Late January 2011 e-news

Train to Gain
Are you a Deaf Senior Manager or Chief Executive of a charity, business or social enterprise? Do you need some coaching to strengthen your strategic leadership? This popular government scheme ‘Train to Gain’ will enable you to have a series of part-sponsored, tailored, one-to-one coaching sessions with Laraine. Let us know asap as the funding is about to end and we wouldn’t want you to miss out on it! Email Laraine if you want to discuss this further, or look at the two links below.
www.deafworks.co.uk/our-services/deaf-professionals-training/
www.traintogain.gov.uk/

New Year e-news
Apologies to some of you who weren’t able to view our last e-news correctly (and were instead presented with a black screen). The Firefox gremlin has now been expelled (hopefully never to return). Click onto www.deafworks.co.uk/2011/01/january-e-news/
to see the New Year e-news. Tim of Cybacat sends his apologies and will be doing his utmost to stand guard over all gremlins!

New Year resolutions
Thanks to all those who responded to our tips for deaf and hearing people working together. Good to know what readers find helpful. Here are some more tips:

Top Tips when thinking about becoming a (deaf) manager
So you are thinking about becoming a manager? Does the thought terrify you or would you look forward to the challenge? There are several things you can do to prepare for management: and rushing out to get a management qualification is not necessarily the first step.
1. Think about why you want to be a manager. What attracts you? Is it the pay? Opportunity to do more? Status? Keen to be more involved in the organisation? Once you know that, then you can look for the right kind of management post.
2. Did someone else encourage you to think about becoming a manager? If so, why? Do they think you have good organisational skills? Leadership skills? What makes them think you’ll be a good manager? You might be surprised at their answers.
3. You are suspicious that this is “tokenism”. So what? Just get your foot in the door and make sure the tokenism quickly becomes a non-issue. Talk to people if you are concerned, and try and identify what it is that is making you feel uncomfortable.
For 7 more tips click onto http://www.deafworks.co.uk/resources/top-tips/ten-top-tips-when-thinking-about-becoming-a-deaf-manager/

Teach Yourself BSL on YouTube
We are pleased to see reviews for the TYBSL book and DVD are starting to appear on Amazon. You can now see Deaf author Paul Redfern on YouTube explaining, in BSL, how he came to write the book. For those of you who can sign click here www.youtube.com/deafworksuk. For others, captions will be added within the next couple of days.

Deaf Awareness Guide
Deafworks has produced two guides so far: Improve your BSL and Access for deaf people to museums and galleries. Our next publication will be a Deaf Awareness Guide. What would you like to see in this Guide? What would make the biggest difference to you – as a Deaf or hearing person?

See you next month!

P.S.
Many thanks for all your good wishes to Laraine on being awarded her MBE. She has received 300 well wishes so far and counting!