To agree, or not to agree: How to improve team decision making
Consensus decision making improves team outcomes by ensuring all voices are heard and solutions are owned by everyone involved. Unlike majority voting dominated by the loudest or most powerful, this approach harnesses collective intelligence and builds engagement across the entire team.
Diary: A rookie mistake
A learning and development manager learns a critical lesson: align training programs with business needs first, not personal ambitions. After discovering managers want practical, functional training rather than award-winning initiatives, she must refocus her strategy for long-term success.
The engaged learner
Learner motivation is critical to training success, yet L&D professionals often overlook it in assessment and evaluation. Without engaged, motivated employees, training programs have minimal impact, making engagement measurement essential for effective learning investments.
LeadershipZone caption competition
Juliet LeFevre won the LeadershipZone caption competition with her witty submission and will receive copies of leadership books by Rudolph Giuliani and Captain D. Michael Abrashoff. Future entries are welcome via comment or email by Thursday, March 12th at 4pm.
How clean is your coaching?
Clean language coaching uses language free of assumptions, opinions, and advice to enhance thinking quality. Unlike traditional reflective listening, this approach focuses on genuinely neutral questions that allow clients to discover their own solutions and insights.
What should directors know?
Directors need specific knowledge beyond managerial experience, including understanding board structure, legal duties, and governance best practices. Essential areas include business environment knowledge, company-specific information, financial literacy, and applicable legislation relevant to their company type and stage of development.
Free training resources
Discover a curated collection of free training resources spanning team building, management, business skills, and specialized topics. This guide includes tools for copyright law, diversity training, distance learning, and business analysis techniques like SWOT analysis, all available at no cost.
Diary: And now for something a little bit different
A training manager navigates organizational restructuring while planning innovative learning solutions for the year ahead, including hiring an unconventional trainer to bring fresh perspectives to staff development.
Climbing the training career ladder
Build a sustainable training career by becoming a recognized expert in a specialized field like change management, project management, or negotiation. Beyond developing core training skills, select an area of long-term professional interest and commit to deep study through reading, research, and practical application to establish yourself as a go-to authority.
Free thinking: Obama’s magic
Barack Obama’s magnetic speaking style transforms how audiences feel about politics and care about messages. Martin Shovel explores what makes his stirring campaign speeches so effective and reveals techniques other speakers can learn to engage their audiences.
Training to save lives
Geraldine Grainger, formerly head of learning and development at John Lewis, now leads training at the RNLI’s Poole headquarters, preparing volunteer lifeboat crews to save lives at sea. She shares how her experience in corporate L&D inspired her move to the charity sector.
Dealing with a credit crunched training budget
When training budgets tighten during financial downturns, organizations can still deliver effective learning by pooling resources, developing internal training capacity, prioritizing spending, and focusing on measurable business impact rather than cutting budgets uniformly across the board.
The language of leadership
Effective leadership communication requires finding the right words to inspire and persuade your audience. Language experts share strategies for presenting complex information clearly, including reducing data overload and focusing on the story behind statistics rather than technical details.
Women v men: Who rules best?
Research shows women possess natural leadership skills that make them effective managers, yet fewer reach top business positions. Studies reveal women’s transformational leadership style often outperforms traditional male management approaches, despite workplace biases against female executives.
LeadershipZone caption competition – winners announced
The LeadershipZone caption competition has concluded with Tony Buzan selecting the winners. Garry Platt won first place with his witty caption about economic strategy, while Garry Damant took runner-up honors, each earning a place on Tony Buzan’s “Leadership in Times of Crisis” seminar in London.
Video: Clive Mather, Shell Canada
Clive Mather, former president and CEO of Shell Canada, shares insights on leadership and corporate social responsibility in this video. With 35 years at Shell across multiple countries and roles, Mather emphasizes that true leadership is demonstrated through actions, not words.
Throw away that Leadership Competency Model
Competency models and standardized leadership development programs stifle authentic leadership by forcing people into the same mold, rather than nurturing the unique qualities that distinguish true leaders from their peers. Effective leadership development must center on developing individuals as people, not fitting them to predetermined blueprints or competency frameworks.
Diary: Talking targets
Training manager Josie Roberts sets ambitious targets for 2009 to prove her team’s value during economic uncertainty, but worries about delivering on promises amid recruitment freezes and scheduling challenges.
News: Leadership Trust are ‘Ones to Watch’ in Best Companies
The Leadership Trust, a Ross-on-Wye leadership development company, has been named ‘Ones to Watch 2009’ by Best Companies, recognizing workplace performance and best practices based on staff survey results.
Review: Total Leadership
Total Leadership by Stewart D. Friedman helps readers identify their core values and improve leadership across four key domains: work, home, community, and self. Adapted from a popular Wharton course, the book offers practical activities and exercises, though its verbose writing style may limit its impact compared to the engaging classroom experience.