Quadrant 1 International

Archived Articles

Below you will find all the previous articles we have written.

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Quadrant 1 International stamp of Quality Assurance

The Quadrant 1 International stamp of Quality Assurance is your guarantee of proven quality. It represents over 18 years of applying NLP in business across a wide range of industries, professions and applications.

Is your mental frame sabotaging you?

The frame you use to communicate is as important, if not more important than the words you use. What does this mean? It means that when your communication isn’t getting you the results you want, try changing the frame. Here’s how to do it.

Are you experiencing cultural turbulence?

Any collection of people who come together under the vision of an organisation is going to experience ‘cultural turbulence’. For any team or organisation wanting to take advantage of cultural turbulence, to improve productivity, cooperation and team working, the metaprogram profiler has immediate application.

Promotion can Damage a Team's Performance

According to a recent survey by the CMI, performance is hindered by poor management competency. In our experience, misguided promotion or poor management training can also scupper a team’s performance.

Can you see the matrix in your organisation?

In today’s fast changing competitive business environment companies are looking for ways of releasing potential in their people so they can develop smarter ways of working. The matrix represents all the rules and routines that make up an organisation’s culture, but woven too tightly they can restrict and constrain effective behaviour, creativity and results.

Present with Power? Barry's Top Tips :-)

Barry Cannister delivers his first lesson on “Presentation Skills”. Prepare to revolutionise your business! Lesson 1 from “Barry’s Bob On Guide To Becoming THE Boss”.

Modelling Leaders

Gain an insight to the motivation behind the actions of leaders that seem to be getting things right.

How do CEO’s make decisions when faced with uncertainty?

Getting smart in business is easy when you have the right tools. Knowing how to model an effective person’s thought process, i.e. your CEOs, will enhance understanding and trust to enable teams to work more efficiently and harmoniously. Read on to find out more.

Decision Making – is yours finely tuned?

Each day the average person makes thousands of decisions. In business some of these decisions have a major consequence on the business. How do you make decisions? Find out how some of the most successful business minds make their decisions.

NLP in Beirut - The Quadrant 1 Experience

Lebanon is a country of proud entrepreneurs and business builders who are embracing NLP and using it to achieve even more business success. Find out about our experiences and why we are inspired by the ambition, resilience and creativity of the Lebanese people.

Manflu or Cold?

Have you had manflu – or had to nurse a cold-ridden partner? Here’s a little something to make you laugh!

A Christmas Message...

From all of us at Q1, have a very enjoyable Christmas and a fantastic New Year. Take a look at a ‘Typical day in the Q1 office’. – Enjoy!

The rules of passionate people

Business needs passionate people. It needs them to drive performance towards meaningful goals, but there needs to be a balance between passion and analytical thinking to achieve great results. One of the ways to create balance is to first be aware of the rules you have subconsciously set for yourself. Find out how to reveal your subconscious rules and discover how they may be holding you back.

Decide and Execute!

Decision-making is at the heart of any business, yet we find that many people are totally blind to the barriers that get in the way of making faster and smarter decisions.

Who’s getting in the way of progress – could it be you?

A common complaint we hear from CEO’s is the frustration over some managers’ lack of execution. We also hear the very same from managers complaining about their executive teams, resulting in delays on key projects and overall productivity. Read on and discover a decision-making strategy that really will make a difference.

Are you listening to me?

Why managers are turning to NLP for leadership skills

I was recently with a group of managers from a fast-moving international organisation. They were learning NLP skills to give them more of an influence in the business. During a conversation at coffee break one of the managers said she recently met their CEO, who asked her how things were in her part of the company. She told him what she was excited about, and also described some of her frustrations.

Looking for a step change in your performance?

To make big step changes in performance you first need to let go of conventional models of working. Some companies seem to take these giant leaps in their stride whilst others, more risk averse, lag behind. Why should this be?

Hung Parliament? Who’s going to be hung out to dry?

We can be certain that in UK politics the future is uncertain. The prognosis for a hung parliament is one of indecision, conflict and disagreement. If this scenario sounds familiar to you it could be a reflection on the management team.

Shock to the System

Devising a route back from Beirut where I was working during the Icelandic volcano fiasco, my focus was very much on journey opportunities.

Intuition – this is how it works!

If you have ever wondered what intuition is and how it works read this article. You will discover how NLP tools give you a deeper awareness of the things which people call ‘gut-feel’, ‘intuition’ and ‘personality-clash’.

Paradox Coaching

Introducing an assessment tool which perfectly reflects the very nature of NLP itself!
Find out why it went down a storm at the NLP Conference in November and why the London Business Group is so interested to find out more.

Face-to-Face Time

Are you a face-to-face type of person, or would you rather carry out your communication electronically? Find out what an HBR report reveals about electronic communication.

