Soft Skills Training: Multi-city Presentation Training

Client: Maersk (China) Shipping

Maersk (China) Shipping (part of the A.P Moller – Maersk Group) is an international company of Danish origin widely recognised for its activities within shipping, energy, offshore, retail and industry.  The A.P. Moller – Maersk Group has more than 100,000 employees and offices in over 125 countries.  The company is listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange.

Problem:

Maersk required 118 young, high-potential staff (hereby referred to as ‘trainees’) from across China to improve their presentation skills, with the training being conducted in hotels in Beijing, Shanghai and twice in Shenzhen.  Maersk also required that two presentation seminars be run concurrently in each location, resulting in a total of eight seminars, within a one and a half month period.

Maersk required that each trainee receive a tip card to highlight the major skills learnt in the course, a trainee member report card emphasising each trainee’s strengths and weaknesses, and a DVD of each trainee’s presentation.

A further challenge was that all of the skills should were to be taught over one and a half days, instead of the standard two day period.

Implementation:

Step 1: Content and Schedule

ClarkMorgan Corporate Training conducted a mandatory consultation with Maersk regarding the specific content that was required. This also allowed us to be able to determine a solution of how to fit two-days of presentation training into one and a half days, as Maersk required no reduction in content.
The course was scheduled as follows:
Evening Dinner: 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm (2 hours)
Day 1: 8.30 am to 5.30 pm (8 hours + 1 hour for lunch)
Day 2: 8.30 to 12.30 (4 hours)

As the total day-time training was two-hours shorter than the standard 14-hour course, the evening dinner prior to the official training was used for ‘ice-breaking’ and team building activities.  These activities were then excluded from day 1 and 2, which allowed for no reduction in content.

Step 2: Language Assessments

As with most multinational companies in China, Maersk required that the Powerful Presentations seminar be conducted in English.  For this reason, it was important to assess the English language of all trainees prior to the training. Rather than conduct a ClarkMorgan Assessment System (CMAS) test on all 118 trainees, a direct comparison was made of the BULATS (BUsiness Langauge Assessment Testing Service) score that each trainee had previously obtained via a third party vendor. A comparison chart is shown below:

All trainees with a CMAS level of 5 and above were placed in the higher groups, while trainees with a CMAS score of 4 or below were placed into a lower level.  A total of four groups were deemed low level, and another four groups were deemed high level.

Step 3: Assignment of Trainers

A clear difference in Business English language ability amongst the high-potential trainees was discovered.  ClarkMorgan Corporate Training recommended that the two concurrent seminars at each location be split into a high and low level group.

Jeff Lunz, was selected to train all lower Business English language level groups due to his bi-lingual ability, and co-founders Andy Clark and Morry Morgan were selected to train the higher Business English language level groups.

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