put together a three-day programme of speakers and visits which included visits to the Leeds University learning centre and the Community Learning Centre in Castleford as well as talks from representatives of the British Labour Party, TUC and Learning and Skills Council so that delegates could learn at first hand how the legislation works and how ULRs (union learning representatives) operate in this country. The mission was rounded off by a presentation from Adam Reep, learning manager at CPP Group Ltd., giving the view of a local employer, Delegates have now returned to Norway to consider whether British practice should and can be transferred to the Norwegian context.

CRPM International
For many years YA has been working with a management training company in Lausanne called CRPM. CRPM administer several of the Nestlé leadership, communication and intercultural courses which we run in Vevey, as well as providing a range of management courses for the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Now, they have launched a new venture – CRPM International – to offer management courses in English to the growing number of international clients in this part of Switzerland with director Jeremy Comfort running the first course in People Management in Lausanne in the spring.

Giving feedback at Sprachen und Beruf, Dusseldorf April 2008
Sprachen und Beruf provides an opportunity for industry and language learning providers to get to together to discuss how better to meet the needs of business. Director Jeremy Comfort ran a Developing People Internationally taster workshop for delegates at this year’s conference. The focus was on giving and receiving feedback across cultures.

Whatever stage we are in life, feedback on our performance (both critical and encouraging) is a vital contributor to motivation and also further development. However, in many business organisations, the feedback process is left to a formal “tickbox” appraisal system which both managers and subordinates have little faith in. We believe that feedback needs to be an everyday occurrence, recognising something we observe that is going well or something which is not. How you bring this to someone’s attention needs to be both culturally and interpersonally adapted. In some organisations, employees are sceptical about a celebratory style of positive feedback and only see the value of the critical comment. In other cultures, both organisational and national, direct feedback is not encouraged, especially in a team. Here managers need to develop a style more adapted to these so-called high context cultures.
During the session we watched some DPI video extracts of managers giving feedback and explored best practice in this difficult area of communication.

Managing culture - the forgotten project risk
Bob Dignen was recently in the south of Germany to support Media-Saturn in the kick off of a major project which will roll out a new goods management software across its global operations. Bob was commissioned to introduce 'culture' as a potential project risk for the core team of programme and project leaders. Research indicates that international cultural diversity is both an opportunity and a risk for international teams: diverse teams can outperform more homogenous teams but this diversity must be managed strategically and consciously or the mix in values and behaviours will lead to lower performance. Bob led two sessions during the two days which provided a framework to both map and manage difference in key areas - attitudes to leadership, approaches to teamwork and responsibility, ways to ensure clear communication, etc. And what is the value of this kind of intervention? Well, culture is now on the agenda, actively discussed within the project team, and with a commitment to manage diverse perspectives and approaches proactively in order to foster creativity and innovation through the whole project.

R & D project management courses
Nestlé prides itself on the major contribution that R & D makes to its nutrition business. The Product Technology Centres and the Nestle Research Centre bring together scientists and engineers from across the globe. A key success factor for them is their ability to communicate across function, for example to people in marketing. On the Introduction to Project Management courses which are run for all new project managers, a day is devoted to “getting their message across”. The main focus of the day is establishing a dialogue – two-way communication with both their internal and external contacts.

On the conference circuit
Nick Brieger has been busy promoting our Developing People Internationally approach at a number of conferences this year, in line with the European Union’s designation of 2008 as the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue:

English and golf
For many years we have offered participants the opportunity to combine the development of their professional language and communication skills with playing golf and golf coaching. Director Jeremy Comfort, former director and still active trainer Derek Utley, and administrative assistant Marianne Miller, are always ready to manage their time flexibly enough to accompany one of our guests on a round on a local course. And there are quite a number in and around York. If you are a golf enthusiast, check some of these out and then call Marianne at YA on +44 1904 624246 to discuss your golfing as well as your other training needs:

Allerthorpe Park Golf Club
Easingwold Golf Club
Forest of Galtres Golf Club
Fulford Golf Club
Heworth Golf Club
KP Club
Malton and Norton Golf Club
Pike Hills Golf Club
York Golf Club
York Golf Range

Best Practice
Jeremy Comfort and co-author Bill Mascull, have completed two new titles for professional language learners in the Best Practice series published by Heinle. The intermediate and upper intermediate course books have a strong element of intercultural learning. Learners are taken through a comprehensive intercultural syllabus while also building their language and communication skills.

For more information on any of these stories, please contact us . . .
Tel: 00 44 1904 624246
Fax: 00 44 1904 646971
Email: training@york-associates.co.uk

York Associates Language, communication, intercultural, interpersonal and leadership training
Peasholme House, St Saviours Place, York YO1 7PJ, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 1904 624246 Fax: +44 1904 646971