Archived Articles

Change, ecology and social beliefs (as published in Rapport)

In general we are free to choose what we do. Yet how much choice do we actually exercise for ourselves? How much of what you do every day has been decided out
of conscious choice?

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?

Calling all Sales Professionals

Make a real impact on your sales results.

Increase Your Personal Effectiveness at Work

Discover NLP tools and techniques for your personal and professional advancement.

Coaching Models Don’t Work

As published in this summer’s edition of Rapport – the magazine for personal development.

Do you have a job, or do you hold an office? Apparently there’s a difference. And do you twitter in your office?

Find out what our MP’s do.

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.

Don’t wait for the Business Schools to catch up!

Harvard Business School research has finally recognised the shortfalls of MBA’s and their need to embrace practical skills. Something businesses all over the world have realised for years.

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.

Strategies of Successful Executives

‘How we do it: Three executives reflect on strategic decision making’.

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.

Only 33% of employees say they trust their senior managers

This is one of the key findings from the latest Employee Outlook survey report from the CIPD.

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.

5 Ways to Make This New Year’s Resolve Stick!

Make your New Year’s Resolution stick. Run through these simple checks.

Have you had your wake-up call?

Looking forward to starting a new fitness regime after the festive break? Here’s some food for thought!

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?

NLP as a strategic business tool

Today NLP is finding its position centre stage as a universal approach to many strategic business challenges.

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.

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) - The 21st Century Business Success Tool Kit (Orange Paper)

Over the past few years Neuro Linguistic Programming has really come into its
own in the world of business. Why is this?

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.

Royal Mail - modernised or traumatised?

“I had to raise my hand to go to the toilet”- PO worker

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.

Quadrant 1's Approach to Executive Coaching

Coaching is at the core of the services we offer at Quadrant 1 International. Find out more about our approach.

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.

Quadrant 1 Article in this month's 'Coaching at Work' published by the CIPD

Featuring the highly accurate Harrison Assessment tool.

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

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.

Presenting at this years NLP Conference

David Molden and Pat Hutchinson, Quadrant 1 lead trainers and coaches.

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.

8 Reasons why learning business NLP, particularly in a recession, is a no-brainer!

Learning NLP business skills now is an absolute no brainer. Here are 8 reasons why –

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.

Influence vs Information – The Art of Presenting (Orange Paper)

They say information is power, but today information is at everyone’s
fingertips, and power now comes from the ability to influence and engage.

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.

Results of the poll ‘most common distractions at work’

In our recent poll we asked you what you consider to be the most common distractions at work. You responded as follows –

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.

Did you take your body on holiday and leave your mind behind?

Just back from your summer break? Are you refreshed and raring to go?
Taking time out to recharge the batteries and relax is a no-brainer in today’s complex and high-speed business climate, but did you really have the break you deserve, or did you find it hard to switch off?

Rate of progress – or length of inertia – how do you measure a day’s effort?

Wherever we turn these days our clients seem to want to move their organisations forward with increasing speed. The rate at which they expect decisions to be executed and plans implemented will one day soon match the speed of procuring and devouring a big Mac, of this I’m sure.

Harbingers of Change

Some CEOs seem to have an instinct for spotting harbingers of change and then taking initiatives that steal the march on the competition. In 1999 a quarter of the bacon sold in Britain came from foreign pigs that had not been fed antibiotics to make them grow faster. The Danish industry abandoned these drugs in response to consumer demand – a harbinger of change. In Sweden farmers are banned from using antibiotics to promote growth. This gave both the Swedish and Danish farmers an advantage over those in the UK who had not yet developed alternatives to antibiotics.

Do you have the tools you need to succeed?

Ever tried to undo a crosshead screw with a flat head driver… ever rounded a nut by using the wrong sized spanner… sometimes grabbing the nearest (or most familiar) tool seems like the quickest option. What inevitably happens is that ‘quick job’ gets harder or more complicated and the quick fix you were seeking becomes a more serious or time consuming problem.

