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In this interview we're going to be talking with Paul Taylor.
Paul is the Chair of the CMI for London and
the southeast region and has a diverse range of responsibilities.
Paul has also had senior level jobs for over 25 years and
therefore has a great deal of experience that he can share with us.
In this first interview, we are going to be talking about
the CMI qualifications specifically and the skills and competencies students
can expect to benefit from by completing each level of qualification.
So Paul, a student comes to you and starts to undertake their qualifications.
>> Yeah. >> What specific skills and
competencies can they expect to gain?
>> Yeah, I mean, I think looking at the CMI's split into two parts.
Let's say the qualifications and say the volunteer network, which is where I work.
But if we talk about the qualifications specifically, firstly,
there's a number of things they can learn.
They will get a very good qualification in management.
An industry proven and known in industry qualification.
That qualification can be done in two ways.
They can do the CMI course in a pure sense through a partner with a CMI angle,
they can do it by partnership with a higher education authority,
it matches with the degree, etc.
What a qualification will give, a number of areas in management.
From a line management coping with conflict or managing conflict,
various HR skills, motivation, planning,
organization, how to put control into place, how to organize people.
I call it command and control which is very inundated, isn't it?
But even if you know what I mean, it's trying to put some sort of like,
make things happen.
That's the pure qualification so which is very powerful.
But around that, where I come in around the region,
we do a lot of volunteer activities too.
Benefit the student members, as well as non-student members.
So specifically talk about a student memberships.
We run a number of volunteer activities with a number of business schools in
London and southeast region, which is basically within London,
Kent, Surrey, East Sussex and West Sussex.
So through that, the first one we tend to do is we sponsor a number of awards.
Yeah, so basically what we try to do is, you might have CMI Student of the Year,
for some of the most improved students.
And we will work with the dean to advise the award then, we'll hand that
nice certificate in a year's membership depending on what the level of award is.
We also do student mentoring the same way as our mentoring scheme.
And it's not open just to students even though students are probably the people
that take it up most.
And you can be a mentor or a mentee, and I'm both at the moment, so I mentor one
chap, or I did mentor one chap, and I've got no one to mentor me at the moment.
But, so I'm on the hunt.
>> [LAUGH] >> But on the serious side,
students can go on there and say, yeah, I've got an issue I need some help with.
And that can be anything, an array from, I'm entering the job market next year and
I have no idea what to do.
So you can maybe get a student five or
six years into their working life who can help them do it.
Or alternatively, I have another issue.
I can't write my CV or I want to start my own business what can I do?
And it all various, it's a typical student-mentorship type of relationship.
But we have lots of senior people in there,
so you may have a senior manager being mentored by a very senior manager.
It's a typical mentoring relationship.
As well as mentoring the new wards, we also do what we call a curricular
enrichment which is a really posh way of sending we send in a lot of speakers,
which is similar to what we're doing here at the moment.
And we've sent people in to speak to universities about anything, really.
We've done one about, I think last week they did one on chaos theory.
Which I must admit, I had to Google to find out what exactly that was.
So we do a lot of those sort of things for students.
But outside students, we do a number of things for
we'll just say the non-student membership.
But all student members are entitled to this as well.
So as well as, sort of for example, we do a number of what we call networks,
but other communities will call them special interest groups.
Basically if there's a demand to run something, we'll try and run it, so
we have a special group for consultants.
Yeah, and that ranges from just people who are very young students
who are maybe just becoming an internship or thinking they'll go into consultancy,
up to very senior people in the big five, you know.
And that is very much around networking, running events, interests, consultants.
We also run a series of networks for women in management, and
it's really to try and improve the number of women in management and
improve their profile because all the research says that women get paid less and
they don't get promoted less, the glass ceiling.
And it's very easy to dismiss this being a bloke, but
there is a lot of evidence that's true.
So we basically campaigned to try and improve the level of women in management.
We also run a group called Square Mile which is very much around
financial services.
Even though it's actually run in Canary Wolf which is nowhere near
the Square Mile.
And we have bankers and investment managers, I mean,
talking about what they do.
And likewise, we run the group in London for London members, and
we do one down in Kent, so those are special interest groups.
They run a number of events, which student members can come to for free, and
it's just really ran network.
So you've got the chance for a reasonably mature student, 21-22,
to network with some very senior people in the industry, which is fantastic really.
I wish I had that when I was their age.
We also run a number of events.
So we can run a number of events, what I call large events or small events.
The small events could be a very small discussion between a senior guy talking
through how to write your CV to a number of people.
All the way up to 200 plus people, including people like Nick Lisa and
John Brown and other people talking at those events.
And it's basically just very different, trying to get the full breadth of it.
We also run a number of relationship with other professional bodies.
because despite we're along head with them because we want their members to join us.
>> [LAUGH] >> We're in the same space so
we basically just need to all work together, so
we do relationships with Bridge Computer Society, AAT, run join events.
And last but definitely not least, what we tend to do also is we run, well not so
much me, but head office run a thing called thought leadership.
