I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the revolution in recruitment; finding people that really can live up to what they say in interview so that there’s more chance of them being successful in the job! Part of this means that I design assessment centres, which include candidates doing some or all of the following…

With recruitment and selection costing on average £5,000 to £50,000 per person, it really does pay to select the right person first time round! And with research showing that the predictive validity of an interview is as low as 0.2 even with great questions, it is clearly not the best way to find your perfect recruit.

Bernward Winter and his colleagues tested participants’ ability to learn new made-up words for objects after either two intense sprints of three-minutes length, 40 minutes of gentle running or rest.

Level 3 Apprenticeship for Supervisors / Team Leaders in a Nutshell. Are you thinking of putting some of your aspiring managers through a modern, trailblazer apprenticeship? If so, here a few important things you need to know…

Having recently read this book and seen David speak on the topic last week, I thought people might be interested in an overview of the principles and a little bit of my take on them having worked to improve the engagement of many companies…

Pipeline is absolutely my favourite and most used experiential exercise because of its versatility and the way it never fails to create a high-energy environment with maximum involvement and laughter. For those of you who are not sure what the exercise entails, you can see a short video below.

Careful design of review processes in experiential learning is essential if learning objectives are to be achieved. It is also crucial that you make reviews active, creative and varied throughout a learning programme so that people don’t get bored or come to dread reviews. Here are some of my favourite methods of reviewing experiential tasks, tried and tested over 17 years.

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!