Be inspired

You don’t tend to act unless you’re inspired. And time is precious. So here are ideas and thoughts worth making a little time for.

Guide

Understanding and overcoming procrastination

Fuschia Sirois is a professor at Durham University’s Department of Psychology. She is particularly interested in how procrastination, perfectionism, loneliness and traits linked to negative mood adversely affect health, and the qualities that play a role in improving well-being.

Estimates suggest that anywhere between 15% and 25% of the adult population procrastinate regularly. So what this means is that about one in five members of your team are going to be prone to procrastination.

Fuschia Sirois, Professor at Durham University’s Department of Psychology

I'd like every manager spend proper time with every one of their direct reports every week. I think that in itself would make quite a lot of difference.

Ruth Kelly, Chair Thames Freeport and Water UK, previously Member of UK Parliament and Secretary of State for Education and Skills

Conversations

Ruth Kelly, Chair of Thames Freeport and Water UK

In this episode, Ruth Kelly, Chair of Thames Freeport and Water UK, and ex-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, talks about:

Guide

The importance of being cognitively flexible in a world full of distractions

Naomi de Barra is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist who is excited about bringing great psychology to the workplace, to make businesses and people more productive. She has almost 20 years of business experience in FMCG, Pharmaceuticals, Recruitment and Healthcare. Her areas of interest are Neurodiversity, Leadership and Selection and Assessment.

Conversations

Ezechi Britton MBE, incoming CEO of the UK's Centre for Finance, Innovation, and Technology

How are organisations and investors doing managers a disservice?

Articles

Three secret reasons every manager can be a great coach to the team

Coaching works really well to boost well-being and performance. No question. A study of coaching of female leaders within GSK published in 2017 concluded as follows:

ARTICLEs

Three secret reasons every manager can be a great coach to the team

Coaching works really well to boost well-being and performance. No question. A study of coaching of female leaders within GSK published in 2017 concluded as follows:

Imagine if managers developed their relationship-building skills, created more trust and psychological safety, and practised some coaching techniques...

Articles

Are you coachable? The answer will affect your career and legacy

Coachability is going to become the key factor when it comes to hiring, keeping and promoting talent. If you're not coachable, then you aren't learning, you're atrophying or, at best, staying where you are. Who wants that?

Articles

Leaders as inclusive Connectors

Great leaders throughout organisations have certain superpowers, one of which I call Connectivity.

Articles

Four reasons CEOs don't act to improve people management

A question cropped up for me while pondering the very high levels of employee engagement enjoyed by some firms but not others. According to Gallup's assessment of exceptional workplaces, they enjoy employee engagement levels of 70% compared with the global average of 21% and still quite impressive relative to the US average of 35%. This means that such firms with the highest engagement levels have 14 engaged employees for every actively disengaged employee, or over 13x the global average.

Articles

Preventing burnout: managers in the frame again

Gallup’s State of Global Workplace 2022 Report has just been published, along with a letter from Gallup’s CEO, Jim Clifton. He writes about one of the largest studies on burnout which finds that 76% of us at work will suffer burnout at some point.

Articles

Coachmania and Tulipmania

Over the past few years I've had the opportunity to speak to a large number of executives transitioning from corporate life to the gig economy. They were eager to pivot from being a leader or manager in an organisation to an external coach to organisations. They wanted to pick my brain and our discussions made me wonder about the parallel with Tulipmania.

Articles

Evaluating your next big career move

When you have a choice, how do you evaluate that next move? I've enjoyed talking about this issue with a few CEOs recently. After exploring some potential impediments to making the right move, I conclude below with a five-factor approach to evaluating it.

Articles

ESG progress demands great managers

What on earth am I talking about, connecting progress with Environmental, Social and Governance issues with having great leaders and managers in your organisation? For each of the three domains of ESG, investing in managers will be critical to success.

Articles

Been a victim of the great training robbery?

Harvard Professor Michael Beer and his colleagues used the 'great training robbery' phrase around five years ago. Despite huge amounts being spent on learning and development globally ($370bn in 2019 alone), they said companies

Conversations

Graham Cooke, Founder and Ex-CEO of Qubit

Entrepreneur and FTSE100 Non Executive Director, Graham Cooke has been developing internet-based products for the past 20 years. He joined Google in 2005 as one of the earliest European employees working on the Google Ad Platform and Google Analytics. After Google, he founded Qubit, a leading SaaS company in the e-commerce space, providing AI-personalised shopping recommendations to over one billion users per month across more than 300 leading brands. He sold Qubit to Coveo Solutions in 2021 and remains a strategic advisor at Coveo.

When you align the whole way through and you have a business or a product that your employees are very purpose driven in building, and using, you get this full alignment. It becomes this incredibly efficient slipstream.

Graham Cooke, Founder and Ex-CEO of Qubit

Conversations

Ruth Kelly, Chair of Thames Freeport and Water UK

In this episode, Ruth Kelly, Chair of Thames Freeport and Water UK, and ex-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, talks about:

Conversations

Ezechi Britton MBE, incoming CEO of the UK's Centre for Finance, Innovation, and Technology

How are organisations and investors doing managers a disservice?

Conversations

Mark Billige, CEO of Simon-Kucher & Partners

Mark Billige is CEO of Simon-Kucher & Partners, the global consultancy firm operating in around 30 countries world-wide. Simon-Kucher delivers revenue and profit growth for clients by optimising pricing, sales, and marketing strategies.

