Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The training company’s International Meeting Skills Workshop (IMS) is a unique training model that helps companies develop the skills needed to effectively contribute in international meetings and to manage relationships across cultures.

During training sessions, the group take part in role plays using a selection of characters from ‘the stage’ to help express key skills, including: Influencing and persuading, flexibility, presentation, strategy development and defending a vulnerable position.

Professional actors are also used to act out scenes from the trainees’ specific experiences and offer solutions for future scenarios.

Director, John Holmes, said: “From my legal and thespian background, I was able to draw on my experiences and use skills from both worlds to pass on to people who need to expand their professional meeting skills.

“By using the mask of a character, delegates on the course can lose their inhibitions and work together to combat difficult situations.

“From client feedback I’ve received, the IMS workshop and the inter-cultural aspect of the course has proved to be extremely useful for professional development, and the course in general has struck a balance of fun, theory and useful practice.”

Frontline Training Solutions have been assisted by UK Trade & Investment’s international trade advisers to expand their business by helping them make crucial contacts overseas.

He added: “The help I received from UK Trade & Investment was effective and supportive. The Passport to Export programme really helped in the early days and the range of people and organisations my adviser helped me contact developed my confidence and clarified my direction.”

The company has delivered regular training to the central banks of Europe for the last three years.

Workshops may have up to seven different central banks present, all training together to enhance their strategic awareness as well as promoting greater collaboration and cooperation within the EU.

Of the 26 central banks in Europe, Frontline has trained personnel from 15. The new contract will deliver training to personnel in the three Baltic central banks.

Martin Senior, international trade adviser for UK Trade & Investment, said: “For such a unique company with a large international client base, we were really expanding on their contacts and the direction they were taking the business.

“Any small or medium sized enterprise can ask for our professional support.

“We can set up a business plan for them, expand on market research, sign companies on the Passport to Export programme, a series of workshops for new or inexperienced exporters, or point them in the direction of appropriate trade shows.”