Wordsmiths

February 19, 2022

Feeding Back Effectively: tips to help keep feedback helpful and constructive

In the last blog, we discussed how facilitating good feedback should be a priority for leaders. It’s critical for improving the performance of your team. But what is best practice when it comes to delivering that feedback? To be truly effective, feedback needs to fulfil these criteria: Timely If you had to pick one vital component to make feedback effective, it’s timing. Feedback conversations – whether positive or negative in nature – are most effective when they’re held as soon as possible after the event. Relevance wanes after a while – […]

January 19, 2022

Performance Management – how to make it work for everyone

Hybrid working arrangements are fast becoming the norm for a great many businesses which would normally have people working in an office. But a blend of people home-working alongside dedicated time in the office can throw up as many issues for leaders as it solves – including that of performance management. How can leaders effectively manage their team’s performance in a post-pandemic world? Performance management might traditionally be framed as a formal meeting between leadership and team member, blocked out in the diary a couple of times a year. But […]

November 24, 2021

Reflective Questioning – what leaders should be asking themselves now

The pandemic has changed our working practices – perhaps forever. While some people have returned to the office full-time, many are continuing to work entirely from home, with others developing a hybrid arrangement of home and workplace. It’s a period of flux, but it’s also the perfect opportunity to reflect – not least about what we want from leadership. Sharing expectations Your organisation’s situation may be different now – the world around it has changed immeasurably. Objectives and goals may have shifted – and it’s also possible that your team […]

October 12, 2021

Modern Leadership – the last 40 years

As more people return to the workplace with the lifting of coronavirus restrictions, the demands of managing a blended working arrangement of home and office are unprecedented. Managing those who may be anxious about or unaccustomed to their new working set-up places new demands on management. Now is an ideal opportunity to ask questions about the sort of leadership that is most effective in a changed, post-pandemic world. Reflecting on the last four phases of modern leadership can provide an insight into how evolving management styles have altered the working […]

September 11, 2021

Workplace habits – adapting after the pandemic

If you have worked in an office during any part of your career, there are some things that are just comfortingly familiar, regardless of who you work for. Having someone else make you a brew as part of a round. Catching up with a colleague hogging the photocopier to pass the time until your printing is done. Shaking hands with your visitors as you welcome them to your site. But what happens when these corporate comforts are no longer appropriate? Alongside vaccination, social distancing and enhanced hygiene measures are still […]

August 26, 2021

Is work/life blend the better aspiration?

Is work/life blend the better aspiration? In our blog ‘The new normal’ we explored the immediate reactions that going back to work could cause. There’s a very real transition that many will need to make and it’s important to start preparing how you want to deal with this change. There’s also the long-game to think about. We’ve had almost 18-mths of more flexible, agile working that recognises outputs and delivery more than physical presence in an office. As a society, we’ve shown that we can change, quickly, and make it […]

July 26, 2021

Getting ready for the ‘new normal’

The new normal – it’s a phrase everyone is using but the interesting thing for me is that as we do look forward, it’s likely that nothing is going to feel normal for quite a while yet. Much of what we get stability from in our daily routines has changed or shifted. For the last 18-months, many people have no longer needed to commute to work, or do the tea-round for more than just yourself. Smalltalk has been limited to the few minutes on a video call before a meeting […]

June 28, 2021

Part 2: Resilience – putting your resilience into bootcamp

Personal development, whether in the workplace or at home, is something we associate with learning a new skill or getting better at one we already have. However, as a general rule we tend to focus on more practical subjects whilst not always creating space to develop our emotional skills. Conversely though, by investing more in our emotional intelligence, performance improvements are usually a welcome consequence. Our levels of resilience, as we discussed in our last blog, are to some extent pre-programmed and no amount of brain-training is going to change […]

May 13, 2021

Part 1: Resilience – the term everyone’s talking about

After the unprecedented challenges of the last year, there are many things we will have all learnt about ourselves. From better understanding your tolerance for working alone at home, experimenting with how to better manage your work/life balance or even how to incorporate more personal health and wellness into your life, we had a unique opportunity to try things at a different pace and in a different way. The global health pandemic had been a once in a lifetime event that has touched us all in some form. Both the […]

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