Our proven programmes are designed to develop emotional intelligence, softs skills and an entrepreneurial mindset, stimulating life-long personal growth as a foundation for success in business.

Our approach combines positive psychology, business tools and innovation techniques, and is equally relevant to graduate start-ups, freelancers or budding intrapreneurs, and students from a diverse range of backgrounds.

Ranging from intense, in-depth, interactive workshops for small groups to a broad introduction for entire classes or courses, our aim is to align with and complement your other initiatives and support.

Being able to identify and healthily express your own shortcomings, frustrations and challenges is a buffer against your emotions running wild and distorting your perception.

This is particularly important given evidence suggests that entrepreneurs suffer disproportionately with mental health.

Improving your soft skills, developing prioritisation strategies and building social awareness can help you make better decisions, come up with solutions, create strong relationships, and ultimately, win people over.

These skills are the foundation for cultivating respect, a unified vision, and good morale, which, in turn, leads to improved productivity.

71 percent of hiring managers state that EQ (emotional intelligence) is more important to hiring and promotion decisions than IQ (intelligence quotient).

Researchers have found that executives who failed in their jobs exhibited poor interpersonal relations, inability to work in a team, and difficulty handling change.

Under our SEEK portfolio, we have a range of modules and topics to choose from, including perception, personality, universal emotions, social cues, feedback and defence mechanisms, verbal economics, money mindset, imposter syndrome, motivation, communication, persistence and resilience.

We use techniques such as storytelling, critical incidents, profiling, prioritisation, decision-making, role play and goal setting, applying a number of key principles to all SEEK programmes to encourage participants to:

take on new perspectives and be comfortable opening themselves up

reflect on how their, and others, responses are influenced in different situations

adopt simple tools and techniques to help reframe perspectives

use self-assessment to set benchmarks and focus on areas that require attention

LEVEL1

Based around a full day, intensive workshop, includes full pre-workshop briefing; online questionnaires and summary report; one-to-one session with each delegate; personalised online workspace; a structured combination of instruction, group activity, teamwork, role play, group coaching, self-reflection and personal planning; post-workshop report; pre and post-programme evaluation and monitoring.

Start-ups and Freelancers

Focus on prioritisation and persistence

SME Placements and Interns

Focus on resilience and difficult conversations

Intrapreneurs and Innovators

Focus on influence and engagement

LEVEL 2

3 hour interactive workshop; online questionnaires covering personality and emotional intelligence; personalised online workspace; a structured combination of instruction, group activity, self-reflection and personal planning; post-workshop report; pre and post-programme evaluation and monitoring.

Start-ups and Freelancers

SME Placements and Interns

Intrapreneurs and Innovators

LEVEL 3

2 hour introduction to mindset, soft skills and emotional intelligence including interactive polls; optional online questionnaires.

Aligned with specific courses and classes to complement general enterprise activity across the curriculum

When we introduced the SEEK concept to the team at University of Sunderland’s Digital Incubator and Enterprise Place, it was clear that it aligned with a core objective.

In addition to a highly successful programme placing graduates with regional SMEs, the team supports both students and graduates who have the ambition either to work on a freelance basis or start their own business.

A comprehensive programme is in place providing advice, guidance and training to address practical business skills and challenges.

However, working with students from a diverse range of backgrounds, the team had identified a gap in support around a range of barriers to success including confidence issues, self-awareness, goal setting and accountability.

With a focus on helping participants to develop emotional intelligence, softs skills and an entrepreneurial mindset, SEEK follows a structured process, combining teamwork, instruction, reflection and a number of tasks to stimulate goal setting and self-evaluation.

In advance of a full day workshop, participants in the Digital Incubator’s first SEEK programme completed questionnaires to provide a ‘baseline’ and identify potential outliers, along with a brief task to kickstart their thinking on what has shaped the person they are today and their perception of success.

Given the constraints of the pandemic, the workshop was delivered entirely online with a key focus on overcoming the potential barriers and technical challenges to develop from the outset a sense of belonging and support as part of a peer group with shared interests.

The structure of the day and the individual tasks were designed to build clarity for each individual on their key challenges, and identify practical, actionable and measurable steps to move forward.

By working as a team, they were able to develop knowledge of both themselves and also the social context in which they will all work, and as a result re-enforce empathy and authenticity.

From a practical perspective, each participant had their own personalised workspace on a digital whiteboard to capture their own work, using a number of tools and techniques to help diagnose, evaluate and prioritise key issues.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to witness a significant evolution during the day not only on an individual level but also in the way they worked together as a team to help one another with a deep sense of camaraderie.

Along with their own personal action plan, the participants each received a comprehensive review document including questionnaire responses, task summaries, reflections captured during the day and key areas of accountability.

Evaluation and feedback following the programme was overwhelmingly positive with the majority of participants reporting that the programme exceeded their expectations along with significant improvement against each of these areas:

– Knowledge of their own personality traits and the personality traits of others

– Awareness of the complexities surrounding personality and perception and how that impacts people’s responses

– Awareness of the importance of emotional intelligence, the elements they needed to work on to achieve their goals and the benefits that will bring

– Understanding that everyone has self-discrepancies and growth is the result of overcoming these

– Understanding of the natural process of working in teams, the potential for conflicts and the importance of leadership

– Confidence working with colleagues, especially using digital collaboration tools

When asked how likely they would be to recommend SEEK to others, the average score was:

9.8

“Finding out so much about myself”

“The diversity of the exercises and the opportunity to work in teams, engage in open discussions and learn about each person’s opinions”

“Spending time actually thinking and evaluating what my next move would be rather than just reacting”

“Revealing, challenging, informative, open”

“A really great interactive and engaging programme that helps you develop an understanding of yourself and the business you hope to create, in a positive and relaxed environment”

“Enjoyable, interesting, educational”

With a range of modules that can be adapted for students from a diverse range of backgrounds, SEEK is designed to bring self-assurance and a sense of belonging to graduate start-ups, freelancers or interns.

It’s a practical way to develop the invaluable soft-skills that bridge the gap into new ventures and career journeys.

Personality, self-awareness and social awareness

Personal brand, integrity and authenticity

Adaptability, resilience and the impact of perception

Addressing self-discrepancies to build emotional intelligence

Working in teams, tackling conflict and developing leadership

Problem-solving, decision-making and accountability