Press releases
Press release - Wednesday 4th March 2009
Free places on The Fear Course
Remarkable Performance Ltd., the company that brought us the nationwide Fear Course is offering people the chance to grab a free place on one of their amazing workshops.
All people need to do is go to www.fearcourse.com and sign up for their free monthly prize draw. People who enter the draw will be automatically be entered every month until they either win a place or they unsubscribe from the draw.
David Wilkinson, the designer of the course said today "We get most of our business from referrals so it make sense to offer people the chance to go on the course for free."
The Fear Course is a one day workshop that gives people the skills they need to be able to deal with nerves, fears and anxieties. People typically attend the course to deal with nerves and anxieties including:
- Doing presentations
- Driving test nerves
- Performance anxieties - acting etc.
- Exam nerves
- Fear of flying
- Interview anxieties
- Dating and social nerves
- and many more
Justine Webber the course adminstrator stated that "The feedback from participants is excellent. People really enjoy the day and the emails we get from them after the course show that it has really helped them to deal with their nerves and perform like they want to."
You can contact the course team on 01865 331776 or email them on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Press release - Monday 2nd February 2009
New research finds workers don't trust bosses
Bosses make situation worse
Almost 90% of workers don't trust their bosses to work with them to deal with the recession according to new research. The vast majority of workers surveyed believe that their bosses are hiding the real state of their business from them. They also think managers are making decisions based on fear rather than rational thinking and consensus.
Three thousand employees from all over the UK participated in a survey conducted during December and January. The main finding was that 88.1 % of respondents believed that business owners were not using their staff properly or consulting with them to help to beat the recession.
" They aren't talking to us or using us to help them." Bristol worker
"They are just making decisions based on their fears. They are panicking" .London employee
than talking with us and trusting us like she used to." Manchester
Dr. David Wilkinson, who conducted the research is author of ‘The Ambiguity Advantage: what great leaders are great at' and originator of The Fear Course, he commented,
"Fear appears to gripping business owners and managers throughout the country. As a result they are failing to work with their employees to solve problems. Yet more often than not the employees can help them come to better solutions (on what do you base this). Unfortunately fear is driving their behaviour."
He continued "It is very common for people to become more authoritarian when fear abounds and they feel threatened. They rationalise that more control reduces risk. It often has the opposite effect. At the very time when people need to be co-operating with others, the fear gets to them and they shut off from the world - without really realizing it."
David, an expert on people's reactions to uncertainty and risk says that in a crisis people react by making three fundamental mistakes.
Firstly they start exercising more control when they need to free things up and experiment more to find out what works now. He said, "The trouble is, frightened people tend to have a heightened fear of failure compared to when things are going well and they try to control things more as a result."
Secondly people in a tight corner they jump into action, often without thinking. What this research has shown is people who are really good in a crisis spend quite a bit of time observing what is going on first. They don't get panicked into action too early. Solutions thought of without knowing what is really going on could be the wrong and make the situation worse.
Lastly, people who are scared look for evidence that their views and thoughts are correct and they ignore any contradictory evidence. This makes them feel safer. Unfortunately this is a false sense of security. People who are good in a crisis look for evidence that they might be wrong and change their views readily.
David commented, "Getting entrenched in a belief in times of uncertainty is a great way of becoming extinct really quickly." He continued "Most people react to the fear of the situation and start protecting themselves rather than getting out there and exploring the options - and this is exactly the behaviour I am seeing from Britain's bosses. They are making the problem worse both for themselves, their employees and the country."
David can be contacted on 07786 176700
Or via email on
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
www.fearcourse.com
About David Wilkinson
David has had a wide and varied career. He was brought up and attended school in Africa (Zambia, Malawi and Kenya). He obtained his first degree in Psychology at the Open University and his postgraduate degrees are from the University of Oxford.
After finishing school he joined the British Army, serving primarily in Northern Ireland in the mid to late 1970s. He then served in the UK police force from 1980 until 1995. As a senior police officer he was Director of Studies with the UK National Police Training College where he was responsible for trainer training and the design and development of the UK National Command Level Public Order Training in the early 1990s.
