So, you have qualifications and lots of practical experience in your field. You’ve achieved a great deal. Suddenly you are asked to give a presentation at work! This isn’t what you signed up for when you became an Engineer or Technician. Where will you begin? You have never given a presentation in your life and the thought of it is proving to be quite daunting.

 

The IET are here to help.



IET Lifeskills are free workshops that are delivered by professional skills trainers who work for the IET. Being one of the Professional Skills Trainers myself, I have first-hand experience of how valuable these workshops are and know that they will give you key skills to use both in your career and in your personal life.

 

Looking at the scenario above, our Back to Basics with Presenting workshop would be an ideal place to start to help you get some key skills and tools to create and deliver your presentation.  



Presentations are just one of the areas of Lifeskills that we cover. In total we have a catalogue of 15 Lifeskills workshops that include:



- Introduction to management

- Fundamentals of project management

- Make an impact with your CV

- Managing change



The full list of Lifeskills, including a description of the topics these cover is available on our website: http://www.theiet.org/membership/career/courses/lifeskills/

 

My colleague and I deliver Lifeskills all over the UK. Local Network organisers work very closely with our courses department to organise these events. Most networks will run two Lifeskills during the academic year. If you would like to bring a friend or colleague that you think would also benefit from the workshop then you can. In addition to all of these workshops being free of charge, they are also open to the public, which means that anyone can come along

 

If you are working toward professional registration, Lifeskills will give you some essential skills to help you work on your competencies, set out in the UK-SPEC and help you to gain the confidence to put these skills into practice in the workplace.

 

Your Lifeskill can contribute two to three hours of CPD as part of the IET's CPD Monitoring Scheme allowing you to maintain your knowledge and record the learning for CPD purposes. 

 

What do delegates say about our Lifeskills?



With delegates from various backgrounds attending our Lifeskills, feedback has shown the networking opportunities are valuable as well as the experience that is brought to the table.  Feedback from our delegates proves time and time again that this free service, that the IET offers, is an essential part of their personal and professional development.

 

"The event was a great fun and also very informative. The interactive sessions where people actually stand up and do things is a great idea rather than just sitting on the chair listening."

 

"The speaker excellent and my project management knowledge and skills were greatly improved by the evening. She delivered the session in an engaging and enjoyable way and I would not hesitate in recommending the session to colleagues and friends."

 

So come along to our Lifeskills workshops commencing in September, we may have just the course you were looking for.  Full details of upcoming lifeskills can be found on the events calendar, or listed on your local network's MyCommunity page.





This blog was guest written by Louise Tythe, Professional Skills Trainer with the IET Professional Development team.