The past two weeks at Interaction Consulting have been a whirlwind of activity and I have loved every second of it. The life of an intern at Interaction is high-paced and diverse.
My time so far with Interaction has been an incredible 5 months of learning and development and I have welcomed the opportunity to further my professional career in an industry I did not consider to be relevant to my psychology degree – boy was I wrong!
Prior to Interaction, I worked for many years in before and after school care whilst I completed my studies. After I graduated it was a natural progression to move into a management role and run a before and after school care service of my own. This was extremely fulfilling work but it was time for a sea change.
Initially, when I joined Interaction I was involved in a lot of the behind-the-scenes tasks to support our highly skilled consultants in their training delivery and facilitation. My tasks ranged from auditing and refining existing content to ensure it was contemporary and ready for delivery, developing bespoke training programs, scheduling and resourcing, and being actively involved in the creation and refinement of proposals. The best part of this role was learning about the variety of learning and development workshops that we offer – there is something to meet everyone’s needs! And if there isn’t an existing course ready to be tailored, we work with our clients to develop custom programs.
Recently, I had the privilege of co-facilitating a planning day for an APS Division. This was my first experience with hybrid facilitation…with approx. 80 people in the room and 12 joining us virtually. My role for the day was to host the virtual participants – this was a huge undertaking…talk about baptism by fire! I was responsible for managing the breakout rooms, communication through the chat, arranging the technology so virtual participants could provide input to the face-to-face attendees, managing different camera angles and troubleshooting any issues as they arose.
Hybrid learning environments are being utilised more and more frequently. It is a fantastic experience to be at the forefront of integrating a hybrid approach to our facilitation and deliveries. I look forward to streamlining this process further. The energy throughout the day was incredible – everyone was so engaged and enthusiastic about the work they were doing. The next steps will be collating all of the information gathered on the day – the discussions and outcomes of the activities – into a high-level report for the Division to utilise in future strategic discussions.
I have realised that psychology is highly relevant to the management consulting industry and have been able to utilise my knowledge and skills to inform both the content I am creating and my facilitation and delivery style. It is a privilege to work with highly intelligent and engaged clients in a variety of industries, and to be able to help them further develop their knowledge, skills and confidence to grow and shine in their chosen fields.
