Of all the techniques available to people who work with others, building rapport is perhaps the most powerful. It can transform impossible situations into ones with potential and can allow you to connect instead of being like ships that pass in the night.

Here are 7 rapport-building techniques: Read More »

If, like me, you train regularly, you’ll know how easy it is to put your foot in it.

I was reminded of this training truth recently when I read the obituary of one of the UK’s finest support comedians, John Junkin.

Junkin had been a schoolmaster before treading the boards. The story goes that one day while taking a class of particularly uninspired fourth formers, Junkin had spotted a boy at the back of the room chewing gum. Read More »

I read two different newspaper stories the other day. One suggested that, if you are a manager, you’re probably working longer and harder than ever before. The other suggested that only a small percentage of us do a job that we really love.

Which makes me think that, as suggested by Henry David Thoreau, there are a lot of people out there – including managers who manage others – who are “leading lives of quiet desperation” and will “go to their graves with their song still in them”. Read More »

A few weeks ago was the Spring equinox, I got up at 6 o’clock and watched the sun rise over the sea.

The sight was so beautiful that I decided to repeat it the next day. Only to find that the sky was cloud-covered and the sea a forbidding grey. Read More »

This is the story of two shoe shops.

In the first shop, the conversation went something like this.

“Can I replace these joggers with a new pair? Look, there’s a manufacturing fault just under the heel.” Read More »

We each have both strengths and weaknesses in every job we do. Our strengths are the things we are naturally good at and the weaknesses are the things we can only ever make limited progress in. For managers and team leaders, the aim of understanding people’s strengths is to help people excel.

Here are 7 ways to use people’s strengths: Read More »

The other day I read a newspaper article that challenged everything we’d ever thought about using praise to motivate people.

It came from research done at Stanford University, California, which found that students who are repeatedly praised become risk-averse, make less effort, and are less motivated.

According to Professor Carole Dweck, praising a student too often fails to help them for three reasons. Read More »

If you want to move up the ranks of masterful communication, you have to watch what you say to others. Not just in the showpieces of communication such as a presentation or a meeting, but in everyday interaction. Learn the following 7 rules and you can quietly become a master of one-to-one communication:

1. Be Kind.

Whenever you engage with people, you always have two choices. You can communicate from a standpoint of love or from one of fear. When your communication is laced with sarcasm, blame, threat, anger, anxiety, worry, and control, you are communicating fear. Read More »

Can you remember your first training model?

I don’t mean that dishy graduate from the IT training team or that handsome hunk from the consultancy.

I mean a theory of how people behave and relate in organisations.

I can.

It was Theory X and Theory Y and it was nearly 35 years ago. Read More »