When it comes to up-skilling as a business support professional the waters can be a little murky. Business support is a broad umbrella term encompassing a plethora of roles from reception to executive assistants to project managers. With these roles requiring such a vast breadth of skills and knowledge, it can be difficult for employers and employees to know exactly what to focus on when selecting up-skilling opportunities and what resources will provide the best opportunities for applied learning.

Recently Lotus People were fortunate enough to partner with tertiary education provider, Scentia to give away a mini MBA course as a prize to one lucky client at our Christmas function. Having recently completed the mini MBA we caught up with prize winner Adele to ask a few questions about her experience;

Adele, you were our lucky winner of the mini MBA course with Scentia; tell us, how did you enjoy the course? 

I loved every moment of the 5 day Mini MBA experience, even the finance day! What an engaging experience. A great group of people from different professional backgrounds and perspectives which I got to learn from and connect with. Steve our facilitator was quite inspirational and did a wonderful job of creating an open and honest space where I felt comfortable to participate in.

What were your key take outs and what did you find most interesting? 

My key takeaways is that as an executive assistant, I know more than I give myself credit for and that a lot of these principles I can utilise in my day to day role. This course reassured me that self-awareness, awareness of others, being genuine and trustworthy, being resilient and being able to influence others’ emotions are all fundamental to doing the functions of leadership well.

I found that the emotional intelligence learnings to be the most interesting, everything from mindfulness, empathy, establishing core values and mindset.

Have you applied any of your new skills in your current role? 

As I have a strong interest in workplace culture and wellness and because a part of my role is employee engagement, I hope to utilise some of the learnings and apply it to my recognition program that I’ve just implemented.

Who would you recommend the mini MBA to? 

I would recommend this to anyone who wants to become a more reflective, self-aware and strategic member of a general management team. It’s an excellent foundation course for business principles. I would recommend this to executive assistants in particular, so they can gain a more solid understanding of how to strengthen their ability to influence as a leader, because we are all leaders.

 If you are interested in learning more about how a mini MBA can help you to up-skill – click here