FAQ for All

Learning to live by going through the “school of hard knocks” too often costs too much — personally and in relationships.

In the “school” of Heart Knocks (we are a training company) we offer you a Curriculum for Full Living in which you will find a learning path that will have you negotiate the turbulent waters of life with the calm and ease that begins with awareness and understanding of self and others, followed by life-long learning and growth.

We are a team of individuals with different backgrounds and education who are passionate about having individuals grow into their full potential as a human being.

We believe that the personal growth and psychological development of the individual human being is unquestionably the most powerful force for good in the world—enabling within the family the loving kindness we are all capable of, creating prosperity in business and fostering compassion and understanding in and between communities.

We see experiential education as the key which opens the door to realisation of human potential. Education creates awareness and understanding of new possibilities. Experiential learning enables sustainable behavioural change.

We offer trainings designed to serve different people at different levels:

• Personal trainings focus on profound transformation for the individual
• Corporate trainings focus on the dynamics of communications and behaviour in the organisational environment
• Public trainings focus on awareness and understanding of new possibilities in personal, family, work and community life

The design of our programmes, especially the personal trainings, are based on the experiential model of education.

Academic learning tends to limit people to the known and the proven and may be well suited for scientific and technological endeavours.

The important issues that are the greatest sources of satisfaction and accomplishment in adult life—love, relationships, health, community—need to be learned by experience and cannot be wholly accessed by the intellect.

When you participate fully in any of our trainings, we can promise you that you will receive value in some of the following ways:

• Achieving new levels of success
• Producing better results with less effort
• Communicating more effectively
• Facing challenges with more courage
• Feeling more alive
• Having greater trust in people and the future
• Experiencing greater clarity about life and work
• Handling stress effectively
• Breaking through self-imposed limitations
• Rekindling your joy in life.

For details of specific trainings, please ask for our brochures, which are available in print and for download.

Ultimately, you could choose our trainings for any of the following reasons:

• To boost your performance
• To find new ground in your relationship(s)
• To achieve a new level of success in your business or career
• To be coached in what you cannot yet see
• To get in touch with what really matters to you
• To gain a fresh perspective or insight to your more basic concerns
• To rekindle a spark of vitality and enjoyment of life
• To create a future that’s different from the way it seems to be going
• To make a meaningful contribution that you have yet to do
• To experience the kind of breakthroughs you saw in someone who went through our type of training.
• To gain internationally recognised professional certifications in leadership, training, and coaching
• And you will find other reasons of your own…

Our trainings are of a genre that has its roots in what became known as the Human Potential Movement (HPM) in the 1960s. One of the originators of HPM was the psychologist, Carl Rogers, who postulated that the innermost core of a person is good and positive, and in possession of inner resources and innate potential.

For more information on the HPM, see:
https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/human-potential-movement-0

Our core curriculum, the Advanced Living Series (ALS), can be traced back to those early beginnings.

Over the decades the ALS and other programmes have evolved into what is sometimes now called “the transformational trainings”, the term being reflective of the focus on how they affect the participant in their perspectives and attitudes in life.

Every participant who walks into our trainings will do so with their own unique reasons in mind. Whether they see it clearly beforehand or realise it in retrospect, many participants will do our trainings because they want to:

• Live life with freedom and passion
• Have clarity on their direction in life
• Expand their leadership skills
• Have greater insight in areas of life important to them
• Deepen their personal relationships
• Continue their personal growth
• Make a difference in the community
• To accomplish what they know they have yet to do.

Any mentally and emotionally healthy adult person (18 years and older) who is open to expanding their horizons can benefit from our trainings, often in profound and powerful ways.

Our trainers usually apprentice for two or more years with a master trainer. This is a rigorous process that demands not only intellectual understanding, but also internalizing the principles of the trainings fully at emotional and experiential levels. The trainers we use have presented the material internationally and typically have more than 15 years experience in the field.

The companies and individual trainers involved in this genre of trainings, although dispersed across the globe, have a common commitment to the quality, effectiveness and continued development of the training, and through informal connections with each other have been able to ensure that trainers and companies maintain healthy practices in their training business.

Participants who complete our core curriculum, the Advanced Living Series, are accorded Associate status (AIoL) with the Institute of Leadership (IoL), UK, and can continue with self-study online to qualify as a member of the Institute, earning for themselves the post nominals, MIoL.

We are a training centre for the Institute of Training and Occupational Learning (ITOL), UK, and participants who complete many of our trainings are entitled to membership of ITOL which carries the post nominals MITOL.

Experiential learning is described variously as “an engaged learning process whereby students ‘learn by doing’ and by reflecting on the experience” and “challenge and experience followed by reflection, leading to learning and growth”.

For a more comprehensive description, see, for example:
https://www.aee.org/what-is-experiential-education

One could also describe it as exploratory or adult learning, where the participant takes active responsibility for their own learning which then becomes a result they co-create-with other learners in the class.

As in a gym, the equipment and exercises may be the same, but the experience and learning is different for each person and the effort they put in. Lessons learned are therefore personal and specific to the individual participant although it occurs in a class of many.

Experiential learning gives back to the individual the freedom and adventure that comes with learning the things that are important in life. It is about exploring and discovering what is true and what works for each person as different situations present themselves.

For this reason, the experiential processes designed into our trainings are palpably more effective and results more sustained than programmes based on more traditional models of education.

Typically, our trainings will consist of interactive exercises followed by reflection and sharing and supported by short lectures. Participants experience their trainer more as coach than as teacher or lecturer.

