In this inspiring opening session Chris Barez-Brown will be opening up the minds of the participants for a fully productive and creative day.

Chris Barez-Brown studied marketing in the UK and the States before joining Bass Brewers in sales management and brands marketing roles. Chris joined '?Whatif!' in 1998 where he's worked in all areas of innovation but has spent most of his time unleashing the creative potential of companies all around the world.

Team Coaching is a subject that is widely discussed and debated, but about which there is little actual documented material that specifically focuses on 'coaching' the team, as opposed to 'facilitating' or 'team building'.

This session aims to:

• define team coaching and how it differs from other team interventions
• provide a framework to support team coaching
• introduce models that could be used to effectively support team coaching.

Elaine Grix and Charlotte Park will share their ideas and experiences so that you leave with an understanding of how you might approach team coaching in the future.

In this session Wendy Hirsh and Paul Fairhurst will propose that a learning strategy can be seen as consisting of a set of essentially practical choices. They will look at how to align these choices with organisational and employee skill needs and cultural preferences and introduce a simple framework which asks:

• Why do we need learning and development in our organisations and what learning will align with our business and individual needs?
• How will we deliver L&D activities and who will do this, both in our L&D function and outside it?
• So what is the impact of learning and how are we going to evaluate it?

Wendy Hirsh is an independent researcher and consultant and a principal associate of the IES. She advises many employers, both private and public sector in the areas of employee and management development, career development and workforce planning.

Paul Fairhurst is a principal consultant in the IES Consultancy team, responsible for helping clients gain sustainable benefits from the research and consultancy programmes. He has over 20 years successful experience in business, most recently running his own coaching and management development business.

Resli Costabell shares some secrets about how she produces creative, fun, training exercises that really achieve what they're meant to achieve. Resli will be flexible on the day but topics she may focus on include:

• The one question you must answer before you even start designing an exercise.
• Plaigercising: how to be ready to design at the drop of a hat.
• What's in the black box: the actual process of devising a powerful, memorable exercise?
• Turning a very rough draft into something more workable.
• And turning something more workable into something fun and energising.

Resli Costabell is an award-winning international speaker, trainer and coach. She's known for her creative approach, for the life and humour she brings to workshops, and for designing memorable, fun exercises that bring home the learning.

Can you imagine a world without stories? They are everywhere, not just, as some think, in the school or nursery; they abound in the office, on the internet, round the photocopier, on the shop floor. Listening to a story relaxes us, engages and motivates, helps us to see things in a different way, and most of all, offers a non-invasive but powerful form of learning. Margaret Parkin reminds us we ignore them at our peril!

Margaret's session introduces participants to the concept of storytelling as a learning and development tool, and offers a number of practical applications that can be incorporated with individuals, teams and organisations. Topics covered include:

• Storytelling in organisations - is it an ancient art or a modern business tool or both?
• The benefits of learning through storytelling
• How stories work - why we remember and learn from stories
• Practical uses for stories and metaphors in organisations
• Telling the tale - adopting the storytellers' skills of curiosity, emotion and empathy in order to assist the learning process

Margaret Parkin is an international speaker, learning and development consultant, executive coach and best-selling author of three books on the topic of 'organisational storytelling'.

It's an issue that organisations have been struggling with now for decades: How can we increase the number of diverse employees at more senior levels in the organisation? Many approaches have been tried, including positive action schemes, mentoring, general training and awareness raising, coaching, and targeted development programmes.

In this session, Nic Sale will explore the different types of methods that organisations have used in order to identify the successful practices and those that have no impact - or at worst, are detrimental to what the organisation is trying to achieve. Throughout the session, she we will review the direct impact of each of the methods, as well as the often unanticipated, indirect side-effects on the organisation's culture and employees.

Dr Nic Sale is Head of Diversity at Pearn Kandola and a Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society. She was awarded a DPhil in Psychology in 2002 for her research into the effects of minority status and culture within multinational organisations.

We live in an increasingly interconnected world and our success increasingly depends on making critical relationships work. We need to develop leaders who can rise to the challenges of delivering results through many interdependent relationships, managing a range of business partnerships and handling complex sets of stakeholders.

In this highly interactive workshop Alex Cameron and David Archer use their ideas and models to demonstrate ways of tackling these critical leadership development issues.

At the heart of the workshop will be an exercise which uses the Socia Organisational Partnering Indicator (OPI), this uses MBTI© language to help analyse and describe the culture of an organisation. Organisations, like people, have characteristic preferences for the way they interact with others, gather information, take decisions and organise their work. When the future of one organisation depends on its ability to work closely with others, leaders at all levels need to understand these differences and how to take actions which are effective across these cultural boundaries

David Archer is a director of Socia Ltd and has 16 years' consulting experience in the public and private sectors. His extensive experience in leadership development has directly informed his work on collaborative leadership

Alex Cameron is a director of Socia Ltd and has spent 21 years in organisation development, specialising in executive development and change management.

Matt Somers suggests that managers who are able to coach their staff are the ones best able to weather the current economic storm. Managers who are able to coach their staff have greater value to their current organisations and are more attractive to alternative employers.

