The Herald: Every great leader has their own unique story of how they made it to the top – but a belief in oneself remains a constant factor, and it's such personal confidence that The Power Within Training aims to instill in all its clients.  By Andrew Collier

 

LEADERSHIP development training is popular, often challenging and can make a real difference to building skills and careers. There’s just one major flaw with it. A lot of the information being passed on to learners just goes in one ear and out of the other.

Statistically, people tend to only remember between 10 and 15 per cent of what they have been taught.

To get around this problem, the lesson needs to be memorable and compelling, and the way to do that is to tell a really good story.

It’s a philosophy which is paying major dividends for one Scottish company operating in this area of business. The Power Within Training, a business based at Eurocentral near Motherwell, has developed techniques that produce remarkable results.

“When you come on one of our courses, we structure it in such a way that we are telling stories all the time”, says James Fleming, its co-founder. 

“This means that 97 per cent of attendees are either using the information at that moment or are still doing so 12 months later.”

The Power Within Training has achieved remarkable growth, largely based on the fact that it is the first organisation of its kind in the world to use a system called Motivational Intelligence (MQ) a Nobel Prize winning offering that has been called the third and most influential level of human intelligence. 

It has also been named one of the top ten most promising scientific discoveries of the 20th century.

James, who runs the company with his Yemeni-born wife and co-founder Enas, comes from Glasgow and built his career in Dubai working as a Senior Director for an international oil and gas enterprise.

He began as an engineer, moved up into mid level management and then in 2007 went on a training course on leadership. “It literally changed my life forever”, he recalls. “It was a dramatic moment in my career, which then really took off.”

The company moved him out of engineering and operations and into a role in human resources, working in career development and talent management. 

In two years, he took his region – the Middle East – from near the bottom globally in terms of performance in these areas to the very top.

He was then moved back to operations but no longer enjoyed it. “I suppose the flame had been lit in terms of helping people build their careers and assisting senior leaders in focusing on what mattered most to them.

“Something just clicked in my head and I thought I could create a really powerful business programme for the Scottish economy. Whenever I came home from Dubai I felt as if the UK economy never moved forward. I thought I could really make an impact.”

James returned to Scotland in 2016. “I’d done research leading up to that moment for several years and had studied successful people, including people in my own organisation. 

“I quickly realised that their success was always down to their own self belief.”
The Power Within was launched the following year, operating on a face-to-face basis with trainees in hotels and other venues. Its business model changed dramatically with the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020.

“Everything we offer is bespoke - we don’t do courses that everyone else offers. 

“So I wondered if we could just start again. We emptied our bank account, went digital and started to build new content. 

“We started selling to places like Dubai and Saudi Arabia as well as the rest of the UK instead of just the Scottish market. 

“We did really well. We put the content online, created videos and the business just grew and grew. We are now a global company.”

James’ key offering of Motivational Intelligence is still new and still remains largely unknown in the mainstream. 

“Emotional intelligence is a buzzword in any management leadership course. However, science has now discovered that humans are not emotionally driven, but by our motivations.

“So we have created a course called Leading with Motivational Intelligence and it is available as an SQA approved Executive Diploma. We are an SQA training provider."

The Power Within Training is also a Skills Development Scotland (SDS) training provider and a Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) approved training organisation.

Other key products it offers the leadership development market include self leadership development, a Multi Trade Leadership Academy and a Business Growth Academy, all certified by the CPD.

The company is also a key provider of business growth and leadership development training to colleges across Scotland via the Flexible Workforce Development Fund (FWDF). 

This allows businesses across the country to access Motivational Intelligence training at no cost to them. James said: “If you are a business owner and looking to get access to this fully funded training, contact my team by email or give them a call.”

“It’s all really personal development”, James adds. “You have to first be able to lead yourself before you can learn to lead others. We take people on a journey that is completely different from that offered by most training courses.

“As almost everything we now do is digital, the beauty is that we can run courses with participants in different places - someone in London, someone in Manchester and someone in Wick, for example. And they are all taking part in one cohort. That really is incredible.”

www.thepowerwithintraining.com/mq/

www.facebook.com/thepowerwithintraining

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Learn to screen out negativity for peak performance

Motivational Intelligence (MQ) is an incredibly powerful tool in the leadership training armoury. It is also something we are likely to hear a lot more about in the years ahead.

It is considered to be the third and most influential level of human intelligence and is the key differentiating factor between people who succeed and those who struggle. 

The Herald:

The Power Within Training's co-founders James and Enas Fleming are pioneers in Motivational Intelligence (MQ)

 

In short, it is an individual’s ability to identify and manage negative thoughts and self-limiting beliefs in order to overcome obstacles and accomplish goals.

Motivational Intelligence can help explain why some people persist in a task while others give up as soon as they hit the smallest barrier.  

Its adherents claim that it actually guarantees success and is the common thread in every great human triumph or endeavour.

Training in motivational intelligence is based on modern day social psychology. 
It can be seen influencing the five key areas of accountability, adaptability, resilience, initiative and courage.

The way we process information in our brains starts in MQ before going on to emotional intelligence (EQ) and IQ. 

People who have higher levels of MQ, the theory goes, make fewer excuses, adapt more quickly, handle adversity more effectively, take productive action and embrace change better.

As a result, Motivational Intelligence becomes an incredibly powerful and useful tool for personal development. The Power Within uses it as the basis for a transformative learning programme that yields results and obtains levels of buy-in and recommendation rates from participants that are unprecedented.

The Power Within Training only offers courses involving a maximum of 20 people, which keeps sessions powerful and intimate. 

They are also offered in relatively small chunks - again, using storytelling techniques – lasting a maximum of three hours at a time.

Participants carry out work assignments between sessions to review what they have been taught. 

Courses vary in length, from eight hours in total for sales and leadership up to between 45 and 50 hours for Leading with Motivational Intelligence.

“Most people - and this includes me, in the past - go on a course and they love it. But when they go back to work they forget almost everything they have been taught.

“With our courses, we guarantee 100 per cent that if it doesn't change your life, we will give you your money back. Not just your business or your leadership, but your life - the way you talk to your kids or your wife. You can’t unlearn what we teach.”

Co-founder James Fleming believes that for his company the future is hugely bright. 

“We are growing and growing at an incredible pace - we now have a full team and are hiring some really powerful and talented people.

“We want everyone in the UK to have access to what we teach. I see us being a 15 to 20 million dollar organisation within the next three to five years.”

www.thepowerwithintraining.com/mq/

www.facebook.com/thepowerwithintraining