In-house team manager coaching
Hi there! I please need some advice on in-house coaching, as this is something we are looking to roll out (GROW model). What in-session coaching activities can I use with a customer services team manager to improve manager performance, and ultimately their teams performance? Also what out of session activities would you suggest? If there […]
5 simple ways to increase workplace productivity
You’d be hard-pressed to find a team lead or C-suite executive who wouldn’t leap at the opportunity to increase productivity within their organisation. One huge problem facing companies around the world right now is the number of disengaged employees within workforces. Engaged employees don’t just go to work, they love the work they do and […]
Driving performance through learning in 2020
Learning is, without question, undergoing a renaissance. It wasn’t so long ago that many L&D professionals were bemoaning the relentless onslaught of AI, automation and other emerging technologies as threats to their very existence. Skilled jobs in finance, HR and legal were surrendered to the machines, and L&D looked to be next in line. But […]
What Is Conscious Leadership?
The world is crying out for Conscious Leaders who are aware, awake, and connected as they rise to the challenges of our times. For millennia, human beings have been on similar journeys of self-discovery, pursuing knowledge, power, health, wealth, purpose, happiness and excellence. The human drive to look outwards, go further, run faster and build […]
Performance management: how to conserve mental energy during the day
Using your mental energy to boost performance.
Identifying Outdated Processes and How To Redesign
The Bicycle Book Like all good stories, the bicycle book may be real, or simply told to highlight a point. I personally was told the story of the bicycle book in a lecture whilst studying for my MBA. Whether its roots are in fact, or fiction, it highlights the point perfectly. So the tale starts, […]
Stress Awareness Day: why stress is the enemy of creativity
In the early 1990s, I used to write adverts for those new-fangled internet businesses. Most of them had the same promise: “Our technology will do all the hard work for you, so you’ve got more time to do what you enjoy!” The clients wanted us to show images of people relaxing or playing golf or […]
The third secret of accelerated learning: design with variety in mind
Variety is the spice of life when it comes to learning design.
The diversity challenge? Team cohesion grows from shared goals
Nisha from Finance eyes her lemon meringue cupcake, the topping melting in the sun. Liz from Communications forces a bright grin as she grapples with the microphone. “The winner of the Cupcake King or Queen of 2019 is…” Nisha hasn’t mistakenly entered herself for The Great British Bake Off, she’s just struggling to enjoy the monthly […]
How a Marathon Became a Team Event
You’ll have seen in the news that Kenyan, Eliud Kipchoge, achieved a remarkable thing – he ran the distance of a marathon in under two hours, shaving nearly two minutes off his own marathon world record of 2 hours, 1 minute and 39 seconds. To put this achievement into context, it meant running an average […]
The second secret of accelerated learning: facilitate don’t train
Last time we looked at business focused and learner centred objectives, the most important of the five secrets. It’s the most important because without it, there is no focus, engagement or follow up. This time, we’ll look at the second of the five secrets, ‘facilitate don’t train’. At the time of first publishing these five […]
Common sense in Business Management
After more years than I care to remember, firstly in management myself with rising degrees of seniority, through to today running my own training and development organisation, it never ceases to amaze me that what I consider simple common sense just does not occur to many people. Is it just me? Have I clouded my […]
Personal development: stop procrastinating and start doing
We are all prone to procrastination in various forms but I believe that the way we live and work now has only made this tendency stronger and easier. What is procrastinating anyway? It’s actually a kind of weird self-regulating failure and although most of us are aware that we procrastinate, we can’t seem to stop […]
The new languages of virtual working
From discussing progress and having annual reviews to booking holiday and asking questions about a task, face-to-face conversations have always taken preference. With the rise of the gig economy, however, and businesses looking to reduce costs, more and more people are working remotely, making these conversations arduous. How, then, can business managers effectively communicate with […]
The first secret of accelerated learning – finding the balance in priorities
In 2013, I developed my ‘five secrets of accelerated learning’. These ‘secrets’ as I call them, were the culmination of research into a fascinating area. This area had many contributors but, up until then, there was no one unifying model to cover everything we had learned about how to accelerate learning through an organisation. This […]
Campaign learning: what is it and why does it tackle eLearning challenges?
In the second part of her series on campaign learning, Issy Nancarrow outlines why marketing tools and techniques can be useful for learning providers and how to use them. A learning campaign is the process of using marketing alongside the delivery of learning or change interventions. The campaign delivers value by increasing awareness, engagement, communication, participation, […]
Introducing campaign learning: what’s wrong with our current approach?
In the first part of her series on campaign learning, Issy Nancarrow looks at the failures of existing approaches to learning and what we can learn from the world of marketing when it comes to transforming the field. Whether the audience comprises corporate execs or students engaged in education, the barriers that prevent learners from absorbing content […]
Are we feeding fear?
Several times a week, I take the winding road up onto Dartmoor. Essentially the main link between Tavistock on the other side of the moor and Ashburton on this, it’s a perfectly useful road for much of the route, with lines down the middle and everything. It’s a somewhat different story on our side of […]
How to create participant buzz around your learning
The long-term effectiveness of any training programme relies on the participants’ enthusiasm and personal investment in it – so how can you inspire them to feel this? Delegates on learning programmes often feel like passengers – or even prisoners – rather than participants. If they’ve been pushed to take a training programme by someone else […]
Learning on the spot: how collaboration encourages workflow learning
Do we need to be concerned with measuring the impact of training outcomes if employees are achieving their goals through taking a more collaborative, peer-to-peer approach to learning? Having worked in learning and development for the better part of a decade, I had to learn how to deal with one fact over and over again […]
