What we're thinking

Poor you, that’s not a great position to find yourself in. First of all though, how on earth did you get here? Did your boss just wave, say ‘see ya later’ and disappear off to some beach? Or did you have an actual handover discussion before their holiday, where things were explained and you were… Read more

At the recent CIPD L&D Show, the Strengths Partnership team were out in full force, including one of the authors of this book (and co-creator of the tool), Dr Paul Brewerton. I think it’s fair to say that Strengthscope® is now firmly established as the UK’s leading assessment when it comes to helping teams and… Read more

What’s stopping you from delegating? This is something we deal with right at the start in Zoomly’s ‘How to delegate effectively’ workshop. For example, people can feel very uneasy about the whole idea of asking someone to take on a task and get it done. Typical objections that I’ve heard include: “They’ll think I’m arrogant”… Read more

Recently I’ve been leading Zoomly’s ‘How to develop your leadership style’ workshop quite a lot for different clients. One of the first tasks participants work on in is to consider the leaders who’ve inspired them. Time and again I observe teams discussing this somewhat hesitantly at first, but soon the tempo shifts to an inspirational… Read more

Each year, Investors in People (IiP) publish their ‘Job exodus trends’. This does what it says on the tin: how many people are thinking of leaving their jobs in the coming year – and why? At the end of 2017 IiP polled 2000 people. Remember, 2017 saw the lowest UK unemployment levels since 1975 (4.3%… Read more

‘Culture’ has a host of different meanings; for example, “I’m off to an art gallery to experience some culture”. For this post, I’m thinking about how we view the world; our beliefs and values, behavioural norms and attitudes. As more and more of us work with others in different locations and from different backgrounds, our… Read more

For many of us stakeholder management is a fact of contemporary working life – we’re usually dealing with different people or groups, with differing interests, in the process of getting stuff done. (I should say upfront that I’m not a global-sized engineering projects guru; if that’s what you seek The Association for Project Management is… Read more

For the purpose of this post, let’s assume that the whole team is being formed for the first time. So your employer is taking on a new project, or has won a significant contract, or is setting up a new venture. If you’ve been selected to lead this team, chances are you’ve been involved in… Read more

Image ‘email overload’ by VectorStory / Deposit Photos The two biggest bugbears of contemporary working life are meetings and emails. We wade through a swamp of the former and are regularly overwhelmed by a torrent of the latter. The volume of email is mind-boggling: Palo Alto tech firm Radicati predicts 269 billion emails will be… Read more

Image by macrovector (Askold Romanov) / Deposit Photos So you’ve noticed that one of your team is turning out to be a star performer. First of all, congratulations – lucky you for having a high performer on your team. Second of all, well done for noticing – all too often, great performance is barely acknowledged,… Read more