If you are a manager, it is so important that you make time for regular one-to-ones. Even if your desks are 4 metres apart and you think you are totally in touch with where someone is, you still need to have regular one-to-ones. It’s a space you create where they know that it is about them as an individual and you will really listen to their hopes, dreams, fears and concerns.

In December 2014, Shirley was lucky enough to be asked to deliver two workshops for a new client, Mc Bride in Manchester. The first was MBTI in coaching in which 20 European coaches from within the business looked deeper at their own MBTI profiles to see how they were likely to be impacting their own coaching. They also shared and tried out different coaching tools and considered the importance of flexing their style to be the best coach they can possibly be for each client.

Shirley has teamed up with an amazing facilitator called Steve Creffield from Evolve in Brighton. They have evolved an existing a 3-day leadership development programme for senior project managers within GRM Futures Group. These managers are responsible for multimillion pound projects aimed at making the world a safer, better and fairer place.

We spend a lot of time in meetings these days and most of them are boring. Many individuals manage to turn up to a meeting and contribute nothing other than consuming a few biscuits! If you are a manager, then team meetings are essential but it is also crucial that you make them productive, worthwhile and interesting to attend.

Are the people on your training courses delegates or participants? Are they really connecting your content to what they already know and learning, or are they thinking about what they’re going to do at the weekend? Are they just passively listening to information, or are they actively creating, learning and planning for immediate application of learning?

A new starter’s first few days and weeks with an organisation set the tone for their future there. How can we make it informative, memorable and engaging enough to stick in the mind and at the same time, remind them that they are working for a great employer? The ideas below apply to all sizes of organisation, though obviously the larger your intake (and budget!), the more you can go to town!

Picture cards are an essential part of every facilitator’s toolkit. They are powerful, elegant and easy to use tools that take communication to a whole new level because anyone looking at them makes their own instant associations. They elicit open, troche insightful and honest dialogue. Effective questions speak directly and honestly to the issues the participants care about, and encourage them to share their unique perspectives and experiences…

The Tower of Power is probably the top selling tool in the UK because it is so versatile and so hard wearing! One of our Yorkshire customers told us that it had so far cost him £1 per use and going down all the time! The exercise can be totally tailored to many different situations and if you call me in the office I can help you design things I have not yet come up with, but here is a starter for 10 of things I have done with it so far!

It is so important that failures that are learnt from, and yet in the UK workplace, many people do their best to sweep failures firmly under the carpet. This leads to fudging results, rolling out projects that don’t actually have the intended impact and a lack of innovation. It might also lead to unreasonable levels of risk if we look at the banking crisis of 2007 as an example!

 I write quite a few articles and mainly to help and support customers but I have to admit that this one may have been a little bit inspired by recent terrible customer experiences with Scottish Power.

More and more I’m asked to work with teams that do not have frequent opportunity to physically get together and there are big challenges in these teams. As far back as 2001, Govindarajan and Gupta found that of 70 virtual teams studied, 82% fell short of their goals and 33% rated themselves as largely unsuccessful. Things haven’t changed too much over the past few years, so how can we ensure the success of virtual teams.

Creativity is a mental tool that is valued across all fields and goes beyond the narrow understanding of being restricted to traditional subjects such as art and design. It’s about problem solving, coming up with new solutions and exploiting opportunities. These are skills that are useful in all areas of work. Moreover, it is not a natural talent – it is something we can all learn to use better.

The 25th of February sees the UK’s official Employee Motivation Day, a day created to inspire passion and appreciation. In a work environment where attention is focused on what the customer needs, businesses can often forget about their most valued asset; the people who work for them.

So hot off the back of a lot of press coverage on how UK office workers need to stand up for at least two hours per day for their health and wellbeing, came a load of news about how our children are obese, don’t spend enough time at school doing PE and are too sedentary.

I thought I would finally take the time to review my friend and associate’s book, ‘Courageous conversations’.

What are the best tools to use on team development day? Team development programmes benefit so much from problem-solving challenges and internal training teams get asked to provide these events constantly so this question is asked of me regularly!