Time to Shine: Rank Review Conference
Written by Tir Coed / Thursday 07 June 2018
The two day Time to Shine Review Conference was held in the Low Wood Hotel, Windermere from the 5th to 6th June 2018. This was the second conference of three in total I will attend as part of my internship.
Once I arrived we enjoyed a brief lunch and then had a short introduction about the next 24 hours. This was also a good chance to reacquaint with the other charitable groups and their interns. The journey there had been marked with delays (due to bus replacement services) but everyone was in good spirits.
We then moved to another room where we would take part in a seminar on ‘Communication in Leadership’ by Jennifer MacKay. The main aim of this was to give us the necessary skills and techniques to develop a good working relationship with everyone in the work place (in particular our manager) and also to learn how to cope with any problems we might face. We looked at how our mind works (via ‘The Chimp Paradox’ where there is a constant battle between instinct, logic and our previous experience) and how by getting to know ourselves we can improve our resilience with better management of our priorities and time. This led us on to look at the ‘Urgent and Important Matrix’ designed by Stephen Covey which is a helpful table that can be used to judge how important tasks are and help us choose what to prioritise. Finally we ended by focusing on how we manage our relationships with others in the work place and during group work practised various resilience techniques in order to deal with problems or issues.
In the evening Caroline Broadhurst came to talk to us about mentoring with the Rank Foundation. She explained that for a year after Time to Shine we could be mentored by those that took part in Time to Shine 2017 and that after our year, if we felt we would like to, we could mentor someone from a future group. This was part of the Rank Foundations policy of continued support and progression. They wanted us to know that they could still help us in the future in whatever career path we chose to pursue. It was also a chance for us, as interns, to give something back and use our gained experience over the course of the last year to support those just entering the ‘Time to Shine’ programme.
We ended the evening with an expertly prepared meal. This was not only a chance for us to relax but it gave us the opportunity to share thoughts and ideas with other third sector groups.
Next morning we had breakfast and then began our showcase preparation with Julie Holness. The showcase is a chance for us to tell the Rank Foundation how we have benefitted from ‘Time to Shine’ over the last year. The event itself will take place at the end of the next conference in Blackpool but due to its complexity it was important to start preparation now. The seminar was as much about developing our skills in public speaking for the showcase as it was about bringing us out of our shells so that we could perform better in the working world. Finally we got together as a group and decided how we would present ourselves in October with the hope of meeting before then to finalise our ideas and thoughts.
The Review Conference was far more intensive than the initial launch conference back in January. It was more about looking at what we had gained over the last few months and showing us how to use that (either within our charity or externally). It was focused on developing our skill set and making us more employable so that we could move forward from the ‘Time to Shine’ programme and ultimately become better at gaining employment in the future.
