About us - our people and practice
Training Attention grew out of a fusion of Clean Language, systems thinking, deep ecology and the irrepressible curiosity of its founder, Caitlin Walker. Having rigorously tested her method in a diverse range of contexts she has access to an expert team of modellers who can train their attention on any individual, team, organisation or community wanting to benefit from this unique approach.
Nancy Doyle, a Chartered Organisational Psychologist, has been evaluating and researching the impact of Caitlin’s ideas since 2002. Her experience as a psychologist and trainer meant that together Nancy and Caitlin have brought these innovative ideas into schools, welfare to work and adult education. They work together in partnership, coaching, refining, challenging each others’ ideas and practices with a rigour that is at the core of Training Attention.
Caitlin Walker
Caitlin specialises in applying systems thinking to professional development. Combining the modeling processes developed in Neuro-linguistic Programming with the discipline of 'Clean Questions' and the common sense of coaching, she has developed leading edge processes that result in whole system sustainable change - Systemic Modelling. Clean language is the foundation of this work. (more...)
Nancy Doyle
Nancy's broad experience working with the public sector and social enterprise has enabled her to become skilled at facilitating others to find their own solutions and resolve conflict through learning and development; on an organisational, team and individual basis. She has designed, delivered and evaluated programmes such as organisation wide training, individual coaching sessions and team development days. Her background in organisational psychology enables Nancy to use a wide range of tools from psychometrics to team building to address concerns and move people forward into more resourceful and successful states. (more ...)
Emma Dalrymple
Emma specialises in group facilitation, particularly in the areas of social exclusion and unemployment and has been involved in the design and delivery of ‘Skills4Success’ since 2004. Using a range of learning programmes in diverse settings – from schools to corporate team building events - she supports individuals and groups to realise their goals and to implement and embed change. Emma also has a wealth of experience training trainers and in using group activities for recruitment and selection processes. Emma began working in the ‘Welfare to Work’ sector in 2002 after obtaining a degree in Law and French from Sheffield University. She is a Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Symbolic Modelling.
Cheryl Winter
Cheryl is a passionate coach and trainer with a flair for building both intimate coaching sessions and interactive team events, for enhancing communication and results all round. Her specialisms are Team Development and Coaching Skills for Managers. As a highly accomplished trainer and coach with over 20 year's experience of helping teams Cheryl helps managers to pay special attention to themselves and each other. Following a successful career in the Financial Services and Retail Sector she joined Training Attention in 2006 and is currently working with our projects for NHS North West Executive Coaches and Sure Start Centres in Preston.
Ben Reeve
Ben has been designing and delivering training consultancy packages for 15 years. He worked for many years in local authority homelessness and advice units and began his training career in the late 1990s delivering housing law courses for officers of the Metropolitan Police. He then went to gain certificates as both a Master Practitioner and Qualified Trainer of NLP, and then specialising in communication skills courses for a wide range of clients, including the Chartered Institute of Housing, Shelter, Age Concern, and hundreds of local authorities and housing associations. He is co-author, with Neil Connelly of the book “Influential Communication Made Easy”.
Our Intention: to enable systems in which people can perform at their best more of the time.
Training Attention specialises in applying systems thinking to learning and professional development. The Training Attention practise allows organisations, teams and individuals to understand themselves, other people and the dynamics between them in a non-judgemental way. This allows them to generate and manage their own changes, bringing sustainable development. We detect patterns outside the system's awareness and reflect back so that the individual, team or organisation updates and evolves its own solutions. A key difference at Training Attention is that we continuously apply the practises to ourselves using clean feedback and are an example of it. We train in diverse pairs, recruit for diversity, work with our clients' system and rigorously evaluate on both outcomes and delivery. We continuously challenge our own and each other's thinking, providing constructive feedback using the clean feedback model and setting developmental tasks on the basis of evidence. Those that take on the Training Attention practise as part of their core culture acquire a practical tool for bridging the gap between the theory and application of system thinking.
Our history
The Training Attention practice began as a synthesis of ground-breaking constructivist systems thinking surrounding personal and group development in the mid 1990's. Most influential was 'Clean Language' as developed by eminent psychotherapist David Grove, Symbolic Modelling developed by James Lawley and Penny Tompkins, the Linguistic Theories proposed by George Lakof and the new understanding of subjective experience being developed in Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Training Attention's Managing Director, Caitlin Walker first began testing her ideas with street gangs in London's inner city. One of the underlying principles of the practise is that it can be applied to all systems irrespective of the amount of resources available. The range of contexts including 'at-risk' pupils in schools, questioning techniques used by the police on under 18's, sustainable work placement of the long-term unemployed and conflict resolution during Primary Care Trust mergers. Stories and Case-Studies of these and other projects can be found in 'our applications'.