A useful description of what to expect in our trainings can be found in our document which prepares participants for the Heart Knocks Discovery Training: English / Chinese

Learning takes place in the immediacy of the training sessions and there are no notes or materials for participants to learn from later.

At Heart Knocks, we offer a repertoire of programmes that is wide ranging enough to cover most of the important aspects of life—personal growth, relationships, family and community—that we say it supports living life to the fullest.

Our programmes are grouped under the following categories, detailed in the links listed below:

• Advanced Living Series – ALS
• Blissful Living Set – BLS
• Colourful Living Workshops- CLW
• Dynamic Learning Labs – DLL
• Exclusively Targeted Courses – ETC
• Family And Me – FAM
• Graduate Application Programmes – GAP
• [with more to come]

FAQ for Organisations

We have corporate division dedicated to having our trainings work for organisations, employing the same technology that make our programmes so effective with individuals.

A detailed description of what we offer the organisation, together with an explanation of our philosophy and some methodology in our corporate offerings can be found here: Corporate Solutions

In addition to readymade modules that are of general application, we offer tailor-made programmes customised for the specific needs of the organisation at a particular time.

“There is an alarmingly weak correspondence between power and competency. Those in power are not necessarily up to the job of discharging their responsibilities to the benefit of those they lead”: 5 Reasons Why Leadership Is In Crisis, Forbes 7 Nov 2018.

We believe that the personal growth and psychological development of the individual human being is unquestionably the most powerful source of leadership competence and integrity in the corporate arena.

“Leadership today requires a greater focus on personal development”: The Changing Nature of Leadership, Forbes, 2 Jan 2023.

The emphasis in our curriculum on individual and organisational leadership is informed by our alignment with the Institute of Leadership, UK, with which our ALS graduates are associated.

The effectiveness of the trainings we offer we do not doubt. This genre of training has evolved over more than 60 years and has proven effective in a sustained way for thousands of graduates all over the world. Our role is to ensure that we maintain and continually improve the quality of delivery.

And we are committed to standards in both our service and our trainings at the highest international levels.

The ALS is a leadership programme designed for individuals who want to maximise their personal potential in life. In the Discovery Training component, participants gain an awareness of the possibilities that are available as they consider the option of choosing to be responsible for their own life. In the Transformation Training component, they have the opportunity to complete with and honour the past and to create that future of possibility they can now envision. In the Legacy Programme component of the ALS, partricipants get to set new benchmarks in the various aspects of their life with themselves, their family, and in their workplace.

The programme tends to contribute to their development as a whole person, showing up at the workplace more willing to be responsible and to take the lead. Organisations that value the personal growth of their people may welcome what the ALS can offer to their executives.

FAQ for Participants

The purpose of the interview is to brief the participant on what to expect and prepare for the training and to answer any questions they may have concerning the training and their participation in it.

Proper preparation supports the class in “hitting the ground running” when the training begins instead of enduring irksome delays waiting for participants to “warm up”.

Personal attendance at the interview, which is not a must, ensures that, come the day of the training, the participant is not stressed out looking for the training centre and finding parking in their rush to be on time.

A face-to-face interview also offers an opportunity to have a richer and deeper conversation on matters important for the participant.

Our programmes are designed generally for busy, working people, who would like to maximise on their time based on a typical 5-day week. Shortening the hours would mean more days to the training.

By sharing their experience during the training, the participant allows themself to externalise and thereby to see and reflect on their thoughts and experience and gain insights and realisations in a way that is not available if they keep it to themself.

Their sharing also contributes to the learning of other participants and becomes an invitation for others to share too, which then adds to the richness of the learning in the class.

Learning takes place in the immediacy of the training sessions and, unlike conventional education, there are no notes or materials for participants to learn from later.

The training is designed to be an integrated whole made up of interdependent parts and lessons. If a participant misses a significant part of the training, they will not be allowed to continue and will asked to attend and complete the training on a subsequent available opportunity.

For seamless continuity, attending all 3 parts in the same batch is ideal, but not compulsory.

Splitting the 3 parts across batches will mean having a different set of classmates for each batch, which some participants may prefer not to do.

If a participant takes too long a break between the 3 parts, Heart Knocks may require them to repeat the Discovery Training to refresh their experience before resuming the other parts of the Advanced Living Series.

Apart from the logistics involved, it is thought best to preserve the maximum options available to participants by not including the cost of meals in the training fee, which would increase the cost for the participant. The Heart Knock Training Centre is located in a shopping mall with an extensive range of eating outlets at a convenient distance for participants to choose from.

Heart Knocks is an accredited centre of the Institute of Training and Occupational Learning (ITOL), UK. Completion of the Discovery Training and the Transformation Training entitles the participant to membership of ITOL, which carries the designatory letters MITOL after the name as a demonstration of professional status and an enduring mark of achievement and credibility.

Details of the advantages of membership are found here.

Participants who complete the Legacy Programme (LP), are accorded Associate status (AIoL) with the Institute of Leadership (IoL), UK, and can continue with self-study online to qualify as a member of the Institute, earning for themselves the post nominals, MIoL.

Details of the advantages of membership of the IoL are found here.

We encourage all participants to attend the Tuesday post event because it provides a formal closure to the training from the previous 5 days. Participants get to see what is next after the training and the opportunity to take the written assessment for the ITOL Certificate for completing the training.

The Tuesday session was made non-compulsory so as not to impose on any out-of-town or overseas participants having to stay the extra days it would take to attend.

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