Blog Posts

Read our free blog posts and gain knowledge, insights, tips and techniques

Lessons From the Apprentice – Design a New Gadget

Communication, Leadership, Lessons From the Apprentice
This weeks task on the Apprentice was to design and pitch a new household gadget.  Lord Sugar said that the success of the task would be very much down to the concept as the team who secured the most orders from two major retailers would win. The boys led by Azhar decided to focus on ... Read more

Lessons From the Apprentice – Print It and Sell It

Leadership, Lessons From the Apprentice, Sales and Selling
So on the day the latest budget was announced, the new series of the BBC’s Apprentice starts.  Lord Alan Sugar has 12 new contestants competing for an investment in starting a new business, having him as a business partner. I can’t help but think – New Series, Same Lessons? Have these people not seen the ... Read more

Lessons from the Apprentice Returns This Evening

Lessons From the Apprentice
It’s back, the new series of the Apprentice starts this evening, and as we did in the last series we will be reviewing the lessons that we can learn the approaches that the contestants take during their tasks. Look out for our weekly posts by our Managing Director David Lumley as he gives his take ... Read more

Should We Put People Into Boxes?

Attitude and Behaviour, Training and Development, Training Consultancy, Training Delivery
Business models are something that is widely used in training courses to help delegates remember skills and make applying learning much more effective. Many of these are related to behaviour and requires us to categorise people. Is it wrong to do this? We take a look in this post.

How Am I Being Perceived?

Attitude and Behaviour
Do you ever wonder what other people think of you or how am I being perceived? Being more self-aware can change the perceptions that other people have of you. In this post, we look at how to understand how you are being perceived.

Time Management – Managing Your Email Inbox

Time Management
Do you get swamped by emails and find yourself spending more time looking for things and working on things? In this post, we look at some tips for managing your email inbox.

How to Influence Your Manager

Influencing
Do you want your manager to do things a different way or to take on-board ideas that you have. If yes, then you will need to influence them to come around to your way of thinking. In this post we look at some tips for how to influence your manager.

Diagnosing Behaviour and How to Change It

Attitude and Behaviour, Influencing
Behaviour and attitude can be a difficult thing to understand, particularly when you are a leader who has team members displaying negative behaviour. In this post, we look at how to find out what is going on by diagnosing behaviour and how to correct it.

What is Experiential Learning?

Training and Development, Training Consultancy, Training Processes
[toc] What is Experiential Learning? Experiential Learning is the process of learning through a direct experience or simply put learning from experience. This means that learning is accomplished by staging certain scenarios or exercises that delegates get involved in and learn from this experience instead of listening to a trainer or lecturer talking about a ... Read more

Undercover Boss – The Lessons to Learn From the Series

Training and Development
Having just watched the last episode of the series of Undercover Boss, I think there are some key lessons that we can learn from each of the episodes. Here are my thoughts on the lessons from the series: Poor Communication Leads to Poor Performance – When a business grows it can be easy to lose ... Read more