Blogs & Articles

How many times have you heard a colleague refer to the accounts team as the bean counters? Or, maybe you have done it? Maybe that just reflects the fact that many of us (including me) don’t fully understand the work that they do or just how vital it is if a business is to function effectively…and profitably.

Companies often find themselves in a position where they believe they need a competency framework but are not entirely sure why or what the material benefit would be.

One common approach to developing the senior team or Board would be to seek to ensure that, firstly, the Board are working, not just as a team, but as an ‘effective’ team because after all, that is exactly what the Board should be.

Most people’s sales conversation could be improved. Over the last 20 years I have seen many sales people do the following:

However, it’s surprising how many businesses still aren’t even getting the basics right. There are numerous methods, models and metrics for evaluating the transfer of knowledge and skills back in to the workplace. But, why can’t we just keep it simple?

The diagnostic framework and suggested management options attempt to provide guidance on the identification, support and management of trainees in difficulty and to provide clinicians with a systematic approach to dealing with these challenging and often complex issues. The pre-eminence of maintaining patient safety should be paramount when managing trainees in difficulty. Formal management guidelines and protocols from your local LETB/Deanery or NHS employing organisation supersede this guidance in all circumstances.

Every weekend throughout the land in both amateur and professional ranks team managers and team coaches grace the playing fields and sports centres of the nation and together with their respective charges they gather to go into metaphoric battle with their adversaries. In doing so, whether those team managers and coaches recognise the fact or not, they are all viewed as leaders by their subjects and are undoubtedly tasked with doing an exceptionally difficult job. So what lessons in leadership can be learned from business and applied to the sporting arena and vice versa?

Learning always has to be relevant to the job, the organisation, the industry and the market. Rubbish. Education is about developing the mind, not just stuffing the memory. Our job here at Maguire Training is to teach the delegates of our high profile clients to be able to do something differently tomorrow that they are not doing today. That could be applying new knowledge, implementing a new skill or adopting new behaviours and to do that it is often much more useful to use abstract teaching tools to excite the imagination, draw out instincts and encourage more cerebral analysis.

Most people would agree that anyone in a leadership and management role should have competent problem solving skills. But what does that mean and how do we acquire them? Every day managers are faced with making a multitude of decisions. Some will require prolonged thought, research and a deep level of scrutiny before a decision can be arrived at and others will be far less onerous to arrive at a suitable conclusion. Also some decisions just make themselves, for example, no one has to be told to go down a fire escape when the flames are licking at your coat tails behind you.

Trainer or learner? Teacher or pupil? Coach or coached? Mentor or mentored? It’s probably true to say that you don’t have to have decades of educational experience to immediately know that the answer to that question may be obvious and for two very good reasons:

Can you eat with a knife and fork without embarrassing yourself? Probably (hopefully!)…and more than likely your parents taught you how to do that. That was you being trained to become competent with a key skill at an early age – training works, we know that and education is rightfully a top priority for us all. But is training always worth it?

Moving from Colleague to Manager It sounds great doesn’t it, your boss asks to meet with you and declares that you are to be offered the job of supervising or managing the team that you are currently a member of. It would then be very easy to get immediately lost in the excitement and anticipation about the prospect of greater responsibility, exciting challenges and (usually) more money, without giving too much serious thought as to exactly what happens next and the implications of such a seismic change in your daily working life.