Hi, I'm Jo and I'm co-founder with Tina of the Human Skills Academy. So I've been
in the fashion business for 30 years and over that time I've launched and developed
lots of international brands worked with retailers all over the world and for the
last five years I focused on professional development. So hi I'm Tina Lilienthal
and I'm originally from Germany but I've lived in the UK and worked in the UK for about 20
years now. I've had my own jewellery brand for 15 years I've just started a sustainable fashion
brand as well. But I've also been lecturing in art design professional practices for the past
15 years. Jo and I started founded the human skills academy about two years ago when we met.
And this came out of really realizing that a lot of our clients or people that we work with have
similar issues and problems within the industry around communication problem solving and soft
skills i.e human skills and we really felt that Jo's commercial expertise and my creative
expertise would really offer something quite different in terms of professional development.
Our courses basically are very bespoke that aimed at the client and what their needs are they're
very innovative we require loads of participation. So the first one the creative leadership
focuses on listening skills and negotiation and persuasion. So it's very communication
based then we sort of move on to storytelling and creative thinking and sort of developing
a professional voice that people feel comfortable with and confident with. The other course that
we're offering is creative thinking and problem solving so here we really dive into the aspect of
creativity and how it can help within business and a professional context. Because generally,
we think about creativity in terms of you know am I good at drawing or sculpting or something like
that but actually, it's the mindset and this is something that we're looking at and how this can
be applied in a business setting. And i think it's sort of like learning to fail well we sometimes
say you know there's no such thing as failure it's only feedback. But getting them to really
see that failure is a learning opportunity and what's the worst that could happen.
And they sometimes think nothing goes right you know and you just
have to challenge that - nothing, nothing goes right? You know and just get them to open up.
And I think it's when you know if we share some stories and then if we get other people in the
group to share stories and then work around it for other people who maybe don't want to. Then
that's fine but at least they can listen and they can realize actually I'm not the only one here
that I do have a choice the small steps I can take to make failure a learning opportunity.
So our courses are aimed at anybody within the fashion business and anybody wanting to
progress to the next level within their career. So it's communication, creativity,
problem-solving all of those things that are very difficult to digitize and will be the skills that
will be really sought after in the future. I mean one of the big takeaways is self-awareness and
also an action plan a workable action plan because it's all well and good coming to do a course and
they love it when they're doing the course but if they don't actually implement it afterwards
then it's a waste of time. So we always get an action plan going, things that they could do but
also really then focusing in on what they will do. I remember one thing that I was told years ago,
no such thing as 'can't', you know we can all progress even if it's just tiny small steps,
the tiny small steps are the best. Anyway yeah I think sort of facing big problems breaking them
down you know one step at a time if you feel that a hurdle is maybe too big to climb over,
but once you've broken it down and you sort of you know going step by step then it becomes much more
much more manageable. You've got to be happy with yourself you've got to have fun and we're human,
we're all human. I think if you look at the world like that then it can reduce fears, especially for
instance like presentation with people you know they're people after all we all have to learn.