If your organisation has between 5 and 249 staff, you may be eligible for a Government grant of £1,000 to spend on leadership & management training, coaching or mentoring.  Bad news is that this scheme will expire on 31 December 2010.

The Train-to-Gain scheme applies to all organizations that:

• Are private, franchise, public and voluntary bodies.
• Have between 5 and 249 employees. This is for the whole company, not an individual site.
• Did not benefit from Leadership and Management grant in the last 12 months.

While the train to gain scheme is applicable to a broad range of coaching, mentoring and training services available to employees in any position within their organization the Leadership and Management section states that:

Train to Gain can help your business:

• get the essential skills to boost your business performance
• improve your business efficiency and increase profits
• help your staff grow in motivation and confidence

To benefit of this service, once checked your eligibility, simply identify a suitable provider for the service you are interested in and then contact the local train-to-gain office.

MaGa Coaching offers a broad range of coaching service to business owners, senior executives and teams.  Please enquire today and check how we can boost your performance: your chance of getting £1000 off your coaching package will expire soon so hurry up!

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The first session of the new MaGa Coaching Group for Business Growth (MCGfBG) took place in Cambridge at the end of March.  A total of 7 business owners in the high tech industry, spanning different sectors such as agile software development, hardware and software consultancy, development of applications for iPhone and web design joined together to be among the founders of this first group.

Running a small business can be a very lonely job, missing the support of partners, fellow directors and colleagues to share problems, bounce ideas and keep focussed on the main business objectives: this can have a very negative effect on the personal performance of the business owners and the organisations they run.

The MCGfBG structure offers the possibility, for businesses owners, to meet and exchange ideas, share experiences and help each other growing their own business.  This is obtained by keeping in touch regularly and reasonably often: a monthly face to face meeting for a 3 hours session as well as a monthly one hour conference call.  It is like having a board meeting and a brainstorming session at once.  Somebody’s problems are often a past experience for others and the typical “have you tried x, y, z?” question is usually enough to unlock an idea for a possible way forward.

The coaching main contribution to this process is to help people to come out with their own answers by asking the right questions.  The second and very fundamental one is to keep the attention and focus on the solution and maintain an accountability process for members of the group to report back at the next meeting.

MCGfBG is organised and run by a professionally trained and qualified business and executive coach. Apart from facilitating the smooth running of the meetings and ensuring that both agenda and structure are followed he trains members about how they can help themselves and others to work more effectively and improve areas that need attention in order to achieve they own goals.

Massimo Gaetani, Business and Executive Coach who designed, planned and executed this project for MaGa Coaching, declared: “I am impressed by the success of this first group and by the interest it is attracting among other business sectors: it is well beyond our initial expectations…” he also added “…the accountability process and the self directed approach that we implement in MCGfBG have a very powerful impact on the decision process of members and it helps them to focus on essential activities that help to grow their business”.

The indirect advantage is to build consistent and trustworthy relationships among the members of the group fostering a strong community of talented entrepreneurs.

Each MCGfBG is centred around a specific business area: it groups business that are compatible and complementary while avoiding direct competitions and big differences in levels of success of the members.

“High tech professionals have their own language and they communicate freely with others that understand them…” adds Massimo Gaetani who was a software and systems engineer for over 10 year, “…so we created this first group around this topic: it’s also preferable to have people that can relate to each other so we carefully selected businesses with similar size and background”.

Coaching programmes have a permanent effect when they are applied for a period of six months or longer therefore the suggested minimum participation to a MCGfBG is 6 months.

MaGa Coaching is now organising the launch of a second MCGfBG in the high tech sector as well as presenting the initiative and business model to a selected group of professionals and business owners in the Marketing and Creative industry on Friday 23 April.

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We have received this morning a SPAM from a source that looks like the VAT office and we would like to warn everyone reading this to ignore it or forward it to phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk  We have contacted the VAT office by phone and they confirmed it’s a SPAM.

The Email has an attachment (html form that displays like a web page in a browser) that requires you to enter company and bank details to receive a payment of £256.99 but, stupidly enough, they say that the claim should be received by 15-Jan-2010!  Here it is:

Subj:  Reminder: Please Submit Your Refund Payment

Dear Applicant:

Following an upgrade of our computer systems and review of our records we have investigated your payments and latest tax returns over the last seven years  our calculations show you have made over payments of ?256.99 Due to the high volume of refunds due you must complete the on line application, the telephone help line is unable to assist with this application.
In order to process your refund you will need to complete the attached application form.
Your refund may take up to 3 weeks to process please make sure you complete the form correctly.
As we are upgrading our records we require the completed form showing your full current details by 15 January 2010

Please submit the form attached to confirm the refund.

S. M.Roberts
Senior Manager
HM Revenue & Customs

————————————————————–
© Copyright 2010, HM Revenue & Customs UK All rights reserved.
TAX REFUND ID: A29R119

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MaGa Coaching’s MD, Massimo Gaetani, was recently interviewed by Karl Hartland, station manager at 209 Radio http://www.209radio.co.uk during the 209 talk, a four weekly behind the scene of the community radio and the people that contribute to its success.  209 Radio is a local community Radio that broadcasts from Cambridge on 105 FM.

In this interview Massimo explains the work he has been doing with the various teams at the station as well as various aspects of coaching and the benefits it brings to business owners.

Please listen to the interview here:

Radio209 Massimo Gaetani Interview Jan 2010

If you prefer to listen to the whole program please check this page.

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Another year is coming to its end and Christmas 2009 is just a few hours away.  MaGa Coaching wish the best Christmas and a super prosperous New Year 2010 for you, your family and friends.

And to finish the year with a bit of fun please have a look at Massimo dancing video, below:

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