Team & Group Training
‘...a brilliant communication trainer’
“Mel Larsen is a brilliant communication trainer, for teams and individuals- and an accomplished coach.
Our business is a charity devoted to peacemaking through personal change and inner development. We need all our staff to be confident and clear in articulating our vision.
We also need to grow in our sense of cohesion and mutual support as a team. Mel took us out of our routine into a different mental space where we could address both these issues with a sense of freedom and fun. She challenged us, in a supportive way, to think hard about our mission and how we communicate it. She was admirably clear in setting out the objective of the day, kept up the pace and energy, ensuring that everyone participated and gained new skill and insight, both psychological and practical. I was particularly impressed by her attentiveness to the needs of individuals, in the present moment, and her sensitivity with which she gave - and invited - feedback.”
Denis Nowlan, Executive Director, Initiatives of Change, UK
‘...a very kind, empowering and fun-filled approach to facilitating.’
“We approached Mel to design and deliver a Pitching, Storytelling & Branding session in-person for 24 senior researchers at Queen's University Belfast as part of our Leading Researchers Programme. These academics drawn from across all discplines are tasked with each delivering a compelling pitch of their 'big idea' at an Ideas Summit we host each autumn.
Mel was able to use her extensive experience coaching clients across many sectors to tell better stories, and this massive knowledge bank was really helpful in offering a range of learning tools for the academics to choose from. Having worked with so many people, she's extremely skilled in offering on-the-spot feedback to the pitches she heard during the session.
The atmosphere in the room throughout the session was very inspiring to be a part of, and you could easily see how much the storytelling frameworks had an impact upon the academics' confidence when pitching. In our final check-out, everyone testified to how much they'd learned about presenting and having tools that they could take forward in the long term.
Yes! I would recommend Mel. She has a very kind, empowering and fun-filled approach to facilitating, and was also super-thorough in the preparation when responding to our needs. We're looking forward to working with her again soon.”
William Warrener, Head of Leadership programmes, 64 Million Artists
‘Mel inspired our creative freelancers’
"During the Cultivator programme we’d identified that creative practitioners considering going freelance and start-ups struggled to create a realistic vision for their business and experienced significantly low levels of confidence or felt isolated. We wanted to provide a comfortable space for freelancers to find a creative approach to identifying achievable goals and build enthusiasm within their business planning.
Often business coaching in a group context can be full of jargon and buzzwords that doesn’t fit with creative thinking processes, we therefore needed to find a business coach who could create a comfortable atmosphere whilst developing achievable goals for the attendees.
We benefited from a more holistic approach that made the room instantly open, calm and able to be vulnerable with each other. The use of visualisation techniques has not been approached with such a cross-disciplinary group before.
Mel is inspirational and incredibly patient! She broke down problems in a careful and in-depth manner that highlights her wonderful experience and professionalism."
Rose Goodship, Cultivator Cornwall
‘Mel's session was excellent’
"We hired Mel to run a session with a group of Dublin academics on our Thrive programme. Mel’s session was excellent - great content, perfectly attuned to the group, with wonderful facilitation. The check-outs at the end of the day for the whole course were pretty incredible and her session was a large contribution to that."
Chris Rolls FRSA, Head of Training & Development, 64 Million Artists
‘Our members felt so inspired: Mel is the ultimate workshop facilitator and coach’
“I had a great experience working with Mel previously via the Audience Diversity Academy and always remembered how brilliant her energy was and how much knowledge and inspiration I'd gained from the experience. I knew that if I had the chance to work with her again (sharing with others) i'd jump at the chance
I really appreciated her approach to preparing such a bespoke, dynamic workshop, via emails and a phone call beforehand. We asked Mel to focus on confidence (including financial) in particular and this radiated throughout the session brilliantly.
Our cohort had never met and Mel was able to galvanise them and the energy in the room with vibrancy and safety. Mel is incredibly professional yet highly attuned to the needs of the group. Members came up to us afterwards raving about the session, they felt so inspired. It was the perfect tone to kick off our Producer's scheme and I think without such positivity and motivation, the overall scheme would have felt very different. It really set the tone and challenged the Producers to raise their game!
The confidence of the cohort was boosted from the off and has continued to grow as the scheme has gone on, due to the permission to be confident in Mel's session and to think BIG. It prompted a number of the cohort to think about their future financial goals seriously and I'm certain this will impact them onwards.
We would recommend Mel to others '11 out of 10'! Absolutely. Mel has a softness, warmth and motivating energy that is rare. She is the ultimate workshop facilitator and coach.”
Madeleine Wilson, Freelance Arts Producer
The group grew in confidence
“Thank you for all the work you have done in partnership with us to facilitate workshops for our Ambassador programme. The feedback and the outcome of the workshops you ran were substantial and fruitful in ways that we can only describe as wonderful and exciting.
Based on the feedback we received, the Ambassadors are grateful for the time and lessons you taught them within such a short amount of time. To see them grow in confidence and developing community projects that have benefited the community has been a joy, and that would not have happened if it weren't for your style of facilitation, content, and patience with everyone within the programme.
A huge thank you for your partnership and grace during the programme and we look forward to working with you again”
Dianna Djokey (Communities Curator) and Lynne Dick (Head of Programming, Engagement and Learning) at John Hansard Gallery
‘Great person to work with’
“We chose to work with Mel to deliver a session on Marketing to a group of Leaders in the Mental health field developing and growing their trading capacity. Mel had the right balance of experience, knowledge and understanding of a range of sectors grasping the context and challenges of this group to ensure the delivery spoke to them; taking the time to research and include sector relevant examples. This effort, attention to detail and great delivery style resulted in a high average score of 9/10. Great person to work with.”
Carol Tavernier, School for Social Entrepreneurs
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