Can coaching possibly provide an edge for L&D initiatives or is coaching just a luxury to be had during times of 'boom' but not 'bust'? Matt believes that an investment in coaching skills now is the best way to get through any tough times and to emerge from them better placed to do well in the next upturn.

The session will cover:

• How to get more done with fewer people
• How to engage line managers in learning and development
• How to turn fear and anxiety into focus and determination
• How three simple principles can change the way we manage

Matt Somers is an experienced coaching practitioner and for the last 10 years has run his own coaching skills training consultancy. He holds an MSc in Human Resource Development, is a Fellow of the CIPD and an active member of the Association for Coaching.

Most chief executives would agree that their mission is to continuously improve the performance and health of their organisation. It's the same goal whether it's about making best use of public or voluntary funds, or maximising returns for shareholders. And it's patently obvious they can't do it on their own - it means developing the competence and performance of their managers and leaders.

The natural response is to start with training and development. It's where everyone tends to start. But starting there could mean wasting their money and not achieving the results. So why is this? It's because the actual effectiveness of most courses sits at around 2.5%!

In this session Cliff Lansley will explore where this appalling figure comes from and highlight the critical role for effective diagnostics and initial assessment. He will draw parallels with the medical profession which would probably enjoy a similar poor success rate without good diagnostics.

Cliff Lansley is the Managing Director of Development Processes Group plc, a national organisation specialising in organisational, leadership and management development.

We all love the extras that technology can offer a training environment but most of us have discovered that these clever effects don't translate into better training or learning. In this session Justin Collinge will be demonstrating a range of skills and techniques; those that bring out the best of technology while maintaining the vital and unpredictable elements that come from interacting with the learners.

The key tool being demonstrated will be how to use interactive whiteboards effectively and creatively. Plus you'll get the chance to explore other up-to-date developments including wireless technologies and audience participation devices (voting handsets).

Justin Collinge is passionate about finding effective and creative ways to support clear communication. He is perhaps best known for his 'Presentation Magic' workshop - sharing how to use technology to communicate in exciting and challenging ways. Justin ran his own company for many years, before recently joining the team at Kaizen-Training Ltd.

In the current climate, perhaps more than at any other time in recent history, the ability needed by people at every level within organisations to proactively and positively manage the organisational politics has never been greater.

'Politics' is one of the least talked about, yet most often used aspects of organisational life and has the ability to act as either an enabling or disabling factor when people face an uncertain future.

In this session Wayne Thomas from the Academy for Political Intelligence will provide a helpful repositioning of organisational politics and present practical information and methods on how people can become more 'politically intelligent' and proactively and positively manage the political dimension of your organisation during times of ambiguity and change.

David Bancroft-Turner spent many years in International Banking in senior management development roles. David now specialises in leadership development and is best know for his pioneering work in the area of organisational politics having developed the unique 'political intelligence' process and now runs the Academy for Political Intelligence.

Blue Sky Performance Improvement is no stranger to awards, winning 20 in the last 3 years including our highest accolade, the TJ Special Achievement award in 2006 and 2008. This passion for awards is based on exceptional standards, complete belief in the potential of every programme and an ability to work effectively in partnership with L&D departments.

Lindsay Terris will talk about Blue Sky's 'sales through service' development programme at NS&I and Kayte Brook-Simpson explore their leadership programme at Sage.

Kayte Brooke-Simpson is a leading expert in driving through large scale cultural change programmes in both the private and public sector. She has successfully led and implemented organisational change strategies with exceptional results winning three awards in the past 18 months.

Lindsay Terris was head of Sales at Powergen before joining Blue Sky in 2002. Lindsay has a strong background in coaching and performance management as well as a wealth of operational expertise in both management operating systems and resource planning.

The creation of an ongoing talent resource within an organisation has been a hot topic for several years now, whether called 'development paths', 'resource pools' or 'career plans', the organisations of today agree that developing and positively exploiting their internal capability is a sound business model. In this interactive session you will:

• Hear from one of the largest global visitor attraction companies, with brands such as Legoland, SEALIFE and Madame Tussauds
• Apply top seven tips for any organisation looking to develop a talent pipeline.
• Understand the importance of vision, values and strategy on the development of future talent.
• Discover a model that has saved tens of thousands in recruitment costs and explore how this can be applied in your field.

Lisa Hubbard is group training and development manager at Merlin Entertainments and has over 10 years of management and training experience within the retail and leisure industry. Lisa's dynamic approach and communication style draws on modern physiological techniques to inspire her learners to achieve their fullest capacity and more.

Richard Nugent is Leadership Consultant at Kaizen Training and is proud to be in demand with clients ranging from Executive Chefs to Chief Executives and Olympic athletes to Hollywood business leaders.

Learning and development professionals know better than anyone the benefits that carefully prioritised investment during a downturn can bring in building the capacity needed to benefit from the opportunities recovery brings. In this year's closing keynote address Jackie Orme will urge the profession to look to their own aptitude and ensure they keep their own skills fresh and flexible to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Jackie Orme has been CEO of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) since April 2008. Jackie has been an HR practitioner for more than 17 years. For the 12 years before she joined the CIPD, Jackie worked for PepsiCo - including 7 years leading the UK and Ireland HR function and sitting on both the UK Executive Board of PepsiCo International and the global PepsiCo International HR Council, during a time of impressive business growth and success.