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| Administration |
This gives information about the sliding scale of fees, cancellation arrangements and chargeable expenses. |
| Appreciative Inquiry |
Appreciative Inquiry is a very easy, powerful and positive way to enable change. You start by looking at what works and how to make this better. Radical! |
| Case examples |
These pages give stories about the work. They describe the present situation, what we did about it and the results. |
| Developmental books |
These list the books, both fiction and non-fiction, that have helped me most. |
| Ezines |
The Practical Developmental Ideas Ezines are in subject order. |
| Ezines - by Date |
This free ezine has developmental ideas and tools that I hope you will find useful. If you have developmental issues you would like me to cover, please say so in the feedback box or call me. |
| For Consultants and Trainers |
These ideas are for consultants and trainers that want to develop people or organisations. |
| For Individuals |
These ideas are for individuals who want to develop themselves. |
| For Managers |
These ideas are for managers who wish to develop people. |
| My services |
This shows how the tools and consultancy about listening can help managers and organisations be more effective. |
| Site Articles |
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| Testimonials |
These are comments made by recent users of my services. Click the links for more detail. If you would like to talk to any of the people, please contact me. |
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| A poem |
| This is a poem I wrote in a poetry workshop. It means a lot to me. |
| Accelerating Learning |
| Infants learn much faster than adults do. What can we do to recover these abilities and help others do the same?
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| Appraisal |
| This suggests several alternative ways to appraise staff and a process for managing this.
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| Appreciation |
| Genuine appreciation is a simple and powerful way to develop and motivate staff |
| Appreciation - Ezine 2003 |
| It is odd that everyone likes to be and feel appreciated and that it is so rewarding to give, yet there is not much about in organisations and families. I give some thoughts on why this happens and some practical things we can do about it. |
| Appreciations Exercise |
| This is a simple way for you to end a workshop. Everyone leaves feeling positive about themselves and has something to treasure, including you. |
| Appreciations Exercise |
| This is a simple way to end a workshop. Everyone leaves feeling positive about themselves and has something to treasure. |
| Appreciative Conference Session |
| This conference session used appreciative inquiry to help people develop their team working, learning and customer service. |
| Appreciative Inquiry by Kendi Rossi |
| This describes a very positive and energising way to manage change that starts from what is working well to help people build their future together.
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| Appropriate and inappropriate help |
| This exercise will help you think about how to help other people. This is not always easy as not all "Help" is helpful. You can use it in a small group or one to one.
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| Attention- Ezine August 2005 |
| Attention is wonderful to receive and rewarding to give, but there is not much of it around in our busy lives. This ezine gives a few ideas about how to give and have more. |
| Being and Doing - Ezine |
| This explores this paradox that we spend our time doing, but are happiest and most effective being. It suggests some ways we can heal this split |
| Best Practice in Facilitating Groups |
| This gives a simple process to help professionals share their best practice and learn from each other. It uses facilitating skills as an example but is applicable much more widely.
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| Building Peace |
| This is an edited version of an older article that gives some ideas on how to build peace in the world around youand in yourself. This may be helpful now.
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| Business Highlights |
| This lists some of my most successful pieces of work. It may help you see how I could help you. |
| Business Services |
| This lists some of the services I offer with links to more information |
| Career Crisis Counselling |
| Individual and/or small group work to help people express their feelings about the crisis, decide what they want to do and work powerfully and effectively to achieve it.
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| Career Crisis Counselling |
| A person needs to fully express any negative feelings about their situation and story and be heard. Then she or he can work on practical things. |
| Career Development Workshop |
| This helps people help each other think about what they want to do and go about looking for a new job. It is backed by a series of handouts.
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| Chinese Puzzle |
| This is a very simple, quick and enjoyable exercise that can help people in a group get closer and take a few more risks. |
| Choosing work |
| This simple tool can help people decide what sort of work is right for them.
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| Coaching |
| Brief note on the how and why of coaching.