After winning a scholarship to conduct doctoral research into police acculturation at Oxford he started to work in academia at Oxford University. This was followed by a Senior Lectureship at the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development. In 2000 he took up post as Head of Professional Development at Cranfield University.
During his time as Head of Department at Cranfield University he developed and ran a series of Disaster Management Trainers' Courses though the Cranfield Resilience Centre. This work has taken him to many parts of the world helping to develop leadership agility and capability in a number of countries including Malaysia, The Philippians, and Kenya. As a result of this work and five years of research into leaders responses in high stress, high ambiguity situations like natural disasters and post terrorist incidents he wrote ‘The Ambiguity Advantage: what great leaders are great at.' Published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2006.
His work on leadership agility in ambiguous situations has lead to the development of a series of powerful leadership development approaches. These approaches to leadership development have lead to developments in emotional resilience, problem solving, creativity, the development of critical thinking and practical understanding about the nature of ambiguity.
David left Cranfield University in July 2006 and set up Centre i to continue this work. He currently provides leadership development and coaching many organisations including Schroders, Royal Mail, The Royal Air Force, The Pentagon, and several governments. He is currently working on the following books "The Handbook of Leadership Problem Solving" and "Emotional Resilience - a guidebook for leaders".
Immediate Release Monday 5th January 2009
UK education system blasted over mental health
The UK educational system is failing our youth by concentrating on the regurgitation of facts at the expense of key life skills like emotional resilience and emotional intelligence which has led to the current situation where One in 10 youngsters questioned in a survey disagreed that "life was really worth living according to a university educationalist and originator of The Fear Course.
"The system appears to be set up for one thing - to train those that can to pass exams to meet government targets. This is training not education and certainly does not develop the emotional aspects of our young people." states David Wilkinson a university educationalist whoteaches educational development in universities around the world and who also developed The Fear Course which teaches people emotional resilience.
"There is an almost maniacal focus in schools today on getting kids to pass exams. I see no government targets that concentrate of developing emotional well-being." He continues
"At universities one of the biggest complaints of lecturers is that students coming from school are not set up to deal with studying at university. They have had a diet of being spoon feed and molly coddled for years at school so that when they get to university they can't think for themselves, are largely passive in almost everything they do and lack much drive. Additionally their emotional resilience even to the smallest things in life is quite low. The system has sucked the spark out of many of our young people in the drive for exam results that make the government look better." Wilkinson states. "Universities areconstantly having to take up the slack left by the secondary schools and develop what should have been developed earlier."
The big worry is that many children leave the schooling system and don't go to places like universities where they can develop the skills and understanding for better emotional well-being.
David explains "There are some very good techniques that can give people better emotional control and develop greater resilience. For example on The Fear Course we teach people like lecturers how to deal quickly and effectively with anxieties, fears and how to get into the habit of emotional resilience. Participants on the course often comment that they wished that they had been show these techniques at school."
David believes that for a number of reasons children are increasingly loosing the educational input of their families that used to mediate their emotional well being. Unfortunately because children are having to grow up in smaller and smaller family units, frequently theses days with single parents or in situations where both parents are so busy having to work, often under pressure from the government that the emotional support and development is largely none existent. Further that the educational system ignores these aspects of development like critical and creative thinking as well as emotional intelligence and resilience.
"The problem is that these are not issues that can be taught by having teachers stand at the front telling our kids what to do. They have to learn through a mixture of learning techniques and practicing them in real life situations, which is why the family used to be important in this aspect of our development." He adds.
Wilkinson argues that there is an emotional and critical thinking void which is disenfranchising large swaths of our children created almost entirely by the economic focus of government policies. The educational system is now seen as a process for feeding the economy of the UK rather than developing the necessary attributes to allow people to develop as human beings emotionally, intellectually and socially. The government has been sleep walking into this situation for years.
"There are very few educational establishments that concentrate on developing emotional intelligence and resilience." Wilkinson states. "Emotional resilience is defined as the ability, when things get tough to deal with our emotions in a positive way. It does not mean being without emotion, but rather being able to control our emotions rather than have them control us."
