What are soft skills and why do you need them?
Soft skills refer to a range of skills which many people feel are intangible, unmeasurable or “cut and dried”. They are things such as personality traits, communication, personal habits, relationship skills and more. They are perceived to be soft because they find it harder to define, but in my view soft skills are the oil […]
Repackaged team title suggestions for HR, OD and Comms
Just recently, we have formed a new team that includes HR, OD and Communications. It’s now a bit of a mouthful, therefore we are looking to come up with a name that rebrands our area without us losing site. Any suggestions most welcome! Thanks in advance. Just recently, we have formed a new team that […]
Top 10 training and development quotations. What are yours?
I like using quotations in my delegate manuals. Delegates feedback that they like them too. My favourite training & development quotations are as follows. What are yours? “Train people well enough so they can leave; treat them well enough so they don’t want to” SIR RICHARD BRANSON “I am always ready to learn, but […]
L&D News round-up: 5 Nov
Our first round-up of the new site – enjoy! When a leader is not a manager and other modern myths – Financial Times 5 Bad Leadership Habits To Leave Behind In 2016 – Forbes There’s more to life – and people – than academic skills – The Guardian Q&A: Lord Coe – ‘I’ve witnessed how HR can make […]
L&D news round-up: 29 Oct
Comes around quick doesn’t it? Here’s the best of the news from the last seven days… How to foster digital intelligence at your company – The Guardian Rapid advances in HR technology predicted to ‘directly empower managers and employees’ – CIPD What Thousands Of New Coaches Don’t Know When They Launch Their Businesses, And How It Hurts […]
The 5 Ps of Vocal Impact in Presentations
When delivering a presentation, voice projection is essential. The 5 P's is a way of maximising all the vocal aspects. P ower – Too loud a voice can be annoying particularly for those at the front of the audience – Too quiet can say that the Presenter lacks confidence and others at the back can't […]
People not on board? Getting buy-in for your learning initiatives
Motivating learners to adopt new initiatives and securing stakeholder and senior leadership buy-in are just some of the many challenges L&D professionals face when implementing a learning programme says Russ Becker, and often the reason why new initiatives collapse. So how can you overcome such challenges? It’s all too easy for deadlines to be missed, […]
Five routes for L&D freelancers to build business contacts
L&D freelancers must keep the business wheel turning. Darryl Howes provides some tips and advice to develop contacts and keep the business blues in check. For any L&D freelancer, contacts represent the lifeblood of their business world; your network is your personal net worth. Who you know (and therefore what you know) matters. Contacts are […]
Training vs Internal Comms
How do you decide to cascade business messages via internal communications, and training them out in the business? How can we help leaders to cut through the noise and provide them with relevant key messages to enable them to be narrators of the business? When is a training intervention required, and when is it a […]
Why Opinions Matter
I recently wrote to my MP. When I say recently, it was about six months ago, but the wheels of government move very slowly and I’ve only just received a response. To be honest, I’d forgotten all about it. The topic of my letter was the increasing number of faith schools in the UK. I […]
Who said 99% of networking is useless?
Given the importance of networking to the freelancer, Darryl Howes examines the recent debate over its worth and effectiveness in business. Well, Davos 2015 top networker Rich Stromback did. Or rather, he didn’t. What Stromback actually said was “99% of Davos is information or experience you can get elsewhere, on your own timeframe and in a […]
Words of advice: Tips to improve internal communication
In an organisation, internal communication plays a vital role in improving productivity, collaboration and individual performances. It encompasses the communication which takes place between directors, managers and employees. Jonathan Curran tells us more. Running behind goals, the organisations and managers are not paying adequate attention to the internal strategies, which might not directly affect their […]
Top 10 tips for designing effective 360 Feedback
Bespoke 360 Degree Feedback that aligns closely with an organisation's core capabilities, values and goals can be a development powerful tool. As well as supporting individuals with information to help them develop their key capabilities, an organisation-based 360 can also provide team, group and firm-wide data for your leadership and talent development strategy. If you're […]
Using 360 Degree Feedback For Training Needs Analysis
At one big company I used to work in, part of our annual training budget process was a Training Needs Analysis – at the end of which we would come out with a plan for what training and development we were going to provide to our people. What an ordeal that was! We had to […]
Why has telecommuting not taken off like we thought it would?
There may not be as many people working from home as first thought. Does your business promote it? Neil Maycock elaborates. Telecommuting, or ‘remote working’, was once hailed as the future of business and town planners were even being reported to be accommodating for a new type of society. Why then, in 2014, is there still such […]
A crowdsourced personality profile?
A while ago I wrote about an idea to use crowdsourcing to provide feedback and appraisal to employees. My views at the time were that there is a place for information sharing and some positive reinforcement within close teams, but that the nature of unstructured feedback can make it a double-edged sword. So let's hear […]
Tips for Improving and Increasing Responses to your 360 Degree Feedback projects
So you’ve finally pulled together your 360 degree feedback framework: you’ve built your customised questionnaire, ratings scales and reporting templates, and you’ve had the go-ahead from the budget holder to get started! All you need to do now is pick a start date, a finish date, press the big red ‘GO’ button, and all will […]
How to use profiling tools successfully
Profiling tools are rightly viewed with scepticism in some quarters, but Mike Cooney tells us how to use them effectively in conjunction with other methods. There are few activities in the learning and development world that have a more consistent and broad appeal than personality profiling questionnaires or psychometric tools. The profiles of which reveal […]
Are Your People Resisting 360 Degree Feedback?
Multi-source or 360 Degree Feedback is a very popular management and development tool and many organisations use it very successfully when developing the leadership and management skills of their people. The principle behind it is that structured feedback, from people with whom you have different working relationships can be a source of valuable insight and […]
21st Century leadership: How to meet modern business challenges
Allison Galbraith looks at the leadership skills and approaches best suited to the 21st Century and the best ways to develop them. Our view on what makes a great leader and the best leadership approaches to adopt has changed over time, partly as research has come up with new findings, but also (particularly since the […]
