I’ll start with a big thank you to everyone who participated in our September poll. We asked you to tell us whether you would be bringing a BYOD ‘bring your own device’ (no, not drink..) policy to your business. The votes were cast and the result was fairly evenly split, with 47% voting ‘Yes’, but the balance slightly tipped with 53% in the ‘No’ camp. It’s clearly an opinion divider - it will be interesting to see if it becomes a more commonly accepted practice in future.

Our October poll is underway, posing the question ‘is performance support of increasing relevance to your organisation?’. There’s plenty of time left to vote – tell us what you think! Every community vote counts, we want to hear from you.

Next to the Blogs; we’ve had a great selection of content posted over the past few weeks so credit where credit’s due to everyone who contributed. Tracey Davison takes a look at Balancing the Leadership Scales, weighing up the delicate balance between praise vs. constructive criticism. Plain old praise isn’t necessarily what the Doctor ordered! In order to experience the benefits of praise, it needs to be balanced with constructive criticism - but it’s a fine line to tread.

BlakeyJ takes the conversation one step further, delving into the dos and don’ts of delivering challenging feedback. He offers a selection of tips and techniques that can make the difference between having our message heard and understood by others, rather than triggering a defensive reaction. Read his post to discover the 8 magic words to avoid, and master the art making challenging feedback easy to swallow.

Hot off the heels of the entrepreneurial networking event of the year, The Pitch Live, in September hj_townsend continues the theme with her blog post talking us through the fine art of business networking, and why we should care about it. She explains the process of finding, building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships, as well as touching on the increasing possibilities offered through social networking.

Any Answers has been busy too – here are some of the highlights:

• Shine asks our community for help with ideas for a ‘Getting Past The Gatekeeper’ training activity for new hire sales reps
• Patricia47 wonders whether it’s worth studying for an MA in Training and Development
• Garry Plat poses some questions about the Hawthorne Experiment and worker productivity

That’s all for this month – thanks for all of your contributions to over the past weeks. Keep them coming, and see you next time!