Creating Meaningful Relationships Whether you are an educator, learning leader or staff manager, you have a significant impact every day and in every interaction you make with learners, peers and staff. Two key questions we need to ask ourselves are: What the quality of this interaction? and How effective is my personal approach in supporting learning within my organisation?   Your Authentic Presence Its not just what you say that matters, it’s who you’re being as you do it. Yes we need to deliver a information, but what we call ‘knowledge’ is constantly evolving and often subjective. What’s more important is maintaining an emotionally consistent tone in your environment, as we navigate the needs of our staff or learners. It's who you are as a person and the qualities you bring to the interactions you have with people during the learning process, that makes the real difference. Creating Rapport  Today, regardless of the context, staff and learners require us to have greater personal understanding of them than previous generations. Meeting their needs asks us to tailor our content with the individual in mind. Staff development, training or teaching can be challenging. There is a part of us that does know how we’d like it to be. Healthy change begins inside us by acknowledging how we are feeling, how we’d like it to be and how we might create this.  If we want people to relate well to us and each other we need to model a healthy relationship and engage them in this. These are the awareness' and skills of emotional and social intelligence.  ‘For things to change, first I must change.’ Making Personal Meaning Those who had and have a positive influence on us are people who relate well to us, connect their mesage to where we are at, and help us find our own personal meaning in it. This is what makes training, teaching and learning inspiring. It invites us to be more person and process-centered, and less task and content focused.                       ‘The secret of education lies in respecting the learner’  - Emerson Social and Emotional Intelligence Interpersonal (social) and intrapersonal (emotional & cognitive) skills equip others to build resilient self-worth and productive personal and working relationships. It’s not just what we know about the world, it’s what we know about ourselves and others that helps us succeed or not. Successful learning and relationships, mutually respectful behaviour and good health, fundamentally depend on these intelligences. These are the skills of Self-Science and need teaching just like other subjects.                                   'Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. The only function of a school is to make self-education easier. Failing that it does nothing.’     Isaac Asimov The Power of Choice Being conscious of the choices we make very moment as we interact with staff, peers and learners strengthens our ability to be effective. Engaging in professional development, and supervision or coaching, is a powerful way to support ourselves, our learners, our colleagues and our community.   'The best way to predict the future is to create it' - Peter Drucker   Dharan Longley is director in Insight Education, and a trainer, facilitator and supervisor/coach for teachers and learning leaders. He specialises in developing the awareness and skills needed to create positive productive relationships and learning environments. His core approach affirms the need to develop our own social and emotional intelligences in order to best support our own and our others’ holistic growth.                                             To discuss how I can add value to your professional development programme contact: dharan@insighteducation.co.nz      Mobile: +64-21-235 4047