When I was 21years old I went for an interview to Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne, Switzerland and they expected some work experience in a hotel. So I applied to the Hilton in Basel and I was accepted for a three week internship.  On my first day of work I walked into a beautiful carpeted lobby with stunning views all around and was directed to the basement. Here it was hot, dark and my job was to fold sheets coming off enormous rollers. My co-workers were immigrants who did not speak English or German and they were interacting amongst themselves all the...

I came across this feel good story and I have been thinking how it can be used in a business context. In a hilly corner of India children are lining up with bags of plastic waste as school fees. In June 2016 Parmita Sarma and Mazin Mukhtar started a small school called The Akshar  (Alphabet) School in Assam.   In winter the classrooms would fill with toxic fumes from burning plastic waste which the people used to keep warm. This was a common practice as the people were unaware of the serious harm to their health and to the environment.  Determined to...

On Monday 25th May 2020, Amy Cooper, a white woman called the police to rescue her from an African American man (Christian Cooper - no relative) who was bird watching in Central park. He asked her to leash her dog who was thrashing around and disturbing the peace. He began videotaping the encounter as she disregarded the park rules and his request, and this upset Amy. When he refused to stop recording she threatened to call the police. Despite no apparent movement towards her or any threat from Christian she told 911 that she and her dog were being threatened...

I came across this story and it resonated with me and I have been thinking how it can be used in a business context. Jyoti Kumari a 15-year-old girl from a village in Bihar came to Delhi to take care of her father after he got injured in an accident. The lockdown was announced on 25th March with immediate effect leaving them stranded and with limited money for food or medicines. They were desperate to get home as they were facing eviction and starvation. Since the expansive railway system and public transport was closed, the only solution that came to...

Last week I had coaching calls with people from around the world; based in Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Vietnam, Amsterdam, Singapore & Cambodia. Our conversations were centered around the virus and how it was impacting work and life. Before the Pandemic tsunami hit, some of them had been given new jobs, new roles, new projects are suddenly left rudderless as they don’t know what the future holds. Working virtually people are discovering that they can be more blunt or confident because there is no physical proximity to embarrass or intimidate. Virtual communication also makes it harder to pick up...

“If I was in your position….” “That sounds like a good idea….” “When that happened to me, I did this…..” “I would suggest….” How often, when working to develop coaching skills, do you hear interventions like those above, closely followed by a groan and a recognition that once again, the inexperienced coach has fallen into the trap of giving opinions or relating personal experiences?   In my experience one of the hardest things to overcome in coaching is the innate desire to ‘help’ and this generally plays out in giving advice. As we develop our coaching skills we need to recognise...

The world has been experiencing disruption in many places and industries for several years now. Though the Global Financial Crisis felt like a major disaster having worldwide repercussions, the impact of the Corona Virus is more widespread. It is highly contagious and transmits easily from human to human, making it difficult to contain and control. The way for any person or business to cope with disruption is to have resilience.  Most dictionaries define resilience as the ability to recover quickly. In times of continuous pressure and change, resilience is often cited as one of the key attributes of successful leaders...

I read a lot about leadership, and not just because I’m professionally interested in leadership. What people write about leadership is a great source of insight into how they are viewing business organisations, and what they are thinking about how those organisations are likely to evolve. I’m particularly drawn to well-considered writing about leadership development, because dissatisfaction with the leadership pipeline is a good indicator of how quickly organisations are changing. This past summer I came across a great article by Josh Bersin entitled “Why Leadership Development feels broken and how we’re fixing it” Bersin considers the way that traditional...

There are a great number of activities that a facilitator can build into an intervention with the purpose of building trust between participants. However, there’s a different, and potentially more important, interpersonal trust relationship that exists in the training room, and ought to be given priority in opening any programme of learning. This is the trust that needs to exist between the facilitator and every one of the learners, and it needs to exist on both an individual and collective level. Ignore this relationship at your peril! So why is it important? How do I establish and maintain it? How...

You don’t need to dig deeply into the literature of Leadership Development before you find advocates of ‘learning on the job’. Strong voices tell us that the best way for leaders to hone their skills is through the first-hand practice of leadership itself. I’ve got some sympathy for this viewpoint, there are some parts of leadership development that benefit from an ‘in at the deep-end approach’, it’s a great way of recognising the adaptability and resilience needed to do the job well, and it blows away the idea that you can learn leadership straight from a book. But I’d suggest...

What does it take to become an effective facilitator of learning? Over the last 25 years, RSVP Design have been involved with the development of trainer training programmes for trainers and facilitators around the world. These have included: Supporting corporate trainers to use more experiential learning methods in their in-house training programmes Helping managers to offer more immediate, on-the-spot performance improvement Developing instructional training skills for medical and technical professionals involved in international health programmes, such as the global drive to eliminate polio Developing pure facilitation skills for those working to resolve conflict, develop strategy or support innovation in their...