BY ABBY S, YEAR 13

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On Thursday 15 September, the new prefect team attended a morning of leadership training activities. The training was spilt into three sessions:

• how to make a good first impression, body language and verbal and non-verbal communication;
• how to work well in a team; and
• presentation skills.

In the first session, we learnt the value of good posture, eye contact and handshakes in making a first impression. We were all shocked to find out that most people make a subconscious first impression of you after only eight seconds, so how you present yourself in those eight seconds is crucial. Also, we discovered that the trick to a good handshake is to make sure you connect the webbed part in between your thumb and first finger with the same part of the other person’s hand.

We learnt how body language can impact how someone thinks of you, how to stand when presenting, and how to walk into interviews. I think that all of us will take the tips and tricks we learnt with us as we prepare for university or job interviews.

In the second session, we learnt about the DISC model for human behaviour and how an understanding of which category we all fall into will help the coherence of our team. I found this session very useful, especially the tips for communicating with and getting the best out of someone with each personality type.

Finally, in the third session we got a chance to improve our presentation skills. We learnt how to best structure a presentation and the various ways you can keep your audiences engaged, as well as how to present yourself when speaking to a group of people. Being a prefect comes with a great deal of public speaking so I know that all of the team will be using the lessons we learnt in this session very soon.