Development centres
Featured in the People Development Methods training manual
By Beverley Williams
Category: People Management and Motivation
Credit price: 4 download credits (Single user)
Development centres are normally considered to be centres of excellence where managers, executives, and others, participate in carefully designed programmes to enhance their abilities and develop their skills. Development centres differ significantly from training courses in that they normally offer a programme of development which allows the participants to build up strong relationships with tutors and other participants while they work on issues on an ongoing basis. Research and consultancy feature strongly as they need to ensure that they remain at the cutting edge of management development. The interaction between participants from a wide range of companies — and sometimes countries — is seen as a significant benefit by many participants. In-house development centres also exist, where structured programmes are in place to meet the needs of particular groups or individuals. These have the advantage of focusing solely on the development needed to fulfil the needs of a particular organisation, but they lack the benefits of interaction with those from other organisations.
You begin the training activity by introducing the topic of development centres and the participants define what a development centre is. Then you run stopwatch exercises to cover the range of topics covered at development centres and to focus on the specific activities that are used as development methods. A light-hearted in-tray exercise follows to enable participants to experience this method, which can be used to develop planning and organising; time management and priorities setting skills. You cover post-exercise issues, encouraging participants to think about the learning points. Finally, you ask the participants for their key learning points before issuing a key learning points handout, commenting where appropriate.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to help participants explore the topics and activities covered by development centres and work through an in-tray exercise.
- Themes:
- Development centres/residential,
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 10 |
| Typical Duration: | 02:15:00 |
| No of Pages: | 25 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Additional resources: Stopwatch or clock, Dictionary or atlas containing capitals of countries, Development centre brochures
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers with participants – probably line managers, but possibly individual members of staff – who are involved in the development of themselves or others. Ideally participants will have already covered, ‘Investigating development methods’, prior to taking part in this training activity.
Download the training activity, Development centres as featured in the Fenman training manual; People Development Methods