Feature: Feedback Culture – Avoiding the Blame Game
If you are training staff to give feedback but not how to receive it, you may be storing up more problems than you are solving, according to Clare Hollett, Managing Consultant at Blue Sky Consulting. Feedback culture are business buzz words at the moment. Everyone wants it, some even say they’ve got it, but in […]
Trainer’s Tip: Learning Styles Line Up
This week’s tip, from Joanna Howard, is a simple and effective exercise to demonstrate learning styles. Using a line along the floor as a continuum from theorist to activist, I ask people to place themselves on the line in response to the question: “Imagine you have to do something new, rather challenging, and you want […]
The Way I See It… Understanding Their Motivation
Kevin McLaren, co-founder of Blue Eskimo Solutions, argues that organisations can learn from sport and the armed forces if they want to understand how to motivate teams. The task of a leader is to get people from where they are to where they have not been. Henry KissingerIt is not by accident that the managers […]
Feature: Motivating Teams
Neil McCracken of Motiva Corporate Development argues that when it comes to setting inspiring team goals, the answer lies close to home. A critical aspect of the manager’s role is to set goals in such a manner that they inspire and engage others, increase performance and provide a motivation for individuals to excel. In professional […]
The Way I See It… Team Reflection
Do the issues faced by teams mirror those of management? Alastair Olby of Kaizen Training believes it is often the case. Something that crops up time and time again when facilitating senior teams is how the challenges their teams face are in fact a mirror image of what’s going on at a senior level. The […]
Case Study: Customer Service Development at Norwich Union
John Willmott, director of customer service at Norwich Union Insurance, explains how the insurer is implementing an original new technique to boost the quality of customer service it offers through its customer contact centres. At Norwich Union Insurance we have always believed – I hope justifiably – that we offer a high level of customer […]
Feature: A Positive Approach to Team Development
When looking at team development do you focus on the problems or the things that are going well? If it’s the latter, then you’re taking an Appreciative Inquiry approach. It’s a positive, optimistic philosophy, that Barry Bailey, Director of Programmes for Mobile Team Challenge, says gets to the core of team beliefs and performance. Appreciative […]
Feature: The Three Elements of Successful Team Development
With today’s flatter management structures and growth in project-driven teams, team building and development have become more important. Joe España Managing Director, Performance Equations Ltd looks at how effective team development involves a process of getting the balance right between individual, unit and the wider group. In an increasingly complex world, where organisational structures are […]
The Way I See It… Having a Laugh
Used by organisations as diverse as HSBC, Scottish Equitable and Continental Airlines, positive appreciation and humour in the workplace is a method of boosting team and indivisual morale. Joe Hoare makes the case for injecting some humour into the office (but please no David Brent-style gags). In the old days, work was work, work was […]
Trainer’s Diary: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing
Discussion, disagreements and trust – Byron Kalies talks team tactics. You walk into a new office and within a few minutes you get some idea of the team. If you walk into a room and there’s deathly silence for five minutes be afraid, be very afraid. Creative team rooms should sound like infant school classrooms […]
Parkin Space: The Definition of Training Needs Analysis
Everyone knows what a Training Needs Analysis is, right? Godfrey Parkin analyses the variety of meanings given to a TNA. I have yet to meet anyone in the learning business who will question the value of a Training Needs Analysis (TNA). Indeed, there are many who will insist that a TNA is carried out before […]
Feature: Team Building and Virtual Teams – a Contradiction in Terms?
Teleworking and the growth of global teams means that co-workers may not be in the same time zone let alone the same city, which has an obvious impact on building a sense of teamwork and trust. Peter Thomson, Director of Future Work Foundation at Henley Management College looks at how to build a successful team […]
Parkin Space: The Retirement Brain Drain
With an ageing population, Godfrey Parkin wonders why so many companies have no formal process for passing on the knowledge of their most experienced workers at retirement. In most Western countries, the baby boomer bubble is causing concern for those planning pension and social security services. It should also be worrying employers. A quarter of […]
Parkin Space: E-Earning in the USA
Ever wondered how much your equivalent earns on the other side of the Atlantic? Read on. This week the E-learning Guild released the results of its annual e-learning salary survey. Data was gathered in the first quarter of this year from people who work in the e-learning field. It’s amazing that they were able to […]
Review: Outdoor and Experiential Learning
Title: Outdoor and Experiential Learning – An holistic and creative approach to LearningAuthor: Andy Martin, Dan Franc, and Daniela ZounkováPublisher: GowerISBN: 0-566-08628-XPrice: £49.50Reviewer: Mike Taylor If you are involved with experiential learning, whether with youngsters or managers, then this book will certainly speak to you, but whether you would find it was good use of […]
Review: Implementing Virtual Teams
Title: Implementing Virtual TeamsAuthors: Abigail Edwards and John R. WilsonPublisher: Gower Publishing LimitedISBN: 0 566 08468 6Price: £53.95Reviewer: Kathryn KellyEmployer’s Organisation for local Government andrecruitmentBeware of first impressions: My first thoughts about a book on implementing virtual teams were that the medium was at odds with the subject matter. This was re-enforced by the computer-generated […]
TrainingZONE’s Top 50 Features of 2004
We’ve had published an amazing 200 features on TrainingZONE over 2004, many of them contributed by members of the site.This is a selection of our favourite 50 – broken into 10 themes but in no other particular order – chosen for being innovative, insightful, creating debate and sheer popularity!We hope you’ll agree with this line […]
The Strategic Leadership Model
Management consultant Bruce Nixon sets out a model for a leadership retreat designed to develop a team strategy for creative change. This provides a simple, practical process, which you can adapt, for a retreat for leaders to decide how the organisation needs to transform in order to thrive and survive. If you contract well with […]
Tactics To Make Your Team Event Legendary
Authors of Legendary Away Days Karen Cooley and Kirsty McEwan have put together a step-by-step guide for planning, organising and evaluating a team-building event. Building strong, responsive teams is one of the key factors in putting your organisation ahead of its competitors. Yet even when the commitment and the will to succeed exist, hidden pitfalls […]
Adapter or Innovator?
According to Dr Michael Kirton’s Inventory, we can all be divided into two groups – those who are more adaptive and those who are more innovative. Rob Sheffield looks at how you decide who’s who and shows how KAI can help in the workplace. Those of us working in learning and development are deluged with […]
