Blog

Curiosity is a crucial ingredient in making a leader successful.   The ability to build a high performing team and lead organisations requires many attributes including sound judgment, confidence, authenticity and the vision to take your company forward. And the greatest, it could be argued, is to have curiosity.   As learning and development consultants here at Excel, we sometimes find that clients on our programmes have many great leadership traits. However, some don’t […]

Here are the critical components of influence.  Did you notice that at some point in the last few years, Millennials started to take over the workforce?   There are nearly seventeen million millennials in the UK, making up over a quarter of the total population. Millennials already make up the largest generational workforce in the UK – with them expected to dominate the UK workforce by 2020.  Projections state […]

Feedback – often delivered formally at annual reviews, can strike fear into the hearts of employees at every level.   For those receiving it, it can seem critical, sometimes harsh or unfair. For those delivering it, it can be a delicate balance between providing encouragement to the employee and flagging performance that is under par.  Feedback is a crucial part of development – or is it? Used […]

Intro  When you work in the training and development space, as I do with Excel, it’s pretty common to have ‘off the wall’ conversations with people about human nature and behaviour.  Particularly when you deliver programmes which help people improve their personal impact.  I guess this is a natural human trait; if I am in this box, does it make […]

Intro  For those of you that are regular subscribers of this podcast you’ll know I am a massive advocate of some of the more innovative ideas about making our organisation‘s great places to work.  Though one of my passions shouldn’t really be called innovative in some companies, it still is…..  ….. guessed what it is yet?  Wellbeing.  Last […]

You might think that by now, in the 21st century, we’d finally got over the whole ‘Men are from Mars’ thing, but to be honest, it’s never gone away. (If you’re not familiar with this book, it basically states that fundamental psychological differences between the sexes is the cause of all their communication problems.) I […]

I was incredibly flattered a few weeks ago to be nominated as one of the role models on the Inside Out Leader Board, which is an organisation whose aim is to smash the stigma of mental health in the workplace and it stimulated me to record this episode too. I won’t go into a huge […]

Over the last few weeks, I have had a Netflix binge! No, not the latest series of Ozark or G.L.O.W, I know I do have an eclectic taste! Instead, I have watched several different developmental documentaries. One that stood out was from Dr Brené Brown, the New York Times bestselling author and vulnerability researcher. I […]

Stress is a very real problem in companies across the globe.  Have you ever had an employee who is highly engaged to perform and loves their job?  They are happy to work long hours, ensuring their team are appropriately managed, dealing with deadlines while simultaneously organising everything.   Then suddenly they crash; physically and emotionally exhausted from burning the candle at both ends, trying to do too much, lacking a good night’s sleep […]