#featured

All of us have a book to write, and we all could write plenty of chapters. What a great experience to do this to find how your journey has evolved and where you are today. There will be highs and lows, but overall the positive from it needs to be congratulated. Think about how much success you have had in life, the joys of living on this planet both at home and work. Just doing something is a success in life.

Then where do you go next, because your book is only partially written? How would you write on those blank pages, where do you want the journey to go, what would you like to see? I think in life we hit stuck areas, and on those stuck areas, we make choices sometimes forced. Some are in a direction that improves us some maybe not, but they are all a direction from stuckness or wanting change. Have you recognised that feeling, feeling stuck on something not knowing what to do next? I think this is a great time to sit with not knowing and see what pops up when you stare at the blank pages.

When you ask "What motivates you in the workplace?" a quick-fire response is often "Money" but is that really true?   Of course, we all need money and if we don’t have it then life can become very difficult. However, I am not talking about that, I am talking about what really motivates us and it may be surprising for you to hear, but money isn’t the number one!

I believe that motivation is so essential for us as human beings.  I believe that people who struggle in life are actually demotivated.  This could be a behaviour pattern they have developed or conditioned when they are young. Furthermore, society doesn’t help with a need for a level playing field.  We are motivated by challenges and the need to do better; this is an essential part of our make-up as human beings.

Most managers believe that if they offer staff more money, then that will motivate them. However, research shows that isn’t true. A major HR study which asked employees to rank their top ten motivators found

All managers are required to listen to others; this could be a member of staff with a particular issue or concern.  It could be a customer with a complaint.  The reality is we are all going to be involved in listening to other people. When we are listening to people, it is easy not to listen.  Most people listen for one reason, to respond.  Think about this when you’re in conversation with someone; you're thinking about how you are going to respond, and if you’re doing this (and we all do) then the question has to be, are you not listening.

When we listen to understand it is a different process.  We aren’t trying to win an argument; we aren’t trying to get our point across in the best possible way, we aren’t trying to get the other person to realise they are wrong.  We aren’t listening to be able to come out with an answer.

When we are really listening to what the other person is saying, we are listening for one reason. To fully understand.

This is a tough concept to get

Have you ever thought to yourself what do I want to change, really change, then actually address it?

The biggest failure with a lot of people is holding yourself back, this then means never really working in an area you want to change, just accepting things as they are. Sometimes little changes make significant progress over time rather than one major difference which is usually not gripped so that change does not happen. Small changes are the way forward.

Think about it, what would you like to change, why and how could you do things differently. Grade yourself and think why you have given yourself the grade? Whether you have given yourself numbers on the scale 0-10 or A, B, C ask yourself why? And then where would you like it to be.

Then the hard work begins with what little changes you can make yourself. Sometimes coaching is required so that thinking is done differently, challenged. What do you want to be different, your overall goal? We all have deep desires and want to achieve, and

It’s that time of year again to make changes, here we go it's 2019…….Yes our New Year is imminent and as always, we look to make changes to our lives. Every year the same process takes place, but did you know it is as little as 7% of the people who want to make the change who actually make the change and do something about it.

I always smile to myself as I enter the gym in January, the smile mixed with frustration. As I watch the people who have made a decision to get fit, I get very frustrated as the equipment is always taken especially the treadmills. But I know by the end of the month the die-hard trainers will be there with the majority of new fitness fanatics gone. Why is this?

Quite frankly people’s expectations are far from realistic, plus they want to make huge changes quickly not understanding they are life changes. Sadly, that is not the way to do it; it is about little changes. Whatever you choose to do in life whether it is personal or professionally it is the small changes

Ever been in a “Training” session where your mind has been anywhere other than in that room and time? Yes, me too and there’s nothing worse to put you off training for life because you are just wasting your time when you’re there for a reason – to learn!

It’s a common theme I hear from many who tell me “I’ve been a Trainer for ‘X’ amount of years”, but actually they’ve never been a “Trainer” because all they do is stand and “tell” information to their audiences.  Often it isn’t their fault as they have only the perception of what they believe training to be and haven’t had the benefit of being developed properly but when this is the case, it’s very harmful to all involved.  So how can you tell if you are a teller?  Here are 4 of the most common tell-tale signs:

You hide behind PowerPoint – Since its introduction, PowerPoint has been such a common tool that people have used for both presentations and training, but it becomes the sole focus.  Big paragraphs with lots of words,

The media has a lot to be responsible for along with the IT world. All we do these days is grab our phones, read the updated messages from social media and focus on what they want us to think. To get a feeling of what's happening these days, you have to read everything.

But what is it we read? Everything is negative, no matter where you go to read you learn so much negative information. The problem these days is we continuously turn to our phones and laptops. So we read more negativity and are constantly bombarded with doom and gloom.

Can you imagine a whole day of reading just positive information? Imagine and visualise that type of day. Imagine all the media agreeing to have a full day of greatness. Just imagine what that feeling would be like what transference people would share with each other. It would be so incredibly powerful and positive, just amazing.

I believe it would be like the sun shining, that day where everyone wants to say good morning. Not like the day where the clouds

I was recently going through some of the past blogs for social media and came across one written by Ralph “Good at your job v good as a manager”. This is a subject that always rings true as I’ve witnessed it many times and it got me thinking that actually, there are huge comparisons with training:

In my career, I’ve come across so many fellow trainers; some good, some amazing and some (to put it kindly) are not so good!  I have also been in positions many times where I’ve heard the statement: “You’re outstanding at ‘X’, so I’m going to make you a trainer for it”.  I see the judgement and justification of making them a trainer purely based on their ability to do something well, rather than the potential to be a good trainer; often then what follows, is a spectacular fail!  So why is this and what should we look for in potential trainers?

Firstly, I’d say consider how that person got good at what they were doing; was it through sheer natural talent or was it through the experience

I was delivering a management development course recently when a delegate pointed out that they didn’t realise how much they didn’t know.  We were discussing conflict and how and why people get wound up, what causes it and how it could be an automated response created from a habit.

The delegate in question said to me they had gone through years of getting angry and frustrated with staff who didn’t think or work as they do.  They said they had gone out their way to hunt people down in the workplace who didn’t think like them.  They were very honest and identified how this type of behaviour could cause more issues in the workplace.   Of course, this type of honesty is essential for making real changes in our behaviour.

The delegate was correct of course. Unfortunately, we are all ignorant; we don’t know what we don’t know.  Education is a valuable key; it can change the way we think and see things.  It changes the way we act and ultimately how others behave too.

Many managers

To be effective at anything in life we have to be able to manage time.  If we don’t manage time then quickly our life can become confusing, and before we know it, we are not completing anything we want to do.  Our working day can then become chaos where we are struggling to keep our head above water as the river forever increasing tasks starts to take over.

A key aspect of being an effective manager is to manage our time.  The first thing we need to know is that we all have the same amount of time, every single one of us has the same amount of time, it’s what we choose to do in that time that is important.

In reality, we all contribute to our non-effectiveness with time management and in my experience having more tasks we can handle is quite rare.  Furthermore, our behaviours and actions contribute much more to our poor time management.  Before we can do anything about them one of the first things we have to do, is to identify what the actual issues are; in other words the elements