Coffee Machine Coaching

Coaching is recognised as a highly effective and targeted method of creating change in individuals for both personal and corporate results. The growth in the number of organisations providing coach training and qualifications has been explosive in recent years as organisations realise the impact of these tools over more conventional training courses.

Major work issues, as voted by you

The results of last week’s poll are very revealing. 38% of you voted low level motivation as the major pressing issue for you at work with unclear direction (21%) and a poor relationship with a colleague (24%) coming close behind. The second two probably contribute significantly to the first so let’s take a look at all three.

Confidence – how to have more!

If you had a big bag of Confidence what would you do with it?

Go for a promotion?
Be more influential with key people?
Lead yourself and others in a meaningful direction, focussed on results?
Start a new business venture?

Are you making great decisions?

At a time of uncertainty like no other in the history of modern civilisation your ability to make fast smart decisions is crucial to your immediate and future well-being. This includes the state of health of your business, regardless of status, as any business relies upon its employees to make smart decisions every day. Here are a few points to remember.

Let’s get passionate!

How about turning ‘Stress’ into ‘Passion’? What if you could turn all those things that cause you stress into opportunities for something else – learning something new, building or mending a relationship, getting some feedback, stepping out of your comfort zone, widening your horizons, influencing the working culture, helping someone through a challenge, coaching a colleague? Well, is there anything stopping you, other than your own mind and free-will?

How do you keep your employees engaged?

Engaged or disengaged?

This is the question on the lips of many senior execs today. They know that when employees are disengaged with their work mistakes are made and productivity falls. They also know that the contribution of highly engaged employees is consistently high.

The Brilliance of NLP

We are often asked ‘what has NLP done for you?’ And perhaps more intriguingly, ‘what does NLP enable you to do?’ These are not questions to which answers trip off the tongue easily. Discussing these questions in the context of our recent book Brilliant NLP we came to the conclusion that answering the first one in particular will depend at which stage of life the question is posed.

Sheep dip anyone?

There is a belief that attitudes and skills can be developed overnight almost like upgrading the operating system on a computer. What often happens is that the speed at which managers expect to see change in processes and systems is also applied to people. Attempts to get employees to think and behave differently by sheep-dipping often have the opposite effect. This is because people are unlike processes and systems.

Arrested Communication

The smooth running of any organisation relies on effective communication between people. When messages become mixed or fuzzy, confusion steps in and people become unsure how to act. The more we understand about how people communicate and process information, the better we can be at communicating with them. This is true whether you are interacting with your team, your boss, your supplier, the general public or interviewing a crime suspect.

Coaching for Change – getting change into the muscle

Fifteen years of coaching, facilitating groups and training across most industries and at all management levels, has taught me there are three key assumptions which tend to be missing when change programmes fail or create inertia and drag.

Dogma or Catma?

Are you making decisions for yourself and your business as a result of Dogma or Catma? That’s the question.

Say what you mean!

By saying what you mean you are far more likely to achieve a positive result. Find out why.

Your mind-clock

Are you sometimes accused of being a workaholic? Do you feel that you have plenty more to achieve but not enough time in which to achieve it? Maybe you have tried to apply some time management techniques with little success, and now wonder where the answer lies.

Pampered Chef Workshop

Pampered Chef

Earlier this month Quadrant 1 had the privilege to run a workshop for 220 lively independent Pampered Chef Directors.

No-Brainers are often No-Gainers

In the May 09 edition of Harvard Business Review the article ‘The right way to close an operation’ suggests that ‘soft hands’ principles of dignity, fairness and respect, whilst obvious are frequently ignored.

NLP in Business - Q1 Podcast

Listen to our podcast and find out why so many businesses are turning to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) to get fast, effective and long-lasting results.

Executive Coaching – the ins and outs!

Coaching is a growing market. Many enter the market as a life coach, learning basic skills focused on the GROW model. The move from Life Coach to Executive Coach has its attractions since the average fee for an Executive Coach is so much higher. Here are some guidelines for succeeding as an Executive coach and why investing in advanced skills is essential.

Practical Leadership - a skills-based approach to managing and leading

If you simply learn a process you know the steps to follow and can tick a box. When you apply skills within the process you develop your capability to achieve more of your desired results. The more clearly you define the context for learning, the more effective your skills acquisition.

Leadership (Orange Paper)

Why would anyone follow you?

You may be an excellent technical manager, but are you an effective role
model for your teams? How many people take their lead from you?

This Orange Paper discusses the irrelevance of generic leadership models in context with the current uncertain economic climate.

Champions

A champion can be anyone. It doesn’t have to be a senior manager or director, and the more champions you have in an organisation, the easier it will be for it to change when required to do so.

Immunise your business against the perils of negative thinking

The challenge today is not in markets, products or services, but in the minds of your people.

