Surepass host regular Expert’s Days with guest speakers

“I found the day very enjoyable, informative and useful, and took away lots of reference notes for the future.

There was much useful discussion around the Standards Check which is such a mammoth issue for ADIs and PDIs. It was great to see everyone talking about their experiences. I have lots of notes about taxable deductions, much of which I didn’t know, e.g. claiming elements of Council Tax, Electric, Gas and Water in respect of home office.

I found the talk by Kevin very interesting and relevant, and hopefully the rest of the audience did too. There seemed to be many points that came from the work of a negotiator which came across into our job. For example, dealing with first impressions if not favourable, and working out how to empathise with that person, find some common ground, and then establish proper rapport.

Much of what Kevin said coincided with coaching theory too; that thoughts and feelings motivate behaviour. So true, in both his job and ours. If we can latch on to how a pupil feels about something, we have a lot more chance of fixing it quickly. If we can get them to work out what would make them feel better about it, the chances are that they will be able to also work out how to amend their actions so that the problem fixes.

Kevin needed to be a psychologist, and to a fashion, so do we. He needed to be a fantastic listener and hang on every word said. We need to be deep listeners with our pupils, and sometimes we aren’t. Key words are in there that we need to listen for, to understand our pupils, and why they do things like they do. We can then give them bespoke coaching which gets the job done quicker and makes them happy…

Cracking day and lots of useful take away.”

Anthony Norgrove