Lovingly Artisan’s Marketing Director, Catherine Connor, is working with the Brathay Trust and the University of Cumbria to deliver an afternoon Café Conversation session as part of their ‘Aspiring Leaders’ course for young people working in the voluntary sector on Wednesday 19th September, at St George’s Church, Castle Street, Kendal.
Café Conversations are inspired by the relaxed informal environment you find in a café, which allows small groups of people to gather and work together creatively, to take part in collaborative dialogue, share knowledge and get to know each other.
The year long programme is facilitated by leading development organisation Common Purpose and gives 17 students the opportunity to gain vital skills through experiential learning. During the process they gain an invaluable understanding of cultural intelligence, which is a key ingredient that students need in today’s business world.
Equipping them with an understanding of cultural intelligence gives the students the necessary skills to enable them to begin to overcome boundaries between sectors, specializations, geographies, generations, backgrounds and beliefs and ultimately to become effective future leaders.
As part of the afternoons activities Catherine will deliver an ‘Effective Questioning’ session, alongside Chief Inspector Andrew Wilkinson of Cumbria Constabulary. During the session the students will learn about the importance of questioning as well as how to ask questions effectively, as they examine leadership and social capital.
Catherine commented: ‘’being part of this programme is a great privilege, I have been in business for many years, and during that time its very nature has changed. Our world has become ever more complex and interconnected, which has no historical parallel.
“It’s essential that we equip our young people with the necessary skills to navigate this new world and its contradictions. This simply must become part of how we equip the leaders of the future, hopefully sharing a small part of my insight with this group of students will inspire them to cross cultural boundaries in their business lives in the future.’’