Do you ever wonder how many of your people are developing negative mindsets as a result of irresponsible media reporting? Here’s a thing – I am told that Sarkozy thinks Gordon Brown’s VAT cut is ineffective. He’s entitled to his opinion. Now, let’s not be drawn into whether it is or isn’t ineffective, because there are more powerful forces at work which we need to protect ourselves from. The news announcer added ‘this is a big embarrassment to Gordon Brown’. How does he know? Embarrassment is a feeling, but this announcer is planting the idea that GB is embarrassed – and all the people who believe what they hear will think GB is embarrassed. Headlines and media opinions are nothing but illusions that get into people’s minds and spreads like a virus. We need protection.

Credit-crunch optimism revealed

Are you a free thinker or do you follow the herd?

The media loves a crisis. And because viewer ratings soar during a major catastrophe such as an earthquake, war or credit crunch, the media machine naturally serves its own goal and seeks out the worst it can find. By selecting what to broadcast the media is filtering information to keep as many of us as possible glued to the tellybox. The question is, do you trust it, and are your actions a consequence of the media? Do you follow the herd, or do you filter and think for yourself? Does the wo/man make the journey, or the journey make the wo/man?

The Curse of Instant Gratification

Are you looking for quick-fix solutions to change management? David Molden considers how organisations can ensure their people are wired positively for change.

Terminal 5 – How it could have been made to work

Not intending to profit from the misfortunes of others, the debacle of terminal 5 is too tempting to pass over, and the designers of this chaos, BAA, have enough media predators hounding them that it is unlikely this low impact shot will be noticed above all the cries for compensation and retribution.

Terminal 5 - A Manager’s Guide to Employee Engagement

One thing highlighted by the opening of Terminal 5 is employee engagement, or ‘how to achieve instant employee disengagement’. This goes some way to answer the questions the public are demanding. It seems that BAA and BA put all their money on technology to create the ultimate airport experience, and maybe they assumed their people were but a small part of the system, and of lesser importance than the technology. If this is true, and all indications suggest so, it is a foolish and very costly mistake to have made.

Good people management linked to business success

From the publishers of The Personnel Manager’s Yearbook

A new report has delivered compelling evidence to suggest a strong link between effective people management and business success. The result of a two-year study, the report suggests that organisations with a comprehensive approach to people management perform better than those without, indicated by higher profits per employee, higher profit margins and higher productivity. It also identifies 12 core measures that any organisation can track to assess the impact of their people management practices on business performance.

How do you compare with your peer group in the success stakes?

Imagine having no one to compare yourself with, except yourself.

What a sense of relief this would bring. We wouldn’t have to beat ourselves up about not performing as well as our colleagues at work. We wouldn’t have to worry about not looking like the alpha male/female with the smartest mind, the most important job role and the biggest pay packet. We wouldn’t have to worry about our bodies not being the youngest, most beautiful and most sexy.

Driven to Distraction

An article in our local paper recently highlighted 10 most likely distractions that cause accidents whilst driving. High on the list are: using a mobile phone, passengers playing with the controls, screaming children and boisterous animals.

What distracts you at work?

If...

If, like us, you are looking forward to the festive break with thoughts of family, children, fun and relaxation, you know that it is also a time for reflection on the year past. Recalling the highs and lows and wondering how much of what happened was planned to happen, and how much of it took you by surprise, we still look for ways of shaping the future the way we would like it to be.

Success at Work - How to Network and Influence Others

Recently published in The Independent on Sunday – in association with Pearson

The Role of Rapport

We all need people in our lives – to love us and to be loved, to buy from and sell to, to coach and be coached, to teach and to learn from, and to enjoy life with. The results of your interactions with each individual will be determined by your ability to get on with them, to be influenced by them and to influence their thinking and behaviour. Whatever you do, your ability to influence others in all kinds of ways is important if you want to be more than a passive onlooker.

Courses and Events

RealPresentations

  • 22 – 23 February 2012 (Oxford, UK)

An Introduction to NLP in Action

  • 15 March 2012 (Oxford, UK)

Certified NLP Business Practitioner

Oxford, UK

  • Module 1: 28 – 31 March 2012
  • Module 2: 16 – 19 May 2012

RealPersonal Effectiveness

  • 28 – 31 March 2012 (Oxford, UK)

Advanced RealPersonal Effectiveness

Oxford, UK
16 – 19 May 2012

RealPresentations

  • 13 – 14 June 2012 (Oxford, UK)

RealPersonal Effectiveness

  • 19 – 22 June 2012 (Oxford, UK)

Certified NLP Master Practitioner

Oxford, UK

  • Module 1: 4 – 7 July 2012
  • Module 2: Real Presentations (12 – 13 September 2012) or Real Sales (18 – 20 September 2012)
  • Module 3: 10 – 13 October 2012

To book a place on any of our courses please call us on 0870 762 1300

Some of our clients

  • Wagamama
  • ADAS
  • HM Revenue & Customs are one of our cleints
  • Canon are one of our clients

See more clients