FAQs

• To increase your effectiveness, success and satisfaction at work
• To talk through challenges, decisions and choices
• To manage change and stress
• To improve relationships at work
• To explore fresh ideas and gain new perspectives
• To access the expertise and experience of others in the group – peers from a wide range of professional backgrounds
• To use the facilitators and others in the group to clarify your ideas, develop
  strategies, celebrate successes
• To learn new skills and develop awareness of yourself and how you interact with
  other people
• To build a network of experienced people who can become a continuing source of
  advice, help and ideas
• To become more skilful at working with others
• Colleagues, family and friends can only do so much and have their particular
  perspectives. Our groups are specifically designed to provide you with the expertise of peers and trained facilitators

Our groups are for women and men of any age, working in all and any business, organisation or profession, who have arrived at a position of responsibility in their career.

We welcome all those:

• Working within companies and organisations
• Planning their return to work
• Running or thinking of running their own business or practice
• Working freelance
• Moving from full time work to a portfolio career

These are some of the issues that have been raised:

• Finding a new job
• Ways to gain promotion
• Returning to work after a break
• Deciding on a career change
• Rationalising the demands of an over-busy portfolio career
• Motivating a troubled staff team
• Ways to deliver a challenging project
• Appraisals: giving and receiving
• Finding the right advisors to develop a new business
• Coping with stress
• Time management
• Self-belief and self-esteem
• Assessing your strengths and weaknesses
• Managing up and managing down
• Communicating and getting a message across
• Handling difficult relationships
• Is it too late for change?

Each participant commits to maintaining confidentiality in Working Edge groups.
Everything said is confidential, as is who else is a member of the group. You can
talk about anything concerning yourself, anything the facilitators say, and of course,
the fact that you are in the group.

Our view is that in one of our groups, you find many of the benefits of working with an executive coach or business mentor and more: access to the experience of your
peers in the group; a network of allies and experts to call on and the all-important practice in working with others, with the potential to receive honest and constructive feedback. With all these benefits, working in a group can be a particularly stimulating and dynamic way to learn.

Kathy Gale and Harriet Spicer facilitate the meetings and there is a maximum of
six participants.

Where?
The Healthy Living Centre, 282-284 St Paul's Road, London N1 2LH 020 7704 6900.
 

Click here for directions

When?
The groups take place between 6.30-9.30pm.

They are scheduled in 3 sets of 5-6 fortnightly meetings spread across the year with
breaks at Easter, summer and Christmas. Contact us for details.

Harriet Spicer and Kathy Gale, who have both run their own businesses and who
have between them worked in the private, public and voluntary sectors. They both
have many years' experience and training in personal development work.

The longer the same group of people stays together, the more rewarding the
experince becomes, and Working Edge groups are often most effective as a
continuing resouce in your life.

We ask everyone who joins to pay for 6 meetings in advance. You pay for
the six sessions whether or not you are able to attend.

You commit to our policy on confidentiality and must keep confidential anything
said by other participants in the group and who the other participants are. If you wish, you are of course free to talk about anything you have said in the group and the fact that you are a member of the group.

This confidentiality agreement exists to build and protect openness and trust
between everyone in the group.

We ask for payment for 6 sessions in advance and the cost per session is £50.00.

Some participants pay themselves and others arrange for their companies to do so.
We are happy to accept either arrangement.

“I feel Working Edge offers excellent opportunities to identify solutions that helped
me face varied challenges in my work.  Group members were very supportive and I
was given lots of encouragement that helped me produce immediate results and
ways forward in my career. I have nothing but praise for the work of both group
leaders whom I found to be very skilled, professional and knowledgeable.”

“Working Edge provided me with a fantastic opportunity to talk about relationships
and challenges at work in a safe and confidential environment, drawing on the experiences of a group of people from very different professional backgrounds all of whom questioned, appreciated, suggested and shared their own experiences with a great deal of wisdom and compassion.”

“Working Edge offers the chance to really think about how you manage your life, both at work and at home, and why you respond the way you do.  And when issues are discussed, and patterns of behaviour examined - and hence seen with more
objectivity - you can consider real change….  The atmosphere is consistently supportive and up-beat. Taking part left me feeling calmer, clearer - and considerably happier.”

People have come to Working Edge groups with enthusiasm, with reluctance or anxiety, with particular issues and generalised feelings that something is not
working. Some people have come to build networks and some people to find a clear space to stand back, strategise and think. Some people talk easily and others take time to get into the swing. To be looking for positive development of some kind is all that it takes.

• You might have fun
• Discover unexpected new ideas and insights
• Avoid re-inventing wheels
• Create a supportive peer network
• Surprise yourself