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| Coconsulting |
| This is a very simple, quick and effective way for people to help each other. It will improve effectiveness and morale and stop problems escalating. |
| Coconsulting - introduction |
| This introduces people quickly to the practice of "coconsulting". Two people take equal turns listening to and supporting each other. The introductory session can be both rewarding and great fun.
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| Coconsulting - summary |
| Coconsulting is the simplest process for two people to exchange help with each other effectively. This article is a brief description of how to do it.
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| Cocounselling |
| This describes the simplest and most profound approach to improving human functioning that I know.
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| Community - Ezine February 2007 |
| We live in a world of intense threat and great opportunity. This is also true at the smaller scale of an organisation. We will only make progress by working together. So building community is vital.
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| Conference using Appreciative Inquiry |
| This conference used appreciative inquiry to help people develop their team working, learning and customer service. It was positive and successful. |
| Conflict - Ezine August 2004 |
| This issue is about how to handle and resolve conflict. We often see conflict as destructive and it can be if mishandled. When you handle conflict well it can lead to magnificent creativity and growth.
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| Consultancy to a Director |
| A Director had less than a day to turn around an IT project that was going horribly wrong. We talked about it for an afternoon and decided what to do. He did it, and it worked. |
| Core Process |
| This describes how to help a person discover what is the core of what she/he does that is consistently satisfying and effective. This is very useful for career and life planning and leadership.
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| Core Process - Appreciating who you are |
| You tell your story to an interested listener and think about your peak experiences using a simple tool. As a result you learn what you are on the planet to do. The experience is profound. |
| Counselling skills |
| The article describes the skills required to help the other person, the client, help him/her self. It also explains how counselling works.
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| Counselling Skills Workshop |
| A small multidisciplinary group of managers learned counselling skills to help their subordinates develop and build their team. They also built their own team. |
| Creative Organisation |
| This gives some ideas on what makes an organisation creative and how personal and organisation development can help.
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| Creativity - Ezine September 2004 |
| This issue is about how releasing creativity. I don't agree with the conventional view that only a few "special" people can be creative. There is a lot we can do to help release creativity from everyone, including ourselves. |
| Crisis Counselling |
| A man was being intimidating and verbally abusive. His job was on the line if he did not change his behaviour. I helped him understand himself better and he changed permanently. |
| Cultural awareness exercise |
| This simple activity helps people understand and value their own and others' cultures. They also appreciate that they can learn from each other. |
| Customer Care Workshop |
| This workshop helped a team in Local Government develop their strategy for improving customer care in their Council. They also learned to value each other and how to work well together.
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| Design of Learning Events |
| This describes the principles that lead to effective learning events such as away days or courses. It also gives two designs that how these principles were applied in practice.
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| Design of Learning Events - Ezine November 2004 |
| This issue is about the design of learning events. There are some principles and methods that can make learning events enjoyable and productive. When they work, learning events can make a big difference to an organisation. When they don't, they create cynicism that is very hard to shift. |
| Designing developmental workshops for a client |
| A European Employee Development Director wanted to develop people and teams across Europe, including Eastern Europe and Russia. I helped him design, develop and test workshops which he ran successfully across Europe, with excellent results. |
| Developing everybody |
| Everybody has more untapped talent. This article gives some ways to develop everybody. |
| Developing the plateauxed manager |
| This gives some ideas on how to develop the older manager who may feel or be stuck in her/his career. It also discusses alternative career paths to the conventional "vertical" one.
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| Developmental Culture |
| This describes some of the features of an ideal culture to support development and some things you can do to create one.
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| Developmental Culture -Ezine December 2004 |
| This issue has some ideas on what a developmental culture is and how we can develop one. In a developmental culture, learning happens easily without you having to drive it. |
| Developmental Meetings |
| A developmental meeting is a meeting to think about how to do things better. This describes how to run one effectively. |
| Director, Regulatory Body |
| "For senior managers in any organisation the opportunities for a really unbiased and supportive discussion about management issues are very few. " |
| Eliminating work |
| Much of the work people do in organisations is unnecessary. This gives a few practical ways to reduce this waste.
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| Emotional Blocks -Ezine June/July 2004 |
| This is about the causes of emotional blocks that can affect any area of a person's work or life. It gives some ways to remove them, illustrated with examples.
