Free Webinar Recordings
Every month, Big Fish Training hosts a popular free lunchtime webinar featuring career development tips and advice. All are welcome, particularly communications professionals. In 2022 we'll help you develop your career with more interviews about imposter syndrome, looking at how you can contain your inner critic and stop holding yourself back. If you'd like to know more, sign up for the Hook or follow us on Linkedin to make sure you don't miss out.
Lunch and learn: Fighting Festive Overwhelm
It's not just work that can feel overwhelming as the Christmas and New Year holiday approaches. It's the pressure to deliver flawless festivities to everyone else - especially for the people-pleasers and perfectionists among us!
The trouble is, aiming for unattainable perfection usually ends in disappointment. Not just for yourself. But also for the people you're trying to please because other people always pick up on your stress and unhappiness.
This reassuring webinar presented by Emma Ewing from Big Fish Training contains her tips for fighting back against festive overwhelm!
Lunch and learn: Managing Up
Setting boundaries for your boss and your clients without annoying them, presented by Emma Ewing from Big Fish Training.
Lunch and learn: Beating Burnout
Crikey, life is exhausting at the moment, isn't it? When you're busy and stressed it can be hard to take the time you need to rest, and with so much on our plates it can sometimes become overwhelming.
Hosted by life and wellness coach Tammy Barter, this on-demand webinar video will walk you through some of the signs and symptoms of burnout, and what you can do about it.
Together, we can beat burnout before it beats us!
Destination procrastination! Why we put things off and what to do about it
Our fabulous trainer and special guest, Sarah, will join you in exploring the murky world of procrastination. Why is it that when we're really busy, we can become our own worst enemy?
Lunch and learn: How do you solve a problem like people pleasing in PR?
We've all been there: over-promising on what we can achieve, agreeing to unachievable KPIs, working late into the night to quantify our success, and don't even get me started on the client pitch process...
PR has a people pleasing problem.
What the bleep is mental health at work?
There are few people better equipped to talk about mental wellbeing and mental health than our special guest, Lou O'Connell, MBE.
Lou is currently a qualified mental health nurse working in the NHS, following a 22-year career in the British Army. She's worked in a number of different (and sometimes challenging) mental health settings in the UK and provided social and occupational welfare support to soldiers and their families. Oh, and she's got an MBE for her volunteer work with young people dealing with bereavement. She's very modest about that which only makes us love and respect her more.

We navigated through dark and light during the webinar and Lou's own story is deeply emotional. If you have been affected by any of the issues raised, Lou would be the first to encourage you to seek support.
Mental health and mental illness resources:
- The Samaritans - always available to listen. Call them on 116 123 or use their self-help app via Samaritans.org
- See Change initiative - Ireland's organisation dedicated to ending mental health stigma (thanks to Rachel Nulty for letting us know about this)
- To find out more about the difference between mental health difficulties and mental illnesses, download the See Change free guide here.
- If you're someone suffering with an eating disorder - or think you might be - Beat offers support through web-based chat, email and a helpline.
- If you're an organisation wanting to educate, acknowledge and support your staff on this subject, Beat is a good place to start. As well as offering information and support on its website, Beat also provides training and events. You can find out more here.
- My Black Dog offers peer-to-peer support for anyone who is suffering with their mental help. All its volunteers have lived experience of mental health issues.
Thanks for Vicki DeBlasi for these links.
Finally, Liz and Mollie have great guides for minimising the emotional impact of receiving feedback and you can sign up here.
5 Most Common Mistakes by Managers and Leaders April 2022
In this webinar, Emma tackles the most common mistakes made by managers and leaders (we've all made them so there's no judgement here!). More importantly, we help you prevent the same mistakes happening again, re-energising your management style in the process.
Press play now for some management inspiration, a soupçon of reassurance and a bit of a laugh while you're at it.
Lunch and learn: Dealing With Your Inner Critic
Many of us have an inner critic.
It fuels low self-esteem, makes us feel anxious and questions our own judgement. Even if we are eminently competent and appear outwardly confident.
The route to personal development is ALWAYS self-awareness. So that's the place to start:
- Admit you have those critical thoughts
- Name them - distance yourself from your thoughts
- Treat them lightly - thoughts are not facts, even if there may be a grain of truth in them, so don't treat them as such
"The brain believes what you tell it most. And what you tell it about YOU, it will create".
So don't allow that negative inner critic to take control - acknowledge it, name it and choose when to ignore it.
Dealing with perfectionism and imposter syndrome - Interview with Dan Bowsher
The mind can be an arse, can't it?
It fuels low self-esteem, makes us feel anxious and questions our own judgement. Even if we are eminently competent and appear outwardly confident.
The mind of my next webinar guest is a prime example!
Dan Bowsher is a veteran of the PR and digital comms industry, having worked in agency, in-house at Vodafone and latterly as his own boss at social media consultancy, Sett Social.
He joins me to talk about his experiences of imposter syndrome, low self-esteem and his battle with clinical perfectionism.
His experiences will resonate with many, regardless of current role, seniority or gender. And we both hope, that by sharing our own stories, we will enable a few more people to share theirs - leading to a more empathetic and supportive workplace culture.
How Big Fish Training Works
Got a team to train? Most courses are delivered direct either in person or via live video for groups of 6 - 12 people. These sessions are tailored to your specific needs. You just need to tell us what they are! Get in touch now for a friendly chat about what you need to achieve.
Want a course just for you? We run special sessions throughout the year and have a growing number of online courses. If you can't find what you need on the site, get in touch now and we can help.
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