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Posted By Administration,
Wednesday, 9 October 2013
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"Was there a time in your career when you were on the receiving end of a marketing plan or business strategy change in which you had no input?" For junior or middle managers this situation is not unusual, but for those in more senior positions this can raise questions around exclusion and self worth, and often results in a resistance to buy-in. In many organisational cultures leaders are conditioned to operate from an ego-centric orientation. People who are promoted to the top tend to be those who are best at making themselves (and their opinions) heard in meetings, which is seen as a mark of authority. Leadership behaviour focuses on the leader being the prime driver of creating strategy, making decisions and dictating action. Vital success factors, such as effective business planning and strategy, become the domain of a smaller, closed group of senior team members. In this instance, it’s not unusual for well-intentioned manager egos to compete, resulting in delays, redirections or even sabotage of the strategy. One process that’s proven to successfully support leadership engagement is ‘facilitated visual planning’. It stands in stark contrast to a directive top-down leadership style. This method encourages equality in contribution, either among peers or to a wider multi- level staff group, and involves people in a structured and visually intuitive way to engage and align thinking. In facilitated visual planning, leaders adopt an approach of humility, and accept that they do not hold the answers to the universe. In more hierarchical business cultures this wider, more creative style may initially be viewed as being ‘weak’. It takes courage to adopt a facilitative leadership style. It requires a leader who can think about ‘we’ rather than ‘me’. A leader who really wants to harness the best from their team will create an environment of trust and respect that allows for a mature depth of dialogue in meetings. A facilitative approach in leading a meeting can enable managers to hold the tension of not making decisions immediately. By encouraging participation from diverse quarters this inevitably leads to better decisions with broader reaching, actionable commitments to which the group involved develops an immediate ownership. Working visually in business meetings is an effective way to establish equality of understanding and serves to focus alignment on business challenges and strategies. This is especially true across the Asia-Pacific region where English is so often an executive’s second language. A good facilitator needs to be prepared to ‘go slow to go fast’, rather than seek the quick fix philosophy adopted in many organisations. By involving others to uncover diversity of thinking and by opening up quality conversations, business planning develops in an inclusive way and people feel connected and responsible. Facilitated visual philosophy interrupts the unhelpful patterns that can occur in traditional approaches to planning. Clarity emerges from visual planning and makes processes, assumptions and decisions explicit, dramatically improving the chances of alignment. The visual nature of the outputs from visual planning makes them clear, engaging and safe for others to contribute to. The results from adopting a facilitated visual approach to business planning are more likely to lead to sustainable business changes in ways that are relevant, interesting and, importantly, owned by the people who will be responsible for making them a reality. meetingmagic.co.uk 
John Ogier Director, Meeting Magic Asia Pacific For more stories about 'The Singapore Story', click here To learn about the benefits of membership to AustCham, click here To check out our coming events, click here
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Posted By Administration,
Wednesday, 9 October 2013
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International education is big business. In
the next decade, it is estimated that seven
million students will be studying outside
their country of birth. So it’s no wonder
that a global access ‘hub’ like Singapore is
attracting so many players in this market.
One of the latest is Study Group. Its new
Singapore office is rapidly approaching
15 staff, comprising several different
nationalities, including Singaporean,
Australian, British and German.
Study Group’s Executive Director for Sales
and Marketing, Yuri Narciss, has recently
joined the company from Google. According
to Yuri, access to global markets was a
key factor in choosing Singapore as the
company’s global marketing and recruitment
headquarters.
"With 34 Study Group recruitment offices
worldwide and more than 140 student
recruitment staff located throughout world,
Study Group needed a central global hub
with excellent infrastructure and ease of
travel. Singapore certainly provides this,”
says Yuri.
"Singapore is also an easy place to set up
business and has access to outstanding
human resources. "It has an outstanding
reputation in education, which has attracted
many international universities to set up
programs here and there is no doubt Study
Group is considering the transnational
educational opportunities here. At the same
time many parents and students in Singapore,
and the wider region, are also aware of the
value of an educational experience abroad,”
says Yuri.
"Study Group aims to be the global leader
in providing programs that create superior
career outcomes for students and achieve
the goals of partner institutions,” adds Yuri.
"While Study Group is acutely aware of the
importance of face-to-face engagement with
students, we’re also focused on becoming
industry leaders in the provision of education
online.”
Working with partner universities and its own
colleges, Study Group now partners with
more than 100 higher education institutions
worldwide, and more than 50,000 students
enrol in one of its programs annually.
