New Deal and The Holst Group

In last week’s Daily Mail I was concerned to read that half of those on Labour’s “New Deal” are back on benefits in a year. My concern is not that this is a fact but that it has taken all this time for someone to recognise and publish the figures.
In so many cases we have got it wrong especially where the young unemployed are concerned. I work for The Holst Group who have been the European partners for Dr Edward de Bono and I am in fact de Bono Master trainer.
For several years I have run a course called “Thinking Smarter Not Harder” within the New Deal programme. The course is based on Edward de Bono’s thinking skills from the famous Six Thinking Hats and his Lateral Thinking techniques and tools.

This course is just 6 hours long and teaches us how to think smarter and also how to be creative. These are all skills that can be learnt by anyone. It is no different to learning a sport like golf or tennis.
Thinking and creativity can be learnt by anyone at any level, you do not even have to be able to read or write!
If the government continue to run the “unemployment” problem based on targets and numbers, like a sales campaign, then the problem will never be solved. Forcing people into jobs they can’t or don’t want to do, just to achieve their weekly targets, will inevitably maintain the figures (if not even increase them) of people returning to unemployment.
Sadly many of the young unemployed people are at “rock bottom”, they have a very low self-esteem, they lack confidence and many actually believe they are unemployable. This isn’t necessarily their fault, it is partly ours and the way the  “establishment” treat them. Having been through a period of unemployment myself, I know how they feel.
If we can listen to them, talk to them and teach them how to think and be creative without our traditional negative responses (that we are all so good at) then things can be improved.
Edward de Bono has said that the New Deal training work that the Holst group are doing has, in some cases, succeeded in 6 hours of his thinking skills what 10 years of education has failed to achieve.
With many of the young people I have been involved with this is certainly true.
There have been complete 180 degree shifts in so many of them and I have some wonderful case studies where “thinking” has completely changed their lifes.
Stuart Scott de Bono Master trainer and Facilitator. The Holst Group