Articles

In today’s competitive world, coming up with creative ideas sooner than your competitor can make all the difference between success and failure. However, creativity is not something that you can force people into or expect them to suddenly become creative by sheer will power.

Instead, creativity seems to be highly dependant on the state of your mind. It is about your brain. If you can provide a suitable environment for your brain, it can deliver many novel ideas rather quickly. On the other hand, a tired or stressed mind is almost useless for anything creative as if it can’t be set free.

Hence, to become creative you should simply focus on setting up your environment and adopt your behaviour in such a way to maximise your chances of success.

This article provides a series of guidelines you can use to become more creative.

Deadlines are a fact of modern life and professionals in just about any role need to be able to efficiently deal with them. However, people deal with deadlines in different ways based on their personality. Deadlines can be stressful and the way people deal with this stress usually comes to define their success and subsequently the success of the team, especially when things go wrong. This article shows why everyone, team members or managers, must be aware of these differences and make decisions based on this knowledge.

When conducting meetings and interacting with other people, your body language can become a critical part of your communication and may even come to define your success or failure.

There are a number of simple yet powerful strategies which can make your encounters more productive and effective. If you are an office worker, you can use these strategies to have an edge over your colleague, client or even your boss. If you are a trainer you can use them to make your training more effective and memorable. These body language strategies are as follows...

Instructional methods can be divided into one-way and two-way methods. In the one-way method, the direction of the information is from the instructor to the audience. In the two-way method, information is exchanged in both ways. These methods are also known as content-centred or learner-centred activity. In practice, lectures are generally one-way and training courses are two-way.

The methods in each style are quite different but they both have their uses. Lectures are suitable for a large audience, where interaction is not possible or time consuming. Even though lectures are very useful as a teaching method, delivering a training course in the form of a lecture is not recommended as the training session could become boring and unproductive. This article explores the one-way instructional method and suggests solutions to make the experience more interactive or memorable without losing the benefits of a lecturing activity.

An opening exercise such as an ice breaker is useful to start up a training session. As the name suggests, ice breakers are designed to “warm up” the session. It is important to note that delegates need to be receptive to learning before they can start to learn. An ice breaker helps to warm up the delegates and prepare them for more learning activities.

Ice breakers are effectively a tool in your trainer’s toolbox. Of course, like any tool, you need to master the skill of using them to get the most out of them. This article explores various qualities, benefits and advantages of ice breakers and presents guidelines in using them.

Just about everybody is involved in either teaching or learning or both. If you are a trainer, your job is highly biased towards the teaching side which means you need to understand how to train your delegates in the shortest amount of time and get maximum results. This requires a deep understanding of how learning and memory works in humans. Otherwise you could easily be wasting your time as your knowledge will not ‘sink’ into the minds of your delegates.

In this article you will be introduced to a set of core features of our short and long term memory and understand its direct impact on training which you can take advantage of to increase retention and learning.

Modern methodologies on training such as the TAP program, Accelerated Learning, or other top-of-the-range accredited train-the-trainer programs are based on the fundamental theory of Cognitive Training Model. This model captures the essence of learning and shows precisely what you need to do as a trainer to increase the effectiveness of your courses for your learners.

The following shows you what the learners must do to learn and as a trainer what you need to do to satisfy your learners’ needs.

Procrastination is what we do when avoiding doing important things. We defer our decision or action to a different time. Procrastination is a mechanism for coping with anxiety associated with starting or completing an action. Procrastination also means that we overestimate difficulties associated with doing something or making a decision. As a result, we postpone our tasks hoping that at some point in the future we will find a better environment to deal with those difficulties. This error of judgement often proves costly as procrastination becomes a habit and this causes regret for the decision maker. Fear of failure, perfectionism, weak prioritisation, inability to make important decisions or emotional mood swings are other factors preventing individuals from doing what they should be doing at a suitable time.

A team, according to Katz Enbach, is a small group of people with complementary skills, committed to a common purpose and a set of specific performance goals. As a team leader you are likely to inherit or build a new team at some point during your career. It is vital to your success to produce a team with individuals who share visions and interests, enjoy working with each other and have a winning attitude.

This article focuses on five main areas that should be considered by team leaders or project managers when managing a successful and productive team.

Time management in effect refers to management of what we do about what is important to us. It is about achieving our goals in less time and with less effort. Time management skills are essential for increased productivity and success in both personal and professional life.

This articles explores a number of techniques you can use to quickly imporve your productivity, almost immidiately after you have finished reading the article!

Communication is the exchange of information, ideas and feelings with other people through a medium. In this article we focus on conversation as the most common form of communication in the workplace. Effective communication forms the basis of any successful company or organisation. The way a business deals with development and monitoring communication channels between employees and employers shows its level of commitment to increased productivity and success.

What process should you follow when delivering an appraisal? Which areas are critical? Should you focus on objectives, on personality or on group adaptability? This article explores the concept, ideas and tasks an appraiser should consider when promoting an employee.

It is well known that presenting is different from training. A good trainer focuses on delegates and his intention is to transfer a set of skills to them. In contrast a presenter is interested to report what has already been accomplished for the benefit of the audience. Although they are both public speakers, their roles are fundamentally different. A good trainer should put the delegates at the centre of the learning process and continuously use novel interactive high retention methods to make sure the delegates learn the new skills and remember them well after the course is finished.

How exactly can a trainer achieve this? The following is a number of core principles a good trainer should follow to get quality results from the training he provides.

Negotiation is the process of bargaining that precedes an agreement. Successful negotiation generally results in a contract between the parties. Best type of negotiation is “win-win” which means both parties will be satisfied with the result.

“Win-Win” negotiation is about alliance not conflict. Successful negotiation results in long lasting and fruitful professional relationships between parties, reduced tension and stress associated with aggressive bargaining methods and leads to more productive and creative businesses.

In this article we explore five steps to a more successful negotiation for all parties involved:

If there is one thing less appealing than giving a public talk is giving a bad one. If you haven’t prepared your speech don’t have high expectations. Experience shows that giving a speech without prior preparation often fails to impress.

Public speaking is not most people’s ideal way of delivering their message or selling their ideas and products. We much rather write to people about our cause than give a speech in to a group of people. Especially if it is going to be in front of unfamiliar faces. Fear of failure, being unfairly judged or even not accurately delivering what we are passionate about is what makes public speaking so unpopular.

A well structured and interesting speech combined with expression of passion and interest in the subject makes the whole experience easier and even enjoyable. Delivering a speech that you have written means that you will be in control of expressions, examples and conclusions. You can decide how successful, interesting, informing or humorous your speech is and how much it would influence those listening. Knowing the basic guidelines to write an engaging and enlightening speech will increase your confidence while delivering and ultimately plays an important role in increasing the rate of success in your personal and professional lives.

This article explains six steps essential to composing a successful speech and contains some useful tips on how to make the process as flawless as possible.