As part of a recent team meeting I invited each team member to share their (current) favourite Personal Development book and it was one of my highlights of the day. I can’t invite you to one of our meetings, but I can share with you the books that were recommended in that session and a flavour of the discussion...

Recently, I’ve read several reports on research that shows a drop in employee engagement over the past twelve months. It’s not really surprising that employees who have been working at home for over a year feel less connected and less involved and perhaps care a bit less about the organisation than they did when they reported for work in an office five days a week.

For me, there isn’t much that beats the pleasure of a good book. I love to lose myself completely in a story. As a child, I used to read under the bedcovers at night. As a student, I would reward myself for ploughing through academic papers and text books by stealing an hour to read fiction.

In many ways changing behaviour is the holy grail of learning and development these days. But actually changing behaviour - although it may be the object of a training programme - isn't always the end result. Because in fact changing your own behaviour, or indeed changing someone else's, isn't that easy...

This week marks a full year since the first time I held a meeting of my team via zoom. We’d been due to have one of our full-day team meetings, but with the looming threat of COVID-19, I decided on the day before to switch to a virtual meeting.

Explaining what personality types are all about is quite a big task, but there are some aspects of personality that are quite easy to spot and they can be helpful...

Towards the end of the first UK-wide lockdown in 2020, I had a conversation with a client about a Leadership Development programme. We talked at length about the pros and cons of doing it online. I eventually wrote this paper, to capture the arguments for and against.

I often get asked: "What is NLP?" and I could give you an official definition or a couple of one-sentence answers. But NLP is a rich and complex field and, I think, merits a fuller explanation.

I was having a conversation with a friend about the break-up of his long-term relationship. “Apparently,” he said, “I’m difficult to live with.” Well, he’s my friend. So I won’t hear a word against him. But it did get me thinking about why it can be hard for two people who love each other to share a home without driving each other crazy.

It’s often been said that British people are obsessed with the weather. It’s true that we do talk about the weather a lot, and it’s usually the easiest way to make ‘small talk’ with a British resident.

What are your development goals for this year? Mine include developing the skill to create the same magic in an online training as I’m used to seeing on site, venturing into the world of podcasts and finding a way to read a few more from that mountain of books I keep adding to…

‘Coaching ‘is one of those words that means different things to different people. It’s often confused with Mentoring and sometimes means little more than giving feedback. Here’s my take on what it means and why it’s useful…