The old cliché goes that Accountants are numbers people - they are much more comfortable with a calculator than a keyboard. But that is just no longer the case. Accountants are managers, advisors and interpreters of large amounts of information on a daily basis and non-numerical skills are in many ways as important as number-crunching.
How much reading do you do on a daily basis? Probably much more than you think. You read reports, research information, check financial standards and legal documents, read newspapers or the financial press, emails, and maybe even study for an extra qualification in your 'spare' time! You do all of this to keep-up-to-date, or learn new things, or to add an extra string to your bow.
So wouldn't it be helpful if you could learn how to read more effectively? To learn how to concentrate on reading even when you have a telephone ringing next to you, emails popping up on-screen demanding to be answered and only five minutes to read that report before you have to rush into a meeting about it.
With this in mind (and a stack of text books I was trying to trudge my way through) I recently participated in the 'Advanced Reading Skills' CPD course. The course is designed to help participants to pick out key points in a document, increase their range of reading speeds, learn how to skim and scan texts, make effective and memorable notes, and to improve retention of information.
That all sounds like a lot to take away from a one-day course, and it is a very intensive course, with a huge focus on practical exercises so that participants can see how their techniques are improving over the course of the day. This concentration on the practical however, is perfect if you want to come away from the course with a sense of achievement and a crystal clear idea of how to apply these techniques to 'real-life' and take them back to the office, or home, with you.
Business Skills (or 'Soft-Skills') training often gets left behind as we put our efforts into what we consider to be more essential technical courses, but I truly found this to be an example of a practical course that will improve both my work, and personal, endeavours long after the course is over.
Dee Connolly, Executive Administrator with the CPD Department at ICAI, recently participated in the 'Advanced Reading Skills' CPD course.
The next 'Advanced Reading Skills' course takes place in Dublin in November. For more information please see the ICAI website.
For a list of upcoming Business Skills courses please see the ICAI website.