People behave as the culture dictates

When working in teams people develop habitual reactions to the way others behave towards them. The culmination of these actions/reactions creates the culture.
Leaders in organisations are role models for behaviour, so if a team is behaving in a way that is limiting their potential to succeed, you have to look at the leader’s behaviour. For example if you want an open innovative, idea sharing culture then leaders need to behave accordingly. Here are some insights into results which can be expected from the behaviour of leaders.

I don't do small talk!

We often hear people say ‘I don’t do small talk!’ The implication is either –

• I am far too busy or important to get involved in passing the time of day with colleagues and friends or …
• Actually I am petrified of you and I don’t know how to talk to you so I’ll just keep myself busy instead

Get a job you like – or become grit in the machine

I have heard some people say it’s not important to enjoy your work – as work is merely a means to an end – the salary; but this view fails to recognise a number of negative consequences on people and the business.

Bad managers turn off young talent

A survey conducted by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM), and reported in the Sunday Times, reveals that 400,000 British workers between 18 and 24 feel their manager is holding them back.

Purpose and Passion in Leadership

I was intrigued to learn that European Union leaders, gathering in Brussels to decide on carbon emission reductions, arrived in big gas guzzling Mercedes cars. Surely, I thought, anyone whose purpose is to reduce emissions would want to be a role model and behave as they would like others to behave? Wouldn’t a Toyota Prius, the most popular energy friendly car available today, be giving a clearer message about the urgency to create change? Incongruent behaviour like this suggests a lack of real purpose, and certainly little passion for taking positive action to reduce carbon emissions.

Is it time to activate your banana?

A current BBC news video tells of civil service bosses in Tyneside who have introduced a ‘clean desk’ policy. The purpose behind it is to improve service to the public, but it has infuriated unions and demotivated staff. One employee was asked if the banana on his desk was active or inactive.

Group Coaching has the edge

To an outside observer the RealSuccess Programme may look like a communication skills or motivational training course – but look closely and you will see that it is very, very, different. Yes, the participants learn the most advanced influencing skills available today, and they leave highly motivated, but the similarities stop there.

The Levellers

Virginia Satir was a highly effective family therapist whose work can be directly related to behaviour in the workplace. By using a range of highly graphic descriptions of typical behaviour she was able to give people a way of recognising the cause of conflict. You will probably be able to draw comparisons between the following descriptions of what is generally referred to as Satir Categories and the behaviour of people in the workplace, and maybe even your own.

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.

Time to trade old style for new?

Over the past 15 years new ways of helping people to succeed have emerged. The science of personal effectiveness has moved on leaps and bounds. The personal development market has bloomed and is undergoing unprecedented change.

Do you think or feel your way through the day?

How do you weigh up situations and make decisions? Would you call yourself a thinker or a feeler? Well, it really doesn’t matter whether you are one or the other – and of course everyone has the capacity to both think and feel. What is important is how you think and how you feel.

Why rapport skills are vital to the success of a new business venture

The Sunday Times business section of 1st October has a fascinating story of how Mervyn Davies, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank, succeeded in buying Hsinchu bank in Taiwan for $1.2 billion.

Is stress getting to you?

As an engineer my brother knows all about stress. He used to test metal components for the level of physical stress at which they would fracture, shatter or break in half. Some metals can take more stress than others, but they all have a point at which they will be overcome by the pressure being exerted. People are pretty much the same, except that stress begins as mental pressure before it becomes physical. There is a level of stress at which some part of you will snap.

It’s getting tougher at the top!

If you’re a CEO or CFO of a publicly quoted company you probably know what pressure is. A recent study by Booz Allen Hamilton at 2500 largest publicly quoted companies has found that in the period between 1995-2004 CEO dismissals increased by 300%, underperformance being the primary reason. Being a CEO is an increasingly risky business.