It's like management theme of the month.
So for example, at the moment it's the gender pay gap.
So it gets narrower and narrower, but doesn't seem to narrow much.
And we had the lost range of middle managers.
Yeah, so we tried to do, to summarize,
obviously as well as the qualifications which are fantastic,
we try to do a lot of soft, intangible stuff around it so the members, and
you can get the qualifications, get far more bang for their buck.
>> So from what we've heard from Paul so far,
we've had an outline of the qualifications whereby students can expect
to get really good support in education in the key management skills.
We've also learned that the fact that the students get a lot of support and guidance
in involvement in other things that will help them along their learning journey.
So, guest speakers, they get a mentoring scheme, they get special events put on.
Paul, with the qualifications themselves.
>> Mm-hm, yeah.
>> Can you begin one level and then progress up to a higher levels?
>> Yeah you can, I think the challenge in most qualifications you can go
to too high of a level, you might struggle and just drop out.
So the idea is, you can do level one, level two, and
build all the way up to get your qualifications.
>> So the reason why I ask that is then how far are your students really looking
to have visualised the whole concept of life-long learning as a result of-
>> Yeah, I mean,
one of the things I've learnt personally, I'm not as young as I look.
But the life-long learning is really clear.
That's one of the things we stress.
And there's obviously different ways you can learn.
You can learn through education, which is obviously the qualifications,
which is fantastic, you learn through, I call learning from others or
watching others, and you can read a book on somebody else.
And, also, the other area is networking and
speaking to other people, that's a key thing.
Yeah, so really what we're trying to do with this CMI, and I'm encouraged by
my superiors and I encourage the guys and girls I work with, is life-long learning.
And that's probably a very cool way of putting it, yeah.
>> And how is that demonstrated by the students then,
do they have to produce anything that they can take with them?
>> Not per se, I think they just do their qualifications within the limit of
the university, the lead in university and that sort of qualification,
but what we're trying to encourage lots of students to do is when they
leave the university, and they go into, say, the working world or
a different university, is to continue their relationship with the CMI.
>> Right, okay. >> Yeah, so
basically, other sorts of people coming behind them can learn as well.
>> Yeah. So it does almost become like a continuum.
>> It does, yeah.
Perfect, right, yeah.
>> And you mentioned the importance of networking as well.
>> Yeah.
>> So do you give them any particular training in how to network?
>> No, well, we don't officially,
although we did run an event actually networking for accountants.
It's quite an interesting course.
We got a guy in who is an expert networker and
he actually gave you techniques on how to network.
And we had a number of students attend that as well.
But there's various within the management direct toolkits,
there's various documents on how to approach people, how to speak to people.
But I think sometimes with networking it's just going out there, having the,
I suppose, that when you go and speak to somebody you don't know and network,
it's very easy to stand and chat to the person you already know.
Often you're on your phone so nobody notices you.
It's just going out there trying to speak to people, but yeah.
>> So it's just learning through experience.
>> Learning from experience, yeah.
I said before, we did run an event on that which was quite good.
Yeah, it was quite humorous really.
>> And building on that, we're going to explore now from Paul's perception,
from the skills and competencies you help your students to develop.
>> Yeah.
>> What would you say, in the job market, are the skills and
competencies that are most highly demanded at the minute?
>> At the moment, if I can probably speak primarily from the financial services for
the point of view, then I'll expand down.
That's quite a hard question to answer actually because there are a number of
different skills depending where you work.
>> Yeah. >> Well, I think primarily now is that,
one of the big skills that are coming out, I call them the soft type skills.
Managing people, stakeholder management, being to bear in mind,
it's a multi local well, or global well, you could get a corporate there,
managing stress, managing emotions, managing change.
I think a lot of that stuff, a lot more softer skills are coming because when I
was growing up in Cranford University,
a lot of the stuff I was taught in university was quite hard technical skill.
This is how you program a computer.
This is how you rewire a plug.
But there was none of these I called the soft skills around,
it was becoming more and more important especially now the UK in particular is
moving towards more of a service industry where soft skills are essential.
>> So by way of what the CMI do in getting your students involved in these different
meetings, having the guest speakers, having these particular events in a way,
you're helping them facilitate [CROSSTALK] >> It does, yeah, yeah.
So you're learning, obviously, for the qualification.
You're learning the theory and some practice around how to motivate people or
how to meet people or how to present.
But when you do all the networking side, you're also learning through,
let's say, a less formal method, yeah.
>> So what we've heard from Paul in this interview is that for
students who are completing their CMI qualifications,
they will have the opportunity to learn about all the key management skills.
And Paul has mentioned planning, conflict management, organizing,
interpersonal skills, for example.
But not only in an academic sense, but they'll have plenty of opportunity to
practice them and to demonstrate them, and to get experience with them as well
through the particular events and opportunities that the CMI provides.
So I think we can summarize by saying we've got both the academic side of
things provide by the CMI, but also the practical application of those
same skills as their students prepare for their careers in the future.
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