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| Employee Involvement - Ezine March 2005 |
| This issue is about ways to involve employees. People who work for organisations often have ideas and thoughts that could make all the difference but they don't express them. This note gives some practical ways to release them.
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| Evaluation of Training |
| This discusses several ways to evaluate the business benefits of developmental training. All will give valuable insights but none give rigorous proof. |
| Experience transfer |
| The transfer process involves the learner integrating into their experience 'missing' pieces from the teacher's experience (mental map) which make sense to the learner.
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| Extending Team Building |
| Have you considered building team work between pairs of people or within systems. Both can produce good results. |
| Facing Personal Change |
| How change affects people and how to cope with its personal effects. This uses dealing with redundancy as an example, but the ideas are universal. |
| Fun and learning |
| We are very good at learning and, if the circumstances are right find, it both fun and rewarding. This gives some simple ideas about how to make learning fun. |
| Fun and Learning - Ezine May 2005 |
| This is about fun and learning. It has some ideas about how to make learning events and the organisation more fun and more creative.
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| Improving a complex system |
| An organisation had a complex system for testing a potentially hazardous raw material. The manager and I helped the operators of the system simplify and improve it themselves. |
| Improving Systems |
| Helping the people who operate and use systems to improve them. This usually involves making systems much simpler. People work hard to carry out their own improvements.
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| Individual Consultancy |
| This helps people think more clearly and act more powerfully on the issues that are important to them. It gives busy people time and space to think. |
| Influencing Skills |
| These are the vital skills we all need to gain the co-operation of others in the long term.
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| Influencing Skills |
| These are the vital skills we all need to gain the co-operation of others in the long term.
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| Influencing Skills Course |
| This is an example of a two-day version of this course. It helps people use a model of influencing and practice it in role-plays that the participants design themselves.
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| Influencing Skills Homework |
| These questions, models and exercises will help people prepare for an influencing skills course or anyone think about their influencing of others.
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| Influencing Skills Training |
| This improves people's ability and willingness to influence others in a work setting and so help organisational and personal change. The skills are vital for effective and successful management.
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| Installing Love |
| Inspiring and funny conversation between "Tech support" and a customer wishing to "Install Love". Thanks to the unknown author. |
| Intercultural Understanding |
| These exercises were very effective at building intercultural understanding in the context of a short course. |
| Intercultural workshops |
| This is a story about a recent piece of work designing intercultural workshops. It shows how I worked with a client and what came from it. |
| Intervening in Organisations |
| This describes briefly things you can do to help individuals, teams and interfaces between teams and organisations become more effective.
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| Large Group Development Day |
| This article describes the structure, process, planning, what happened and the outcomes of a development day for a large administration department.
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| Levels of human communication |
| There are five levels of communication that people use. We overuse being critical and judgemental and underuse sharing feelings. Sharing feelings helps us solve problems. |
| Life goals map |
| The things you do and think today create the future you live in tomorrow. A simple mapping tool can help you focus your thinking so you are more likely to live the life you want.
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| Lifeline |
| Use this to help someone think about his/her life and the peak experiences that give it meaning. The exercise can be very useful to build a group or team when people want to build trust and mutual understanding.
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| Listening |
| Listening is one the most valuable, rare and underrated social skill there is. It is a vital skill for managing and motivating people. |
| Listening - Ezine July 2003 |
| This discusses the value of listening and gives some ways of having more of it in organisations. It gives links to information on two-way helping, see coconsulting and cocounselling for more. |
| Managers managing people |
| This shows how to help managers be more interested and active in managing and developing their people.
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| Managing Change |
| These notes outline some principles and practices that have been found to help with the practical management of change.
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| Managing Conflict |
| This shows five ways to manage conflict and the advantages and disadvantages of each.
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| Managing large meetings |
| This describes a controlled and supportive process for handling a large meeting. This provides the efficiency of large meetings and the effective interaction of small ones
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| Managing Time |
| This describes how organisational culture and personal preferences affect the way we manage time. It also gives some practical ways to do it better.
