Two leading business professionals team up with Wrexham Glyndwr University for latest short courses

Two leading business experts whose work has taken them around the world are set to deliver on a series of short courses with Wrexham Glyndwr University.

Rachel Hughes, a Leadership Development consultant, mentor and charity trustee, will be delivering the Future Leaders course for Glyndwr – which aims to boost its students’ careers through helping them understand the leadership needs of the modern workplace.

And Carrie Foster – a Dialogic Organisation Development practitioner, freelance writer, and executive coach – will be taking the lead on three courses, examining Business Resilience, Business Operations Management and Improving Productivity and Profitability.

The Future Leaders course – which begins on March 9 – has already helped to shape the prospects of graduates from a wealth of different degrees.

It has now been re-designed, both for online delivery during the coronavirus pandemic and to allow anyone to take part who is looking to boost their confidence, to hone their leadership skills – and to move up the career ladder.

Over the course of 16 weeks, the course invites participants to reflect on leadership styles, influencing, negotiation and more.

Rachel’s career has taken her to Africa, India, the Middle East and the US, and seen her work with clients from investment banks to charities, and from energy and utilities companies to global shipping firms.

She has also helped companies and individuals develop leadership skills as a freelance consultant – working to build the leaders of tomorrow.

“My facilitation style is highly interactive and relaxed. I firmly believe the students have more experience of these topics than they realise,” she said.

“It’s important to me that they realise this and start to use and share that knowledge.

“Previous cohorts on this course have found, once they have completed it, that they have a much stronger knowledge not only of the topic – but also of themselves. Through drawing on that strength and that knowledge, many have then gone on to fresh success in their chosen field.

“The course has been fully adapted for online delivery – and I can’t wait to meet this year’s participants.”

Rachel Hughes

Meanwhile Carrie – who has lectured at universities around the UK, developed and refined online courses and academic content, and written more than 40 books – will be delivering two courses this spring.

The first, examining Business Resilience, offers its participants a structured approach which will enable them to rapidly adapt to disruptions to business, yet safeguard people and assets – and maintain continuous operations.

The course starts on February 22 and runs for eight weeks.

The second course examines Business Operations Management – enabling participants to make the most of both material and human resources to produce goods and services – and to distinguish their business from competitors. This course starts on March 29 and also runs for eight weeks.

The Third course Improving Productivity and Profitability takes participants through ways to boost their businesses’ productivity and profitability – building, over its eight week span, a toolkit to maximise production, productivity and profitability.

Carrie said: “I am considered a thought leader in the field of organisational change, people development and organisation development – authoring books, teaching and training those developing as HR and organisational development & change professionals.

“I engage with these activities because I am passionate about organisational development as a discipline that consistently and repeatedly delivers effective change and desired outcomes.

“For my clients I have created organisational change programmes which have harnessed people power and organisational strengths while fearlessly confronting the unknowns to deliver interventions that result in meaningful change and ROI.

“I like to think and I like mental activity.

“I hope that as a tutor I will help you to exercise the muscles in your brain, stretching them in multiple directions, trying to solve problems, develop ideas or understand what is really happening or why people are behaving in a particular way.”

Charlotte Oram-Gettings, Business Development Manager at Wrexham Glyndwr University, said: “Our short courses at Glyndwr offer the best mix of our academic expertise with the industry insight that professional practitioners can bring – and we are delighted to be working with both Carrie and Rachel to deliver these courses.

“Both are leaders in their field, and this collaborative approach to developing business short courses has enabled us to strengthen and refine course content to support both individuals and businesses to make the changes they need to thrive.”

Full details of the Business Resilience course can be found here,  full details of the Business Operations Management course here and the Improving Productivity and Profitability course here.