Blogs & Articles

The shift towards digital learning is becoming inevitable. The convenience and cost-saving of learning taking place ‘on demand’ at the learners own desk or home is the biggest driver. It is highly likely that there is an element of online learning already taking place within your organisation – quite possibly done by individuals using their own initiative because of the growing wealth of content that exists on the Internet.

In our experience, when asked to score out of 10 (with 10 being high), people generally give their positivity 6 out of 10. The vast majority of people that we work with have some degree of negativity and tend to be unconsciously negative, often in denial of it, and unaware of how much we let the negativity of others affect our mood.

How we communicate with others undoubtedly has a dramatic, profound and sometimes everlasting effect on how we are perceived as a person generally and certainly determines what kind of reaction we are likely to elicit from those around us in the moment.

How many times have you been chairing or attending a meeting to discuss a specific topic / project and attendees start talking at cross purposes and before you know it personal conflict arises and initial objective for the meeting is lost.

The introduction of GROW into coaching conversations has provided a clear, structured process that pretty much anyone can follow with a bit of guidance. The coaching conversation using GROW has 4 components:

“E-phem-what??” is something I imagine many reading this are currently thinking. If I’m being honest, it’s a word that I have only just discovered myself. So what does it mean? We live in a World where social media drives our lives and ephemeral content is something that is short lived and after that it disappears forever. Think Snapchat – the photo and video application with over 10 billion views every day and no content lasting more than 24 hours. Because of that deadline, there is the urgency to see it and share it before it is gone forever.

Recent insights and discoveries in neuroscience have shared the importance and given credibility to the role of intuition in leadership, especially when it comes to decision making. What is intuition? It's what results when we piece things together, information, experience etc., to come up with something different or new that a single observation or thought may not have identified.

Someone said to me recently that although they knew we delivered leadership and management training as well as commercial courses at Maguire Training and it was clear at to what these are, they were less clear about, ‘What exactly does personal development mean?’ and it prompted me to think carefully about the answer because I had previously thought it to be obvious.

The Change Model is a framework for any change programme which is seeking to achieve transformational, sustainable change. The model has eight elements that should be considered when leading change:

To become an effective leader you need to be skilled in both giving praise and criticism. While praise is generally easier to give it can be far more challenging for managers to offer negative feedback to a colleague or member of their team.

What makes a good listener? There are a thousand and one training courses available to us that will teach us the many skills required of a good listener. All will no doubt be full of good stuff and they are often combined with other forms of outgoing communication skills such as use of words, pace, pitch, tone and of course body language etc. However, this piece will focus purely on listening as a skill or indeed a craft and assess whether everything that we have been taught is actually being put into practise. As evidence would seem to suggest that the nature of listening appears to be slowly changing in its very essence.

NHS Productivity Keeping up with the demands is challenging, however, it is suggested that rethinking how to attain greater productivity and the way this is measured, may alleviate some of the pressures. Productivity is a simple comparison between the outputs produced by the NHS i.e. the amount and quality of care provided, with the inputs used to produce them i.e. staff, equipment, drugs clinical supplies etc. Improved productivity can be achieved through efficiency and cost measures or alternatively by getting better value from the existing budget.