Blogs & Articles

The 70 / 20 /10 principle is well known across the learning and development community as being a great blend of professional training, support and coaching from key influences around the business and learning whilst you work.

Maybe we’re slow to pick up on new acronyms. Sometimes they just pass us by and we’re doing them without realising. The latest, seen on an e-learning blog, is something we have been offering for years.

You often hear the phrase “Death by PowerPoint”, it is generally the go-to tool whenever you are tasked with giving a presentation. The issue when the audience switches off to a presentation with lots of detail given by slides isn’t necessarily that the tool is being used in the first place – PowerPoint is a great starting place for planning a presentation – it’s just that the presenter becomes too reliant on that format and too predictable.

Microlearning can be defined as delivering content to learners in small, discrete chunks. Where there is a library of content available, the learner is in control of what and when they’re learning. For a long time, this has been referred to as “bite-sized’ or “snackable” learning as it’s easily digestable and fits in with busy scheduled.

What is coaching? Coaching is a style of management in which the manager encourages people to reach their full potential by encouraging self-belief and self-development. Self-belief gives people the drive to achieve their potential. Self-development gives them the means.

Coaching and guidance by the line manager is a fundamental learning activity and it’s worth noting that the CIPD’s Who Learns at Work? survey found that only 21% had received one-to-one coaching from their line manager in the previous year. Without support to apply or consolidate, 60% of learned knowledge and skill stops being applied on the job within 90 days from the end of the learning.

For more and more of us the prospect of working remotely is becoming a stark reality for many and varied reasons. It could be that the commute to work is becoming more onerous with busier roads, a change in job role or personal circumstances or indeed space starts getting tight in the office which often happens in a thriving business.

What is development? Development is improving your performance. It is different from learning. Learning is either knowing something new or acquiring a new skill. Development is behaving differently and better. You can learn without developing although you can't develop without learning. Learning is about improving your capacity whereas development is about improving your performance.

Let’s get one thing clear – the majority of people don’t like confrontation. It generally isn’t a pleasant thing and should a conflict situation be present for a long time then it can have a negative effect on workplace harmony. There are some people who actively seek out battles – people who prey on the weak and revel in ‘winning’ by being more dominant. These people make it difficult as a leader or manager because the issue is often their behaviour as opposed to an event or issue that can be resolved.

What is innovation? Innovation is much talked about subject at the moment but there are a lot of business leaders out there that can’t seem to agree on what it actually is, what it means and how embed into their organisations. The google definition is not that helpful either; “the action or process of innovating”

Nomophobia – anxiety over being separated from your smartphone – it actually has been given a name and more and more people are admitting having the condition. Research has shown that on average, we touch our phones 2617 times a day, with the top 10% ‘power users’ racking up 5,427 touches (source: dscout.com).

How important is creativity in writing? Well I suppose that mostly depends on what you are writing and who it is intended for. With a love letter or an essay on the life and times of Shakespeare or even writing in a business context such as a sales proposal or management restructure document, it could be argued that a dollop of creativity in the writing of it would improve the reader experience somewhat. Conversely with a shopping list, witness statement or audit report, all we really need are the facts.