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| Meeting for support |
| How senior people with different needs and interests can work together and help each other. |
| Meetings - Ezine June 2003 |
| This gives some ideas for making meetings more effective and enjoyable. It also gives links to other sources that you will find thought provoking.
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| Mentoring to develop staff |
| A mentor helps a less experienced person grow to become more effective now and in the future. This note describes the five roles that a mentor may play and gives one way to set up a mentoring service.
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| Name game |
| This helps people learn each other's names in a light-hearted and unexpectedly effective way. It also helps to beak the ice and create a learning climate |
| Network Education |
| This shows a simple way to create a learning community. The range of skills and topics covered is remarkable. This work was done in North London in the eighties before computers were easily available. |
| New Interests |
| This page lists those issues that I am currently thinking about or starting to work on. If these are matters that interest you, please contact me for an informal discussion. |
| Open Systems Planning |
| Open systems is a simple and powerful method for developing any system from an individual to an organisation. It can also be used for strategic planning and problem solving.
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| Organisation Development |
| Work with internal consultants and managers to design and carry out activities, (workshops, surveys, training) to improve organisational effectiveness and culture.
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| Overworking |
| Why so many people are working late, the costs and what can we do about it.
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| Practical Developmental Ideas #4 July 2003 |
| This discusses the value of listening and gives some ways of having more of it in organisations. It gives links to information on two-way helping, see coconsulting and cocounselling for more.
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| Practical Developmental Ideas #A4 August 2004 |
| This issue is about how to handle and resolve conflict. We often see conflict as destructive and it can be if mishandled. When you handle conflict well it can lead to magnificent creativity and growth.
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| Practical Developmental Ideas #A5 September 2004 |
| This issue is about how releasing creativity. I don't agree with the conventional view that only a few "special" people can be creative. There is a lot we can do to help release creativity from everyone, including ourselves.
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| Practical Developmental Ideas #A7 November 2004 |
| This issue is about the design of learning events. There are some principles and methods that can make learning events enjoyable and productive. When they work, learning events can make a big difference to an organisation. When they don't, they create cynicism that is very hard to shift. |
| Practical Developmental Ideas #B1 March 2005 |
| This issue is about ways to involve employees. People who work for organisations often have ideas and thoughts that could make all the difference but they don't express them. This note gives some practical ways to release them. |
| Preventing a major strike |
| A major strike threatened that could have had serious economic and human consequences. I helped the managers share their best thinking and prevent it. |
| Process Development |
| Sometimes you identify needs where there is no obvious solution or approach. Then it is fun to work together to create a brand new process. Some examples follow. |
| Profiling |
| Profiling identifies what the best performers in a group of job holders do and how they think. The profile aids development, training and recruitment decisions.
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| Profiling excellent performers |
| This describes work to discover what made the very best sales people in a computer company special. The results were surprising and helped guide recruitment, training and development decisions. |
| Profiling for Excellence |
| "Profiling" is a systematic method for discovering what excellent performers do that gives them the edge. When you know this, development and recruitment decisions become much easier.
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| Role Negotiation |
| Role negotiation is a process for clarifying others' expectations of you and vice versa. It is a simple and powerful method of clarifying roles and a tough approach to team building.
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| Role of the District Manager |
| The District Managers looked after a group of stores. Their remit was rather vague so they needed to think from first principles about how to add value. |
| Rules of thumb for change agents |
| This is a classic article by Herb Shepard. It gives some powerful and clear thoughts about how to get change to happen effectively |
| Rules of thumb for change agents |
| This is a classic article by Herb Shepard. It gives some powerful and clear thoughts about how to get change to happen effectively |
| Setting Clear Boundaries by Lee Hogan |
| People expect us to stand up for our rights and to clearly express our needs. They have more respect for us, research shows, and they learn very fast how to treat us.
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| Setting Priorities |
| This provides as mechanism for thinking about personal and group priorities.
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| Small business owner |
| "Nick helped me identify my Core Process two weeks ago and it immediately had a dramatic influence in my life." |
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