In Australia, Study Group offers:
• years 10, 11 and 12 at Taylors
College, its international school,
located in Melbourne, Sydney and
Perth
• pathway programs for Flinders
University, University of Sydney
and University of Western Australia
• vocational diplomas and degree
programs (face-to-face and
online delivery modes) through
the Australian College of Physical
Education, Australian Institute of Applied Sciences and Martin
College
• English language programs at
its Embassy Language Schools in
Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and
Sydney
• business and technology degrees
from Charles Sturt University
through managed campuses in
Sydney and Melbourne.
Study Group’s activities in Singapore are
focused on the recruitment of students into
one of its destination countries, including
Australia, as well as the global management
of its marketing activities.
"With a network of more than 100,000
Singaporeans who have studied in Australia
and a history of education partnership that
dates back to the 1950s, Study Group is
proud to have set up our global recruitment
headquarters here, and we look forward
to continuing to help educate the future
business, government and academic leaders
of the region,” says Yuri.
studygroup.com
For more stories about 'The Singapore Story', click here To learn about the benefits of membership to AustCham, click here To check out our coming events, click here
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Posted By Administration,
Wednesday, 9 October 2013
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"Speaking multiple
languages, it seems,
makes you better at other languages, and
also, potentially, more
creative and better at
mathematics, science or history."
 The Australian Government’s Australia in
the Asian Century white paper sets out
plans for the languages component of
the Australian Curriculum to enable all
Australian students to learn a language
other than English. A curriculum for
Chinese (Mandarin) is one of the first
in development. Frazer Cairns, Head
of Dover Campus at UWC South East
Asia, discusses the latest research
into multilingual learning for children,
especially those at international schools.
While multilingual education dates back to
ancient times, until recently multilingualism
has been seen by many education
researchers as an exceptional, even
hazardous, phenomenon.
Trying to learn a subject using a language
other than that spoken at home (for example,
learning science in Danish rather than
English) was cited as the root of a number
of difficulties, including cognitive overload,
semi-lingualism and language confusion.
It was thought that using more than one
language to learn was, essentially, bad for
you.
This point of view has profound implications
for international schools, where a potentially
large proportion of the community is learning
through a language other than their home
language.
Thankfully, educational research now
sees multilingualism as a potential asset,
providing learners with a strategic, significant
advantage. Speakers of multiple languages
learn further languages more easily and seem
to show a better understanding of the nature
of linguistic structures.
According to Laurent Gajo, a professor at
the University of Geneva, empirical research
shows that multilinguals ‘know things’ that
transcend the purely linguistic level. In Gajo’s
view of learning, the different languages
interact and combine to generate an original,
individual, complex competence on which
the user may draw, rather than simply
welding together two monolingual halves.
Speaking multiple languages, it seems, makes you better at other languages, and
also, potentially, more creative and better at
mathematics, science or history.
Learning while using a language other than
your home language is not easy nor will it
yield instant results. Though many children
pick up basic language competencies
relatively quickly, the more specific language
demanded in an educational setting takes
longer to acquire. Indeed, most students will
initially see a drop in their overall performance
as they try to adjust. Much also depends
on personal factors, such as motivation,
the child’s communicative needs and
levels of anxiety. However, in the medium
term, the drop is usually compensated for,
and a multilingual child regains their age-
appropriate progress – and often surpasses
their monolingual peers.
Going back to the concerned parent: should
you, then, speak to your child in, say,
Mandarin at home if it is not their mother
language? The research is clear: no. For
a child learning in a second language it
is vital to maintain their mother tongue.
Skills acquired in the first language can be
transferred to the second language so, for
example, if your child has developed good
reading skills in English or French, she is likely
to be able to apply these skills when reading
Korean. Other transferable reading skills are
the ability to guess the meaning of unfamiliar
words from context and being able to plan a
piece of writing or develop an argument in a
persuasive essay.
Educational research has generated its fair
share of false conclusions—playing Bach to
your children does not necessarily make them
better at maths, despite the claims made in
some studies. The factors that generate the
positive consequences of multilingualism are
not yet fully understood, and much depends
on personal factors. What is clear is the
importance of the strategic and transferable
skills that multilingualism can bring to
children as they face a complex and rapidly
changing world. 
Frazer Cairns Head of Dover Campus at UWC South East Asia
uwcsea.edu.sg
For more stories about 'The Singapore Story', click here To learn about the benefits of membership to AustCham, click here To check out our coming events, click here
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