Conversations

Dannie Lynn Fountain, Global Inclusion Lead at Google's #IamRemarkable

Dannie Lynn Fountain is a passionate storyteller who helps companies focus on people. By day, she works at Google hiring the world’s most talented software engineers. By night she supports clients and brands with HR-focused diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies. Dannie is a five-time author and in her latest book, Ending Checkbox Diversity, she rewrites the story of performative allyship in corporate America.

Conversations

Helena Gaunt, The Principal at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama

Helena Gaunt is the Principal at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. She began her career as a professional oboist, before moving into academia. She then transitioned into strategic leadership roles, serving as Vice Principal and Director of Innovation at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Here, Helena pioneered the use of coaching to boost creative output, a practice she continues to develop in her current role.

Conversations

Cat Agostinho, Co-Founder of Imagen Insights

Cat Agostinho is the Co-Founder of Imagen Insights, which offers organisations Gen Z insights within 72 hours. She is on a mission to support young people and provide them with opportunities regardless of their background. Cat has co-created a business and a culture that champions inclusivity, and caters for different languages, disabilities and social factors.

Conversations

Nabila Salem, President of Revolent Group

Nabila is President of Revolent Group, which creates cloud talent that can thrive in niche technology markets. She's also on the Board of Tenth Revolution Group, the parent company of Frank Recruitment Group, Revolent Group and Rebura.

Conversations

Bruce Daisley, Ex-Twitter VP and #1 bestselling author

Bruce Daisley is one of the UK’s most influential voices on fixing work. His first book, The Joy of Work, was a Sunday Times number 1 bestseller, ending 2019 as the UK’s top selling business hardback of the year. Previously he spent over a decade running Twitter and YouTube in Europe (the latter at Google).

Conversations

Erich Gerth, CEO of RBC BlueBay Asset Management

Erich is CEO of BlueBay Asset Management, ultimately a part of RBC, which is one of the world's biggest banks by market value. Erich also oversees the Non-North American business of RBC Global Asset Management.

Guide

The benefits of being a connector within organisations

Martin Kilduff is a professor at UCL School of Management. In his research, he focusses on the importance of social network connections between people and the ways those connections help or hinder in their job performance, career, and their lives more generally.

Social network brokerage means connecting across people who are otherwise disconnected and looking for those ideas that are important in organisational life as well as in everyday life.

Martin Kilduff, Professor of Organisational Behavior at University College London

Guide

Having greater impact on screen in virtual meetings

Edie Lush is a journalist and communication trainer. She's also an expert in digital communication. This is a very practical guide outlining how to best meet over the screen, so important these days. She helps you find out more about what the best set-up is, what physical and vocal techniques are most helpful, and how to communicate in a way that is memorable. Whether you need to inspire your team or a client, this guide will help you.

Guide

Five dilemmas with one common denominator: knowing when to stop

Simon Devonshire is a serial entrepreneur, investor, NED and chair. He has worked in very big corporates like O2 and for start-ups. His career has given him the chance to observe the repeat behaviours common to successful entrepreneurs and leaders. In this guide, he shares some of these observations, with an emphasis on knowing when to stop.

Guide

Identifying and acting on your priority values as a team

Dr Mandeep Rai is the author of The Values Compass: What 101 Countries Teach Us About Purpose, Life and Leadership. She is a global authority on values, working with companies, institutions, and individuals around the world. She has travelled to more than 150 countries and reported as a journalist for the BBC World Service Reuters, amongst others.

Guide

Using Purpose, Authenticity and Delivery in leadership

James Ashton is an author, podcaster and speaker. He writes and speaks on business and leadership. He's spent years interviewing leaders across sectors and continues to discuss the art of leadership. In this guide, he outlines how you combine Purpose, Authenticity and Delivery in order to become an effective leader.

Guide

Navigating challenging times using your North Star

Minter Dial is a thought-leader, author, consultant and professional speaker on topics such as leadership, brand and digital strategy with a specialisation in digital transformation. Prior to this, he had an international career at L'Oréal, including being head of Redken Worldwide and on the Executive Committee worldwide of the L'Oréal Professional Products Division.

Tools

Building Trust Quickly

The evidence suggests that the longer we know people or brands, the more we trust them. A study of the 100 most trusted brands in the USA found that only two were created in the past 20 years. Time is of the essence when it comes to trust, but what if we don’t have decades to build trust? We need hacks.

Tools

Learning Effectively

When you really need to learn, how do you go about this? And if you help others learn, what really helps?

Tools

Making Decisions

We’re all experienced decision makers. We make tens of thousands of decisions a day, often without thinking.

Tools

Correcting Predictions

The following four-step approach to correcting errors in prediction is proposed by experts in decision-making and judgement. The approach is illustrated with two examples.

Tools

Boosting Wisdom

This exercise will help you and your team think more wisely by using the power of psychological distance.

Tools

Fostering Healthy Dissent

Groups tend to make better decisions when people can express divergent views. When we don’t conform and choose to dissent, it’s usually not because we don’t care what others think or because we want to be difficult. We usually dissent because we want to be useful to the groups we belong to. It’s because we care a lot about the group.

Tools

Personal Growth Framework

This framework offers a way to clarify and manifest your ambitions. It helps you to say yes to the right things and no to the rest. It helps to create momentum to fulfil these ambitions and creates opportunities to celebrate your achievements.

Tools

Getting Ahead Of The Curve

Use a mathematical concept to get ahead of the curve.