CIPD Festival Of Work — 10-11 June 2026, Excel London UK. Visit us at stand E71 (opposite the Social Cafe) to talk to us about your engagement challenges
‘Annual performance review’ -three words that frequently strike terror into the hearts of team leaders and team members alike. For the former they represent endless form filling and back to back awkward conversations in stuffy rooms. For the latter they mean self-justification, and uncomfortable, stilted discussions with the boss. This may be a slight exaggeration, but it’s certainly true […]
Talking recently with a group of communicators from the pharmaceutical sector, the conversation turned to the placebo effect – where medicines which have no active ingredient are given to patients for psychological rather than physiological reasons. In other words, the drugs themselves will have no chemical impact, but often the belief that they are doing some good heartens the patient and this can aid […]
I attended a European Referendum debate in my local Methodist church last week. As you’d expect the debate made it’s way round to sovereignty and as I sat there listening to the two sides of the argument I couldn't help but think how similar the concepts of sovereignty and values are. For a start, both are concepts we feel are […]
After 15 years of helping companies lead people through change you’ll be unsurprised to know that we have created an approach to help organisations engage and lead people through a change, so that the business benefits are achieved. Today I want to focus on one action that we insist on implementing when meeting with potential clients who ask us to help them take people through change. It’s low tech and not revolutionary, but I […]
A question we get asked a lot is about how to lead and engage remote workers. This is a key challenge within the construction industry with employees out on sites. Working with our clients Kier Group & Balfour Beatty we have learnt a huge amount about these topics over the last few years. What is really […]
‘Less is more’ – the saying attributed to architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is usually taken to mean that simplicity, clarity and focus enable effective and productive design. He was talking about buildings, but increasingly we are seeing a similar approach to leadership development. Up until quite recently, clients were often focused on quantity and intensity when we were designing programmes – […]
“But we’ve told them a thousand times….” or words to that effect. We hear this a lot from exasperated executive teams when we give them Inpulse results saying that people don’t know the organisation’s strategy. Often, they have done that, but in ways which fail to register with people, inspire them and help them play […]
It’s crucial that leaders are constantly thinking about how to reengage and refocus their employees. The first task is to refocus people, remind them where the organisation is headed, recap on strategic messages and review successes so far. This can take place at several levels – the CEO in some organisations sends out a video message and/or stages a series […]
“One part Churchill, two parts Princess Diana” was how one of our clients recently described what was demanded of her as a successful leader in a modern day organization. This was certainly an intriguing mental image, but one which made sense as she went on to describe her experiences. What she said also reflected what […]
‘So, what advice would you give Donald Trump, then?’ a client recently asked in a leadership workshop. We’d been talking about what we can learn from world leaders past and present. The news that week was that the President’s approval rating had reached its lowest ever level at 35%, so it was a topical question, […]
