May 10, 2022
How to say "no" well

How to say "no"

Saying "no" is problematic for many of us because essentially we are people pleasers.

April 21, 2022
How to stop an argument

How to stop an argument

Listening stops when we get emotional but things can be retrieved

April 13, 2022
How to beat the inertia and make a start

Starting 'that' conversation

As with many things that test us in life, the anticipation is often more painful than the event itself.

April 7, 2022
If we can just overcome the fear of making things worse by starting that difficult conversation…

Preparing for 'that' conversation

We often find ourselves in difficult conversations by accident, few of us want to get into one on purpose.

March 30, 2022
Earning trust is about self-awareness and about turning down the noise in our head

Earning trust as a leader

Leadership draws upon who we are as people - and therefore exposes our faults too

March 23, 2022
How to pitch so that your ideas really get through the screen

Pitching an idea - new world style

We need to keep refining our way of communicating with each other to counter the fatigue that comes from having to explain everything to an audience that is half here and half on screen.

March 16, 2022
Influencing with empathy

Influencing with empathy

One of the difficult aspects of being in charge of people is actually getting them to do something that they really don't want to do.

March 8, 2022
The mutual agreement, with someone, of how you want to work together is a vital piece of social glue

The social contract

Written contracts are effective at explaining ‘what’ but largely miss the ‘how’.

March 1, 2022
In trying to be fair to people we often confuse the two notions of equity and equality.

Equality and equity are not the same

In trying to be fair to people we often confuse the two notions of equity and equality. And it becomes obvious as soon as we treat people the same because, paradoxically, they don't feel fairly treated at all.

February 23, 2022
A few important steps to hybrid onboarding of new starters

Hybrid-style onboarding

A good onboarding is like a good sat NAV... it will get the person to the right place quickly so that they can begin working effectively.

February 16, 2022
How can we can learn to trust one another to do the right thing

How can I trust you?

Absence introduces doubt… it’s easy to find oneself wondering what our team colleagues or reports are actually up to. We need to learn to trust what we can't see happening... to have faith in them.

February 1, 2022
Make it easy for the person, who's help you need, to give it

Helping each other

How do you approach somebody who you think has the answer but who you're worried about disturbing or even being rejected by?

January 24, 2022
It's really important to remember to include the human details in our remote conversations

Staying connected

When we're face to face we see and sense things that don't get mentioned in remote conversations: how the other person is feeling, how energetically they are expressing a point, simply where they are mentally and physically. We need to find ways of working these elements back into our conversations when we can't be there.

January 12, 2022
How do I keep work and play separate?

Separation anxiety

As we mutate into a hybrid workforce and home/work boundaries further blur, we must pull off a mental trick not only to get ourselves out of bed on dark mornings but also to cleanly, mentally transition from our home lives to our work lives - and back again.

January 6, 2022
Contracting for fulfilment

Get a better deal in life

We exist and live in relation to other people and entities. When we find ourselves unhappy or off balance it is often because we think that we're not getting what we deserve. But very often we have forgotten to set up the initial agreement of who is going to do what and for how much in return...

April 6, 2021
Some simple experiments for the transition to hybrid working

New normal - new but not normal yet.

So now that we've sort of got used to being shut in, we'll soon need to get used to the new mish-mash working routine being elegantly referred to as 'hybrid'. Time for a few life hacks to make the transition smoother... because whilst it is new there's no use in pretending that it's normal.

March 18, 2021
Research results of Water cooler moments study

Water cooler moments - research results

Water cooler moments were a significant part of our work lives before March of 2020. What did we use them for? What are we doing now in the virtual world? What works?

January 7, 2021
Think outside the room

Hybrid Meetings - tip #1

We are all 'sort of' getting used to online meetings - or at least gatherings where some will be sitting beside us (well, about 2 metres away) whilst others will be perched at the end of their kitchen table somewhere in Bedfordshire. How do we make hybrid meetings work really well?

September 4, 2020

Reassuring ourselves

If praise is about me showing you that I think highly of something that you have done, how come people are resorting to praising themselves so much on their social media?

July 10, 2020

Water cooler moments

We've been doing a little research to find out what they are, what people use them for and what they've been doing instead (or not! - not everybody misses them).

April 20, 2020

Working and playing at home - a few things to consider

A few things to consider for those still getting used the oddness of working from home

April 9, 2020

"Normal"

Each of us is getting on with it. It? ... Making life as normal as possible. But are there bits that we just can't fake?

February 4, 2020
Relationships

Show a little love

A quick Valentine's Day look at 3 things you can do to show that you do indeed care about your colleagues

January 17, 2020

Thinking on your feet - revisited

Some people seem to be so good at dealing with that curve ball question. They just come up with the answer… and some.

