Is it a really workshop? Or is it a meeting pretending to be a workshop?
What a workshop isn’t: someone standing at the front of a room with a blank flipchart and a marker pen while people shout out ideas.
Read MoreDiversity makes workshops work
Here’s how to make a workshop fail: invite the same old team, put them in the same old meeting room, give them the same information, and ask them to brainstorm. Likelihood of any ground-breaking ideas emerging? Almost zero…
Read MoreTools of the Trade (for workshops)
What’s a chef without a knife? A gardener without a spade? A painter without paints? Every professional needs the right tools to do the job, and it’s no different when it comes to workshops.
Read MoreHow workshops provoke creativity
“If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
What comes first, teamship or friendship?
When you think about a great team you have been in, do you think about the work, or do you think about the people you worked with? For me, it’s the people.
Read MoreIs your team toxic? The warning signs and what to do about it
How would you describe your team at work? Are they a group of professionals who do their best to work well together to achieve their goals?
Read MoreThe Power of a Team Vision
The US team brought 9 sports psychologists to the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. Elite athletes are expected to be in peak physical condition, but they also substantially improve their competitive advantage with psychological training.
Read MoreHow to speak up to your boss (without losing your job)
There are lots of tools and training courses for bosses on how to manage people, but we hardly ever talk about how people can manage their bosses. “Managing up” is being able to speak up to your boss about how they can support you more, for example to ask for help, to share your concerns about your work or team, or even to ask them to change how they work.
Read MoreManaging the Four Generation Workplace
I started researching this article thinking I would write about the problems of intergenerational working. Boomers complaining about millennials for not using apostrophes properly, Gen Z making fun of Millennials for their avocado toast and coffee obsessions, Gen X’s hedonism getting out of control at the Christmas party, that sort of thing.
Read MoreShould bosses be banned from sending emails out of office hours?
Since the pandemic, we’ve developed more productive ways of working. Bosses have realised that people can be trusted to work from home well, which means we are likely to have more choices about where and when we work in future. However, flexibility also means blurred boundaries, and when expectations aren’t clear it can be more stressful for employees and leaders.
Read MoreBan the Committee and the Workshop! How Language Influences Culture
Committees have been described as “a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled” (Barnett Cocks), and “a group that keeps minutes and loses hours” (Milton Berle).
Read MoreHow to handle a toxic team mate
In a long yacht race, a 10-person crew sail together for up to a week, 24/7. Crew members work in shifts, with an intensive three hours on deck followed by three hours of sleep, on repeat until they cross the finish line.
Read MoreBullies and bad behaviour – 3 things I wish I’d known 10 years ago
The best teams behave respectfully towards each other, no matter who we are working with, how pressured the work is or how senior we are. Bullying and bad behaviour are terrible for team spirit and lower team performance. So why are there still bullies around? Because we don’t intervene early enough.
Read More7 things I learned about writing a business book
What I’ve learned about writing a business book.
In summer 2019 I’d reached a bit of a “meh” moment. I had been working on my second business book proposal for over a year, and just couldn’t get it right.
Outputs versus outcomes: one simple tool to supercharge your goal setting and teamwork
The police have targets to measure their performance, and over the last decade have moved away from output-based targets to outcome-based ones. If police targets were based purely on how many arrests are made, they would be ignoring the fact that arresting people does not deal with the causes of crime.
Read MoreLet’s take back control of our time!
Companies have been increasing their demands for efficiency, smaller teams are doing the work that larger teams used to do, jobs have changed and we are given ever more challenging work to do in a more complicated world.
Read MoreAdvice for young people starting their careers…
I recently gave a talk to a group of Kickstarter training young people who are just starting out in their careers. Here’s the advice I gave them – and more advice my colleagues added.
Read MoreMy Top 5 Business Books
People always ask me which business books I would recommend, and here are my top five.
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