Soft skills: preparing the leaders of tomorrow
Leadership programmes are failing the soft skills test, but L&D has a golden opportunity to help teams prepare for the future. Rapid technology-driven changes in connectivity, knowledge, communication and geographical reach are forcing organisations to change the way they conduct their business. The problem is that our leadership development programmes are not keeping up. The […]
Soft skills: creating a good communications culture
In order to drive continued success, organisations need to learn how to turn soft skills into the hard stuff of success. “The skills and ingenuity of our people are at the heart of prosperity,” said the opening statement of the 2017 CBI/Pearson Education and skills survey, a report which goes on to reveal that more than […]
Starbucks and Unconscoius Bias
Starbucks is closing its 8,000 US stores today so that its staff can receive training around racial bias. It’s a reaction to an apparent example of racial bias, when, in April, two black men were arrested in a Starbucks store in Philadelphia, for simply sitting there. In reality, the two men had arrived early for […]
How accurate is our ability to self-evaluate? Are you as good as you think you are?
Research published in 1999 revealed the existence of what’s known as The Dunning-Kruger effect. This is a cognitive bias of illusory superiority, where people judge themselves as better than others in all manner of areas, e.g. leadership, skills, performance. The reasons for this are many and varied. For example: we all have pockets of vulnerability […]
How to improve employee satisfaction amongst staff
According to a survey by Personal Group, 55.6% of all UK workers are dissatisfied in their current role. This is an overwhelming percentage especially considering the fact that dissatisfaction accumulates over time and is arguably easy to avoid. Understanding what causes employee dissatisfaction The first step in tackling employee dissatisfaction is being aware of how […]
Breaking Through Procrastination: 4 Tips to Know
You know that saying, I’ll work on my procrastination, tomorrow? It’s definitely applicable, right? In fact, as I’m writing this on procrastination right now, I have multiple tabs open on my computer, I just checked my phone, and I’m fighting off my brain telling me to grab another cup of coffee. Call it a generational […]
Changing Fixed Habits On Horseback
As some of you will know from previous blogs, outside of work, one of my great joys is spending time with my horses, who are currently in livery on Dartmoor. I have two; one who is 25 and (officially) retired, and another that I trained from scratch, who will be 10 this year. My ten […]
Back To First Principles
In 2016 I became interested in data analytics and decided to do some learning on the subject. I started learning Excel and then I discovered R, a statistical programming language used for analytics and data science. Though it’s more difficult to use than Excel, I found R to be more flexible and enjoyable to use. […]
3 Ways To Improve Your Learning Potential At Work
Whether you’re working on a degree, continuing education in your career or just wanting to brush up on some information at your current job, you need to figure out some ways to hack your learning. This will not only shorten the time it takes for you to learn the material, it also deepens the impression […]
Time to Scrap Topic Specific Courses?
I got very excited recently when I read that Finland is set to become the first country in the world to get rid of all school subjects. From 2020, for children over 16, there’ll be no more science lessons, no more geography, no more history and no more boring maths! What!? Have the Finn’s, respected […]
Finally Embracing Women Leaders as Women
Some may think my life is weird. I’m a serious academic who loves teaching business to students from around the world. On the other hand, I teach karate to young elementary school kids. Yesterday, I was knee deep in business failure statistics and the latest marketing automation innovation. And last night I had to keep […]
4 Quick Fixes For Peak Networking & Productivity
You’re always on the go. If you’re like most professionals, you have to jot info down on a calendar in order to remember it and are voraciously looking for more time in each day. To make sure that you’re not forgetting the details while nailing down the major points, there are some quick hacks that […]
What’s Wrong With Starbucks’ Diversity Training?
Starbucks is in some seriously hot water after a recent racist fiasco went viral, with protestors around the nation marching into the company’s stores to demand greater action on behalf of its corporate leaders. In response to the outrage that was spawned after the company called the police to arrest two innocent black men who […]
A Mindful Guide To Challenging Conversations
A conversation that goes awry at work can feel nightmarish and become the source of prolonged mental agonising and gut-wrenching stress. We can easily get stuck in loops of rumination and catastrophising: Could I have said it differently? Did I stand up for myself? Why is Jim so unprofessional, mean and downright wrong? Why am […]
How to steer your business towards a learning culture
Looking to nurture a learning culture among your employees? Rajeeb Dey, CEO of Learnerbly, offers a few key strategies to steer your business in the right direction. This is not the first nor the last time you’ll hear me talking about continuous learning. We should all know by now that the key to preparing ourselves […]
Six steps to achieve real behaviour change at work
Changing our behaviour is hard, even when we know what we want to change about ourselves. We have to recognise that desire to change is often not enough. That’s because the emotional centres of our brain learn from ‘doing’, not just ‘knowing’ what we want to change. And if we don’t practice behaviour change constantly, […]
Why you need to stop focusing on efficiency
Working longer, harder and faster doesn’t always lead to bigger and better. Peak productivity isn’t a simple, linear formula whereby if we put more in we’ll get more out. The reality is, it’s more of a bell curve. If we keep using the same strategies to get more stuff done, if we keep pushing harder, […]
Team types – which one are you?
Six years ago my colleague Lois Burton and I identified five different team types – this was not an academic exercise – (goodness knows, there’s enough theory about teams out there to last a lifetime) – but one based on our experience of working with numerous leadership teams across all sectors over a ten year […]
The six habits that help teams win
In my last article I outlined the five steps to building a winning team. There are some meaty things to do and it’s not a quick fix. But if you focus relentlessly on those five things you’ll see significant progress and a stronger, more successful team will emerge. In this article I want to focus on six […]
The reality of performance: no team is an island
In my last three articles, I’ve spoken about the things a team needs to focus on to become a winning team – with the main emphasis being on the team itself and its members. It’s fair to say that some people object to the term ‘winning’ to describe a business team because the implication is […]