November 5, 2019

Why we need water coolers in winter

The water cooler was originally invented in around 1906 to provide safe drinking water. A few things have changed...

October 3, 2019
Meetings

Breaking the cycle of bad meetings

We're making time for bad meetings. There are simple things you can do, whether you're in charge or not, to make things very different.

September 3, 2019

Good conversations don't happen by accident

We need good conversations in order to gather people around us, to have families, a social life and to make our jobs, departments and organisations function.

August 3, 2019

Empathy: What's really going on?

Getting the hang of empathising is a long-burn endeavour...so is it really worth it?

May 3, 2019

The power of honesty

Aside from greater morality, honesty delivers other game-changing benefits

January 3, 2019

Motivation

This was the post that almost didn't get written. How come? Read on - but only if you want to.

September 3, 2018

Where to look for real leadership

There are plenty of people who will tell us how to be leaders... but are they the right ones to ask?

June 3, 2018

Looking beyond the obvious in people

I don't like the phrase "seeing the good" as in "seeing the good in people". So, what else is there?

May 3, 2018

Does coaching have an image problem?

Commonly expressed views on leaders doing coaching rarely explain how simple it can be: helping your people to get more done, better, whilst staying out of the way... Does coaching have a bad image for all the wrong reasons?

February 3, 2018

Snap! The art and science of handling your emotions

How we handle our feelings forms a big part of how people see us - our personality. So why do we try to ignore them and what could we do instead?

December 3, 2017

Ten snippets from 2017

Here's a round-up of one-liners from 2017.

November 3, 2017

How to get it, how to keep it

Resilience is like salt - we never think we can run out of it until we actually do.

October 2, 2017

How to learn from experience(s)

Children really know how to learn - do they have something that we need to remember?

September 2, 2017

Thank you

People rarely ask to be thanked, but things can go seriously wrong when we fail to show appreciation.

August 2, 2017

How to mend the broken conversation

We mostly don't go out to mess up a conversation but we do often overlook the basics and therefore increase the chances that things will go wrong.

June 2, 2017

It's feedback time. Oh good.

Although feedback has a reputation for being painful for both the giver and the receiver, we only have to observe a few simple ideas to make it successful for both.

May 2, 2017

How to present like a human being

We carry around lots of strange notions of what we are supposed to be like when we stand up to speak in front of a group. Which should we disregard?

April 2, 2017

Commitment

We go to great lengths to gain agreement... taking hours, days and weeks to achieve a consensus which then fails to translate into wholehearted action. Why? And what instead?

March 2, 2017

Temper, temper...

We all get annoyed from time to time, but how can we calm ourselves down really quickly and perhaps get rattled a little less often too?

February 2, 2017

Persuasion!

How to get people to really change their minds without tactics, pressure or power.

January 2, 2017

Honestly!

What better way to launch the year than with a shout out for honesty. That thing that we are all told is so important as we grow up and which then seems to promptly abandon us in adulthood when we could actually do something good with it!

December 2, 2016

Top 10 scribblings from 2016

Here is a selection of things that people told us were useful to them - take you pick of these into 2017

November 2, 2016

Assertiveness is not for wimps

Becoming more assertive is not just something that wimps need to do. Even the most confident amongst us stand to gain much by tuning up the way that we get our messages across.

October 2, 2016

Customer meltdowns and the 5-minute recovery plan

Where there are customers there are problems. Supply chains fail, machines break, people mess up. So what could possibly be wrong with simply providing a like-for-like solution as soon as possible? Everything.

September 2, 2016

Customer service or customer care? Who cares?!

Many industries have embraced the notion of customer service - giving the customer what they want, when they want it, for a price they are wiling to pay. But is that really all that's required?

August 2, 2016

Making the remote team work

We're all saving our companies a lot of money by managing our remote teams from our desks. But whilst staying off all those aeroplanes does indeed save money and time it introduces hidden problems for which it is taking us a while to find solutions.

July 2, 2016

Make yourself heard

Everyone knows that the way to make yourself heard is to have the strongest argument, the loudest voice, the biggest personality or the highest rank. But what on earth am I supposed to do if I can claim none of these attributes?

June 2, 2016

Feedback

This word is used so often it has lost its meaning and its power to fascinate. What can we do about this and how can we exchange meaningful words that influence behaviour?

May 20, 2016

How not to help

How can we reduce the number of times that we can be charged with 'getting in the way' rather than helping, as we intend? As usual, just knowing about it helps. But there are three types of 'help' to avoid giving, above all the others.

April 6, 2016

How to disrupt a meeting... to make it better

Can meetings ever pay their way? And if so, is it just a matter of chance or are there things that we can routinely do to ensure that our meetings will actually lead somewhere and produce something usable? Read on...