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The Consulting Skills Workshop – Les Fontaines

Ben Williams writes about his time at Les Fontaines:

Emerging out of the Autumn mists, nestled amongst the trees and overlooking a still lake is a beautiful Chateau, just outside Paris. It may surprise you to hear that this is not a spa or luxury hotel, but actually a place where we are sent shortly after induction. This is Les Fontaines, one of the locations for the Capgemini University.  

As a new joiner you will be sent here for Consulting Skills Workshop (CSW). CSW is an immersive one week course which gives a fantastic grounding in many of the core skills that you will need on projects. I thoroughly enjoyed the course, especially the opportunity to work with colleagues from the rest of the group – my group had consultants from Germany, France, the Netherlands and Sweden. It is a safe environment to practice new skills and experience some the challenges of working on multi-national teams. Suffice to say that English humour does not always go down as expected.

I took a lot away from Les Fontaines, in no small part because of the highly interactive style of learning – most of the time is spent in small teams preparing for group work. One of the most useful parts of what I learnt was how to interact with clients (ably played by our facilitators during the presentations).  There is also the opportunity for a lot of personal feedback, and you will be surprised at the progress that is made in that one week. While there is plenty of work to be done, Les Fontaines does not disappoint on the hospitality. There is a gym and pool, which come in very handy given the quality and quantity of food on offer – often welcome after a day of working on presentations.