AICD Review - Education

Educating the military in a peaceable manner AICD recently conducted an intensive in-house director training program for 25 of the Department of Defence’s most senior officers (both public servants and military) in Canberra.

The Department of Defence is one of the Government's largest and most complex entities and has a strong commitment to enhancing the corporate governance arrangements within the organisation. It is testimony to this commitment that these senior leaders undertook the full Company Directors Course including the assessment. The 2001 Company Directors Course residential and tutorial programs commence in February. Good Governance: Prepare your Policy Manual will be conducted in Sydney and Brisbane in March. Details of all programs are available from State offices. Please ask staff for a copy of the 2001 curriculum booklet. The Skills Update Program The increased pressure on boards and directors to improve their performance and, by so doing, the profitability and performance of the company is not simply driven by market forces.

Both institutional investors and the so-called mom and pop shareholders demand greater accountability from their boards and they have shown over the past five years that they are prepared use their shareholding power to force board changes. For directors, standing still is not an option. In recognition of the need for directors and boards to update their skills, AICD has devised a program specifically aimed at updating the skills and knowledge gained in the Company Directors Course. Doing Things Differently will draw on the experience of directors from companies who have been successful because they have done things differently. The program will challenge participants to look afresh at their board practices and assist in designing the board of the future. Tutors will include CDC tutor Henry Botha and Susan Lenehan, former chairman of NSW Waste Services and the former SA Environment and Education Minister.

Program dates:

ACT - March 7

Victoria - March 8

Tasmania - March 9

SA - March 30

WA - April 2

Queensland - April 26

NSW - May 17

Speaking and presentation skills vital for executives

You're on. You've got 30 seconds... But, my address is 20 minutes. What's this about 30 seconds? That's all the time you have to seize your audience's attention. If you don't, your listeners will go back to thinking about golf. Or the flight home. Or their next meeting. Or whatever. It's that quick. If you overcome that hurdle, there are more to come. Christine Maher has the answers for all of them in the Institute's two-day seminar, "Powerful Speech and Presentation". Maher founded Celebrity Speakers and is Australia's pre-eminent public speaking trainer. So you will learn from a person who both demonstrates these skills and shows you how acquire them. You'll identify and cultivate your natural, individual style. Rewardingly, you'll see your audience pay new attention to your written presentations. You'll avoid theatricality, falseness and mind-numbing stage fright. The curriculum includes:

• The professional perspective

• Six major speaking faults

• Planning and preparation

• Winning your audience and presenting yourself

• Your voice: projection and pace

• The two most important parts of any speech

• Humour

• Speaking without reading

• The power of simplicity

• Impromptu speaking

• Visuals

• Successful speechwriting: How to write absolutely anything.

There'll be a valuable souvenir of your two days' effort - a videotape recording the improvement in your speaking and presenting skills between the beginning and end of the course. Powerful Speech and Presentation, a two-day communications skills seminar will be held in: Sydney: March 19-20. Melbourne: March 6-7. Brisbane: April 2-3. Again in Sydney: May 21-22, June 25-26, August 13-14, November 12-13. Melbourne: May 14-15, August 27-28, November 19-20. A brochure with curriculum, comments by participants and enrolment forms will be sent separately this month to members in NSW, Victoria and Queensland divisions respectively.

Will it be a rough landing? Who knows? Expectations are that business will be harder this year. If your business confronts a downturn, let alone the R-word, you'll need something more than a warm overcoat. We have that something more. In a fading economic climate there's one skill that's been proven to make a big difference - the skill to negotiate a good deal for your company. The economy fell over at the end of the 1980s. Likewise in 1991. In both those difficult times, the oldest AICD short program, Professor Holmes' "Art of Commercial Negotiation" showed it was for the bad times as well as good. Right through the downturns the assessments of its quality by participants didn't falter. Neither did their constant commendations of it to other executives. Nor did the waiting lists for places shorten. Negotiation is a multi-layered, multi-faceted process. Selling or buying, restructuring, cost cutting, changing strategy, protecting market share, the trained negotiator knows how to assemble the pieces of the deal, and to re-assemble them as the negotiation goes on. The end game is to show their opposite numbers a win-win result.

Forget about skilled negotiators being born. They are made. And you can be one. The Art of Commercial Negotiation is run over two days with a maximum enrolment of 24 participants. Next dates: Sydney: March 15-16. Melbourne: March 22-23 Brisbane: May 3-4. Again in Sydney: July 26-27, November 15-16. Melbourne: August 9-10. Brisbane: October 25-26. A brochure with curriculum, comments by participants and enrolment forms will be sent separately this month to members in NSW, Victoria and Queensland divisions respectively.

Disclaimer

The purpose of this database is to provide a full-text record of all articles that have appeared in the CDJ since February 1997. It is aimed to assist in the research and reference process. The database has a full-text index and will enable articles to be easily retrieved.It should be noted that information contained in this database is in pre-publication format only - IT IS NOT THE FINAL PRINTED VERSION OF THE CDJ - therefore there might be slight discrepancies between the contents of this database and the printed CDJ.