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My most embarassing moment. Disguised as an article on Leadership.
This post has been inspired by David Kanigan, whose Blog Lead.Learn. Live you really should be subscribed to. He is a senior leader in a New York financial organisation, and yet he finds time to...
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What is Santa’s Myers Briggs profile?
What is Santa’s Myers Briggs profile? I know it’s not the foremost question on your mind right now. Questions such as “Who just pinched those sausage rolls?“ are reverberating around my ears as I...
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The power of flattery
I come bearing a gift. ”A bit late”, I hear you say. “Christmas was weeks ago.” Better late than never? Overdone? No such thing. It’s the finding from research carried out by University of...
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How Stress can kill the Creativity cells
You may have noticed that my Blogs have become somewhat infrequent recently. The truth is I have had to drag myself to the keyboard to write this one. Normally I bang one out in about 20 minutes, and...
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Presentations: Plan versus Actual
This image says so much. It captures some of the principal Presentation Phobias, in my opinion. It is almost a self contained case for making the use of PowerPoint a criminal offence. Think what would...
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Negotiating: do it over food!
I’m inspired this week by some research done by Lakshmi Balachandra at Babson College in the USA into whether negotiating is best done over a meal. It’s a question I get asked regularly on training...
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Admit it! You’ve lost the plot.
“It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in....
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On losing a Best Friend
Yesterday Charlotte and I had to take one of the toughest decisions of our lives. After 10 weeks of valiant struggle, our beloved working cocker spaniel Rufus finally gave in to his anaemia. We knew...
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Want to get more done? Relax!
Last year I worked out something pretty important. In my fourth year of being self employed (and the fourth year of the recession, as it happens), I finally realised that I was allowing myself to...
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Unlocking Introverted Creativity
This week I’m looking for help. Yes, that’s right, this Blog isn’t just a one way street, you know! I had a goldfish that did this once. It survived 30 mins on the kitchen floor. I’m looking for your...
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Looking for inspiration? Try looking closer to home.
It’s been a tough week. 3 long hard days carrying out interviews on site for a client to assess just how low staff morale is. That was a barrel of laughs. Combine that with a heavy cold (flu, of...
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“I told you so.” Arghhhhh!
WIFE: ”Do you think you should take your waterproof trousers?” HUSBAND: ”Nah, don’t think it’s going to rain today.” (Who cares, even if it does, we’re going for a walk on Dartmoor, not about to make...
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“You can’t run away from your DNA.”
“You can’t run away from your DNA.” I’m grateful to Gary, whom I met on a course last week, for this pearl of wisdom. I’m not sure, but I think he was claiming to have coined the phrase. If so I’m...
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The “BLURT” approach to dealing with conflict
I’ve got conflict on my mind. That’ll be because I’ve been training on that topic a fair bit recently (and it’s difficult to switch off from a subject when you’ve been talking about it all day, as my...
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Our new dog, so far without a name.
“That didn’t take you long,” said someone to my wife when she told them we have just become parents again. She’s right: two months ago we lost our beloved Rufus to anaemia, and it knocked both...
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For heaven’s sake, SLOW DOWN!
“What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” Wise words this week from Warren Buffet – a man whose willingness not to jump...
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How to deal with an Expert
My clients are clever. They are successful in business because they know stuff that their own clients don’t. Not to put too fine a point on it. Any similarity to any of my clients’ clients is...
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The 5 things you can do with a question, apart from answer it!
This one comes up a lot in Presentation Skills training: “What do I do if I get asked a question and I don’t know the answer?’ People get overly stressed by this, and as a result spend way too much...
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“If you’re going through hell, KEEP GOING” (Churchill)
I’m in Sydney, and I’m inspired. Not by the obvious – the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the beaches. I’m inspired by something altogether more impressive – the attitude of my 21 year old son...
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Relationship is EVERYTHING!
Interesting article in the Daily Telegraph recently. An NHS patient survey has revealed the large proportion of patients who complain that doctors do not build an effective relationship with them...
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