Training guru heads to Big Apple to help American managers

One of the UK’s most respected training and development gurus is off to New York to train some of America’s leading managers.

Arnie Skelton, founder of Manchester-based Effective Training & Development, has been invited by the Investment and Development Agency Ireland (IDA) to deliver a series of tailored training sessions at a four-day conference aimed at improving performance and teamwork among the IDA’s management in North America.

Skelton explains: The IDA has a large presence in North America and is dedicated to attracting inward investment to Ireland. However, the team is extremely scattered with managers as far flung as New Orleans, San Francisco and New York.

As it’s not economically viable to pull everyone together often, I have been asked to introduce techniques that will help everyone work better as a team.

To achieve this, we will need to define a team identity and culture to which everyone can relate and feel pride in. When people buy into common values and aspirations, geographic distances diminish in importance, especially in this age of instant global communication. Essentially, it’s about helping create good old teamwork and motivation.

I will also be delivering sessions about managing and measuring performance. This is of particular importance to the IDA because it recently changed its entire management structure and needs a system in place to help gauge and reward individual and collective success.

Skelton is also a well respected and successful executive coach within the organisation. Over the past 12 months, three of the staff he has coached have achieved significant internal promotions.