Calm and Bright: Navigating Difficult Conversations This Festive Season

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 […]

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Turn tension into triumph

Turning Tensions in Triumph - Group Discussion

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 […]

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The challenge of speaking out

Team Communication

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 […]

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Not to decide is to decide

senior leadership team having a dialogue to reach a decision

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. […]

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Could a conversation actually make matters worse?

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 […]

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How to communicate effectively during corona virus

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 […]

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When the stakes go up

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 […]

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Slay the silence

Two people in dialogue having a difficult conversation, breaking the Silence

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 […]

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