"We are getting increasing numbers of young people attending The Fear Course to help them cope" he continues. The course was originally designed whilst David was Head of Professional Development at Cranfield University to help disaster managers and emergency service workers deal with their emotions when dealing with disasters and difficult situations. "I then found lecturers asking to attend the course so that they could deal with their nerves when teaching large groups. The course got so popular with lecturers and then other staff in anumber of universities that last June I made it into a public course and have since been inundated with people all needing help to develop greater emotional resilience."
"People should learn emotional resilience when they are young" Wilkinson concludes, not having to come on The Fear Course.
David Wilkinson who lectures in educational and emotional development at Oxford Brookes, Cardiff, York, UCL and a number of other universities is available for interview on 07786 176700.
Press release December 2009
Ex-cop helps others
An ex-Police Chief Inspector who had to retire because of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has turned to killing stress, anxiety and fear in other people.
David Wilkinson spent years suffering from flash-backs, panic attacks, depression and anxiety as a result of the many horrific incidents he had to endure both as a soldier in Northern Ireland and then as an operational police officer over many years.
Now he is helping others deal with their anxieties, nerves, panic attacks and fears with a unique emotional resilience system on a one-day course called The Fear Course.
"I got to the stage where I was in a very dark place. I was on range of prescribed drugs like prozac, and suffering from panic attacks and anxiety. Even when I started a new career as a university lecturer at Oxford Brookes University I used to suffer terribly from nerves for doing things like presentations, interviews, flying and the like. " The 50 year old who is now a successful academic and businessman states. "Then, when I was running a department at Cranfield University I found myself training disaster managers around the world to deal with really traumatic situations like 9/11 and the tsunami. As a result of my experiences I got really interested in how people cope in difficult situations. I ended up spending years researching how people who are really good leaders in high stress situations, manage. It all boils down to emotional resilience"
As a result of his research he discovered a series of very powerful techniques that deal quickly with anxiety, nerves and fear.
"We have now have new tools that I designed to help emergency service workers in the moment. Our techniques have to work quickly as these people don't have time at the scene of an incident to go for therapy." Continues David, who is also the author of the book ‘The Ambiguity Advantage'.
His techniques we so successful that fellow lecturers began to approach him to help them with their fears of teaching to large groups of students and doing research presentations. As a result of helping his colleagues he set up a business last year with The Fear Course, which he now runs in Oxford.
He now has private coaching clients that include actors, authors' musicians and other celebrities. Additionally the course has attracted counsellors, doctors and coaches all eager to learn his techniques.
"We have quite a booming business helping a wide range of people with problems like the fear of flying, anxieties about doing presentations, public speaking or talking in meetings right through to driving test nerves, panic attacks and things like that."
This is one of the few businesses that is doing well in the current climate. "We are getting more and more people on the course who have been made redundant. Part of the problem is that fear and panic can lead to two things." David states "Firstly when people are anxious they tend not to make great decisions. Any decisions they do make in such circumstances are usually made to get away from the feelings rather than solve the problem. The second issue is that as I know it is all to easy for anxiety to lead to depression and this only makes matters worse. The course can help people halt such a downward spiral and get things moving in a better direction. These techniques certainly helped me and are now helping many others. I make sure people go away with not just the tools to deal with nerves and anxiety but also a year long plan to develop new and more emotionally resilient habits. It's sort of an inoculation against stress, and anxiety if you like"
The Fear Course is getting rave reviews from people across the UK. It shows people not only how to deal with stress, fear and anxiety quickly and effectively but also helps them develop new habits to make them generally more confident and resilient in one day.
David keeps the cost of the course as low as possible to make it available to as wide a range of people as possible. He does this by not holding the courses in high cost hotels and by not providing lunch.
"I looked at the cost of most courses and they range from £395 - over £1000 a day. A huge amount of money that puts them out of the reach of most people," David continues. "When I analysed why the cost are so high I discovered that most of it goes to expensive venues like hotels and expensive lunches. I also found that most of the food on courses was never eaten. So we search hard to find venues that are more sensible in terms of cost and get people to either bring their own lunch or buy it locally. It cuts down the cost considerably and there is no wastage."
More details can be found at www.fearcourse.com
David is available for interview by calling 01865 331776
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