Author: Graham Cook

I’d like you to stop for a moment and do this small thinking task. “I’m going to give you the names of three things. Please tell me which two of the three go together. A quick answer please - I’m looking for your first response. Ok…the three things are a panda, a monkey and a banana.” There are two obvious links - and I’m sure ... Read more...

I’ve just put down the telephone after a twenty minute call with a potential client. That call - which she initiated and wanted - happened after ten days and three cancellations. She apologised and said, “We are so busy - I never stop and even finding time for a call is difficult!”In this age of change and stress and being ‘on the go’ the... Read more...

This is our first guest blog - Victoria Greene, is a  branding consultant and freelance writer. We hope you like it! A great leader can turn an idea into a reality, a dream into an aspiration, and a motivation into a movement. Yet the leader is only half of the picture, as it is their followers that give their words and actions weight. Today... Read more...

“I’ll send you our objectives and then it would be great if you could put a proposal together for us…” This is often how an interaction between a client and a learning designer begins. From that point onwards, the potential success of our partnership depends upon our ability not only to understand what the client wants but also to ... Read more...

Is it me, or is Emotional Intelligence starting to feel a little dated? An approach to people development that seems to be getting close to the end of its shelf-life? I know that this isn’t going to be a popular suggestion, there are a lot of educationalists and HR people heavily invested in EI as a core structure in how they approach assessment ... Read more...

That was the question I was asked recently by a colleague who had been on a working tour of the Far East. He had asked a significant number of first and middle managers to estimate how long they could take in any week to focus on their personal and professional development, and 30 minutes seemed to be the majority answer. Hence his question to me, ... Read more...

I’ve just returned from delivering teamwork training in Kuwait and, inevitably, this touched on the concept of leadership and leadership styles.  Participants on the programme were keen to know what I thought the “best leadership style” was, even though they recognised that this might be situational. Out of interest, I entered ‘... Read more...

There are so many factors that influence the way that a structured creative thinking process unfolds that it’s not surprising that every now and then the process seems to get, well….. just stuck. It’s not always the easiest thing to address these factors directly, you may not be able to change the working environment, or make sure that people... Read more...

To what extent does the design of a learning environment need to recognise the context within which the learning will be applied? This great question was asked during a recent RSVP Design train the trainer programme and it raises some interesting thoughts about the learning design process and the extent to which we can make the learning experiences... Read more...

If you ask non-specialists about their understanding of experiential learning, many will reply that it is learning by doing. Whilst there is an element of truth in this, it does not go far enough. We only learn from experience if we take time to reflect upon the things that happen to us; thoughtfully considering not only the experience itself, but... Read more...