Day 1, Special Group Interest – Leadership and Management.

What a brilliant opportunity to mingle and meet people from literally all over the world, doing a variety of management jobs in ELT. Shirley from local Brighton, Josh from Kazakistan, a friendly fellow from Indonesia whose name I can neither pronounce nor write…and many other smiley eager faces. 

 
George Pickering opened the day talking about Customer Service. 

People might argue if teachers or teachers-turned-into-managers really need that. Aftert all, teachers are supposed to teach, arent’t they? Well, in fact, the job of a teacher has been changing dramatically over the years, and in some places they have to wear all sorts of hats, from babysitters to  psychologists and more recently that of salespeople. We work at schools, which in turn are businesses, let’s face it, and then why not provide learners, I mean, customers, with good quality service in all ways possible? 

Customers then are students, but let’s not forget about our own fellow teachers and admin people, who are in turn our clients when we manage them. Making a long story short, we do need to provide good customer service, starting at home and taking it to the next level at work. 

George’s wise words feel into attentive ears and one of the highlights was the mention of ‘Moments of Truth’ – they are those opportunities a manager has to impress the client and make them memorable experiences. As Cesare Pavese put it, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” 

He was followed by Ron White, who talked about how to measure customer satisfaction, guiding us through a series of ‘hows’ and ‘whys’, filling our heads with ideas. The icing on the cake was his suggestion for us to build a ‘Service Blueprint’, which can be done by the whole staff in order to involve everyone in the customer satisfaction process. Will do!

Fiona Dunlop followed suit, talking about her work at Wimbledon School of English managing her team. Lots of amusing stories told in a delightful Scottish accent, showing the human side of management. We are, after all, people. Mind you, today’s Fiona’s birthday and I was the one to get a present with her insightful sharing this afternoon. 

At the end of the afternoon, after long queues in the morning, a typical English lunch of tuna sandwich plus an apple, and coffee and gorgeous warm cookies in mid afternoon break, the day comes to an end filled with promises for tomorrow, when the real big action starts.  Should say it was an enticing beginning! And the sun shone today in cloudy Brighton, even if only to say it is there, behind the clouds.