Practical tips. Prompts to get you thinking. The odd rant.

At this time of year, many employers are conducting mid-year performance reviews. And many children will soon be getting their school reports. Did you ever get this comment in your school reports: “Must try harder”? I certainly did. With the passing of time and the benefit of hindsight I appreciate the intent and feel less… Read more

  “But what if I give someone constructive feedback and it doesn’t work?” This question sometimes comes up in Zoomly’s ‘How to give effective feedback’ workshop. It may be that the participant has given a colleague feedback on their work and has yet to see any improvement in performance. Or, as is often the case… Read more

“How do I motivate people?” is a question that we deal with early on in Zoomly’s bite-sized workshop on the topic, as well as how NOT to. There’s more to it than high-fiving people or telling them they’re ‘awesome’ – much more. A useful exercise is to think of when you’ve felt really motivated about… Read more

October 10 sees World Mental Health Day, which aims to boost awareness of mental health, specifically advocacy against stigma through education and awareness-raising. This year the focus of WMHDAY is on ‘Young People and Mental Health in a Changing World’ – you can read the full report here. WMHDAY defines ‘positive mental health’ as the ‘ability… Read more

I’ve been delivering Zoomly’s ‘How to motivate people’ workshop quite a bit lately and it often strikes me how some participants feel powerless to deal with demotivation in those they manage. First, I qualify the workshop title: ‘motivate’ actually isn’t something we do to people – it’s more about what can do for people. So… Read more

‘Onboarding’, ‘Induction’, ‘new starter journey’, or simply ‘welcome’ – different employers have different labels. So if any of the above grated with you, sorry – I just went with the labels that many of Zoomly’s clients seem to be using right now. Who am I to offer tips on induction? Well, as someone who supports… Read more

Here in the UK, April sees the beginning of a new financial year, specifically for our personal finances and tax payments. Financial advice websites and ‘personal money’ pages of newspapers are full of advice about how we should best stash our cash to make sure we take advantage of tax breaks to save. ‘Huh. Some… Read more

  Right at the start of Zoomly’s ‘How to influence and persuade’ workshop, we discuss the importance of influencing for mutual benefit. If that’s your goal, chances are you won’t sink to using manipulation, which is a concern people naturally have about this topic. The simple way to decide if someone’s influencing or manipulating is… 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

Whenever I lead Zoomly’s ‘How to coach your people’ workshop, there are a few things we need to clear up early on. For starters, what coaching is – and isn’t (for example, mentoring, counselling, consulting to name a few). After that, a perfectly reasonable question always comes up: When on earth am I supposed to… Read more