As the end of the year approaches, the pressure ramps up. Between looming deadlines, social obligations, and festive preparations, many of us feel stretched thin and emotionally frazzled. A friend recently shared a message that stuck with me: “The first Christmas was pretty simple. It’s OK if yours is too.” This season doesn’t have to […]
Have you have been part of a meeting where the real conversation never happened? Have you been in a room where everyone was aware of what the real issue was but no one was willing to name it? Have you ever wondered what it would take to shift a lacklustre meeting into an engaged dialogue? […]
Positivity is more than a self-help cliché; it’s a transformative force shaping movements and leadership […]
It was a pinch-me moment to be in Toronto this month teaching dialogue skills to the Schmidt Science Fellows. Why would scientists even consider let alone invest in this approach? […]
With the UK general election only a week away, our news streams and TV screens have been full of fractious discussions and accusation slinging. “Politican’s staff room squabbles” is how Rachel Cooke in The New Statesman summed up the recent TV election debates. After watching Rishi Sunak and Kier Starmer go head to head, she […]
Ayesha’s voice sounded tight as she spoke. “I’m struggling and I wonder if you can help? It’s my boss. He speaks at 10,000 miles an hour and I can hardly get a word in. None of us can. We have team meetings that aren’t really ‘meetings’ at all.” This sounded familiar. Many of the managers […]
Decades of research tells us that about half of organisational decisions fail to achieve their goals. They either unravel after a meeting has ended or have unintended consequences. Many meetings don’t end in decisions being made. As we all know, waiting to see what happens is often not an effective way to make a decision. […]
Knowing your preferred ‘reactive tendency’ is key to moving past your limitation and leveraging your strength instead. […]
Avoiding or botching difficult conversations bites into a business. One client I worked with came up with three types of meeting where good conversation wasn’t happening. All of these dysfunctional meetings cost a business as problems fester, decisions unravel and mistakes are made. Can you relate to any of the following? The dominated meeting. One […]
Having a meaningful conversation can be challenging at the best of times. When we want to speak about something that matters – whether with a family member, colleague or friend – many of us withdraw rather than talk. We decide that it’s not the right time, we don’t have the necessary skills or that the […]
As the Board members and I filed into the meeting room, the chattiness of the conversations over coffee that we’d just been having died down. The tone became more serious as laptops and smartphones were put away and my co-facilitator cleared his throat to speak. I watched carefully noting that people appeared to be nervous […]
The news that King Charles has cancer has prompted messages of support from across the world. Rishi Sunak announced it has been ‘caught early’, and both Joe Biden and Donald Trump sent their best. Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly expressed their good wishes as they start to work […]
Management culture often makes a mess of meetings. Group think means conviviality trumps people telling the truth. Managers are disconnected from the people they serve and make decisions in a vacuum. When mistakes are made, the ‘blame game’ starts rather than managers seeking to learn from what has gone wrong. These dynamics have all played […]