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

Being a bit of a fan of learning, a new year always ushers in some new plan to learn…something. It seems I’m not alone. Why do we get the learning bug? We might want to: Boost career prospects with some Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Develop a skill Rekindle a childhood passion Deal with ‘unfinished business’… Read more

  You may well be thinking, “Really? Why should I bother!?” – and you may have a point. After all, things change: unpredictable events, unforeseen outcomes and unintended consequences. Life happens. On some level, we know that looking back is an essential step to moving forward. Yet we can give ourselves too many excuses to… Read more

  When it comes to books that cover business, the field grows ever wider: management, economics, start-up stories, tech breakthroughs and, increasingly, scandals. There are heaps of different ‘best of’ lists, each with heaps of different choices (there’s a selection at the end of this post). As 2019 comes to an end it seems I’m… Read more

The questions I get asked when almost everyone has left the training room are priceless. They tend to be something that really matters to someone, yet they’re reluctant to let others know. So if you’ve ever pondered this question but not asked it, here it is (and to the people who ask questions at the… Read more

Wimbledon. Festivals. Downpours. Must be summer. Note: Summer’s also a good time to update this post 🙂 so I’ve added some new and updated links. When the days are long and it’s still light when we leave work, we can view life a little differently. There may be just as much work to do, depending… Read more

You’ve completed a training course of some kind – what action do you take to ensure that new learning sticks? It’s great when people tell me how they’re using what they learned from some Zoomly training and how it’s benefitting them – and that’s because they’ve made it stick. When I ask people in organisations… Read more

How to build confidence’ continues to be a best-selling Zoomly workshop. Wonder why? Confidence seems to be a bigger topic than it once was. I think there are several reasons, for example: Social media and how it can prompt us to compare ourselves with others Hard-driving, demanding workplaces asking employees to step up more Lack… Read more

I’ve recently been asked by workshop participants to help out with articulating emotions, so thought it was well worth updating this post. (And thank you for the inspiration – you know who you are 🙂  ) Have you ever heard yourself – or someone else – say this: “I feel it’s…”? What normally comes next?… Read more

Sometimes we can hold ourselves back without even realising it. We’re working hard, taking focused time to get stuff done, doing what we’re good at – playing to our strengths. But there’s the potential rub: we may be staying stuck in our comfort zone when we could be stepping up. Questions about this often come… Read more

A question that often comes up when I facilitate Zoomly’s ‘How to give effective feedback’ workshop is who to ask for it. After all, feedback isn’t just about commenting on others’ performance; we need feedback on ours too. Some people seem to think there’s no-one to ask or feel a bit awkward about asking. I’m… Read more