Are you a professional looking to:

• simultaneously enhance your English, Management know-how and intercultural capabilities

Tonyversity will:- work with you on a one-to-one (or small team basis, if you prefer) in order to determine critical intercultural & English language learning and professional Development requirements and how these may be most efficiently, effectively and economically addressed, subject, of course, to constriants such as time and budget.

Training programmes will be designed specific to your own distinctive personal/professional needs and and may be delivered in your place of work, home or at the Tonyversity Office in Bruebach near Mulhouse. Often, for reasons of being able to ‘escape’ the distractions of the workplace or home, clients prefer to visit the Tonyversity Office. Training may be arranged both in and out of office hours and over extended or highly intensive periods. Such training will be based around the your current and anticipated work & projects, for example:

• powerpoint presentations;
• report-writing;
• memos and letters;
• promotional materials;
• technical specifications,
• meetings and their management;
• interviews and interviewing,
• client sales ‘pitches’;
• customer reelationship-building
• negotiation etc
• preparing for living and doing business in Anglophone countries

In fact Tonyversity will address with you any situational context in which you may be expected to have to ‘perform’ in English.

• Prepare your cv & covering letter in accordance with job descriptions and person specifications and to rehearse your strategy/technique for impending interview in English

Tonyversity will: work with you on the design and content of both your cv and covering letter. These days a ‘basic’ cv and a ‘standard’ covering letter is never going to be enough to get anyone on an interview shortlist: it is a ‘Buyers Market’ out there in employment terms – employers are overwhelmed with choice. To address such choice and operate an effective ‘screening system’ which ensures that they get to employ the very best people for the posts, employers are increasingly becoming more sophisticated in their use of Job Descriptions and Person Specifications. Most Anglophone companies, multinationals and large organisations operating on the international marketplace have Human Resource Management Departments who are charged with improving recruitmen &, selection procedures and reducing labour turnover: they are very partiular about who they interview. Cvs and covering letters have to address and reflect critical aspects of the Job Description and characteristics deemed ‘essential’ and desirable by the Person Specification. Job applications, cvs and covering letters are now almost becoming an ‘art form’: difficult enough in your first language… but in your second or third…? If operating in English is a key expectation of the post, your documentation needs to be ‘spot-on’. Tonyversity will help you to make that leap in both precision English and the art of putting together attractive job application packages designed to catch the eye, maintain interest and enhance the chances of being selected for interview.

Getting to interview is one thing… but preparing for it and having to deliver it in English as your second or third language is quite another. Tonyversity will work with you on your interview strategy, based closely upon the requirements of the Job Description and Person Specification against which you will doubtless be directly assessed. This will involve preparing for certain, likely and even potentially unexpected and difficult questions and helping you to find a punchy, up-beat, concise and well-structured style of response that is set to impress. Tonyversity will coach you in developing the technical and business vocabulary specifically for the post and interview in question. With long experience in teaching interview technique, Tonyversity will also ‘interview’ you for the job based on the requirements of the post concerned and give you immediate feeback upon your performance and the means to enhance it.

• Improve your English presentation and negotiation technique in both written and oral forms

Tonyversity will…audit your presentation capabilities, considering the written, oral and listening skills involved. This will involve reviewing actual presentation material (made or in production) and assessing and evaluating this for structure and organisation, accuracy, clarity and impact/impression and offering specific and constructive critique as to how it may be corrected, improved and enhanced. Tonyversity is not simply interested in the presentation itself, but rather in engaging with you as the designer, developer and deliverer of your presentation to enable you to improve your technique for the future.

Presentations are one thing and they are doubtless important, but they are, for the mostpart, a weapon in the armoury of achieving a defined objective which is oftena sort of negotiation. In some circumstances this may be a matter of achieving a sale, in others it may be rather more subtle: perhaps persuading and convincing colleagues of a point of view or a strategic vision. In such cases a written document and perhaps a Powerpoint presentation have to help do far more than merely present information. In such circumstances,the following aspects may be of critical importance:

1. Clear view of the outcome required
2. Siuational analysis and evaluation
3. Strategic options available
4. Comparative nalysis and evaluation of strategic options according to key criteria
5. Selection and adoption of ‘the best’ option (preferably in the form of a win-win opportunity or a ‘way out with honour’ to garner support)
6. Synthesis and ‘appeal’.

This may appear simple enough, but it must be remembered that whether you are selling yourself, a product, a service, a change, a strategy, a creative idea: whatever; you almost always have to begin by recognising that for you to get your way / your result, the person on the ‘other side’ will have to be persuaded away from a place where he is often ‘comfortable’, accept that change is needed (not always easy if it means work) and that your proposal is the best option available. This is sometimes particularly difficult if you are suggesting something quite radically different, which involves a lot of change/risk/time/money and perhaps also if you happen to be ‘new’, significantly younger than your audience or from a different ‘background’. There are critical components in a negotiation which require a logical order. They also require that you understand the other person(s) on the other side of the desk and their likely negotiating ‘territory’ ie what they ideally would like and their ‘bottom line’ (what theyabsolutely have to have as a minimum outcome) – between the two one is capable of negotiating. Perhaps the most criminal error in negotiation is to misinderstand / miscalculate (or, worse still, to fail to consider) the opposite number’s negotiation territory or, indeed, your own. Tonyversity will rehearse you for such presentations and negotiations within the context of your own industry and own organisational contexts and materials.

• ‘finesse’ materials for assured and accuracy use in the Anglophone market: technical documents; journal articles; website content, marketing & promotional materials etc. (link to further detail)

Tonyversity will: apply its native English-speaking ability, expertise in written and spoken English language and knowledge of Anglophone cutures honed in Management and Higher Education to ‘finesse’ your translations of critical documents and web pages in English ensuring that they are technically accurate and establish the professional, culturally-sensitive ‘tone’ you require.

Far too often, brilliant research documentation, commercial bids & presentations, print and web-based marketing and associated materials ‘fall at the last hurdle’ as culturally-insensitive, inappropriate and inaccurate translation renders them weak at best and, sadly, laughable at worst.

Tonyversity trainers are British, native English speakers and UK and French university Senior Lecturers in English and Intercultural Management with more than 20 years’ teaching and business management experience. (See ‘About Us’ for further details). The dovetailing of these commercial and education & training experiences makes Tonyversity unique and perfectly placed both to understand your distinctive commercial and personal needs & contexts and to design and deliver effective training responses at the individual and organisational level.