Are you an aspiring manager? Do you feel the pull towards leadership? In this article, Petia Tzanova, =mc Learning and Development Consultant draws on her extensive career to outline key considerations when taking your first step into management. If you’re undecided whether a management role is the right move for you, then use this guide […]
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In this interview Chris Chadford, Learning and Development Manager at the Calico Group, shares his experience of developing managers so they have commercial, financial and innovation skills. The Calico Group is a collection of social profit-for-purpose businesses, charities and services, that exist to make a difference to people’s lives. Whilst each area of the group […]
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Welcome to the Safe Space – where managers can share their issues, and gain advice from top learning & development consultants. Here at =mc we encourage every participant we meet on our programmes to get in touch if they have specific issues they want to follow up on. From this we hear some common problems, […]
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In this interview, Rebecca Cooper, Head of People and Development at ACT Training shares her experience of what effective leadership development looks like in action. ACT Training provides a wide range of fully-funded training programmes for individuals and employers in Wales. Their mission to improve lives through learning stands side by side with our own […]
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Online learning was pushed into the spotlight a few years ago out of necessity. Since then, many of our customers still choose to develop their teams via a virtual classroom. Where face to face training has all the known benefits of physically being in the same learning environment, online opens up access to those in […]
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John Adair’s Action-Centred Leadership is a classic leadership model, first shared in 1973[i]. It’s used widely in management development to help managers get to grips with the multiple responsibilities that they need. A lot has changed over the last fifty years, and the situations we face as managers feel increasingly complex. Is this model still […]
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Welcome to the Safe Space – where managers can share their issues, and gain advice from top learning & development consultants. Here at =mc we encourage every participant we meet on our programmes to get in touch if they have specific issues they want to follow up on. From this we hear some common problems, […]
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Here at =mc we encourage every participant we meet on our programmes to get in touch if they have specific issues they want to follow up on. From this we hear some common problems, issues, challenges, and worries. In this regular feature we share some of those challenges, and our advice, for dealing with them. […]
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This video introduces 6 destructive mindsets that new managers often fall into by mistake. Each of these can have a negative impact on your success as a manager, how your team perceive you and ultimately how they perform. Explore each mindset, reflect on your own practices and work out what kind of manager you want […]
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Sending your team members on a training course should be a fantastic opportunity: for them to learn new things, for you to see them doing new things, for you to save some of your precious time, and ultimately to enable your organisation to do more, or do better. However, training isn’t cheap – it takes […]
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Welcome to the Safe Space – where managers can share their issues, and gain advice from top learning & development consultants. Here at =mc we encourage every participant we meet on our programmes to get in touch if they have specific issues they want to follow up on. From this we hear some common problems, […]
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Here’s a scenario we hear regularly from participants on our training programmes, and we think many people will identify: Your big or complex task keeps getting moved from one to-do list to the next without making progress on it. It stays put for days, maybe weeks, perhaps haunting you in the back of your mind […]
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Meetings can be fun, empowering and a way to enable new thinking. They bring people together, to share information and collaborate. Sadly, they can also be the polar opposite – dull, frustrating events where nothing gets decided and everyone’s time is wasted. We often hear from participants on our training programmes that they actually dread […]
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Everyone I know is busy. Seemingly busier than they’ve ever been – myself included. Home life, work life, social life, they’re all competing for our time. And there comes a point when even fitting in the fun stuff can be exhausting, because we’re already worn out from trying to do all the other things, all […]
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Welcome to the Safe Space – where managers can share their issues and gain advice from top learning & development consultants Here at =mc, we encourage every participant we meet on our programmes to get in touch if they have specific issues they want to follow up on. From this we hear some common problems, […]
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How to clarify project roles and responsibilities Three of the main problems that affect project success are unclear responsibilities, poor communication, and ill-defined decision-making. If team members are unclear about their role, tasks can get missed or there may be a duplication of efforts. When communication is poor, this can lead to misunderstandings and people […]
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Receiving feedback is vital for all of us. It lets us know what we are doing well. It also provides us with areas of development, improvement and stretch. Everyone we meet wants feedback, but the vast majority say they don’t get enough. So, what is stopping us from sharing feedback with our colleagues? In this […]
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At last, it’s becoming the norm for personal wellbeing to be considered important in the workplace. When we think about how much our personal lives can affect us at work and our ability to perform well, it seems incredulous that staff wellbeing has previously been so far down the agenda. The pandemic forced this to […]
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Following on from our 5 Ways to Improve Your Recruitment Process, we asked our latest recruits how they found our process, and what advice they would give to recruiters. It’s really important to review your recruitment approach from the point of view of your applicants, so we asked them for their honest feedback and views. […]
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We love learning here at =mc, as you would expect! And whilst we spend almost all of our time delivering training, we wholeheartedly believe in learning lots of things in lots of different ways. In this blog we take a look at how to learn from reading, and have book recommendations for you. There are […]
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Welcome to the Safe Space – where managers can share their issues, and gain advice from top learning & development consultants. Here at =mc we encourage every participant we meet on our programmes to get in touch if they have specific issues they want to follow up on. From this we hear some common problems, […]
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We love learning here at =mc, as you would expect! And whilst we spend almost all of our time delivering training, we wholeheartedly believe in learning lots of things in lots of different ways. In this blog we take a look at how to learn from listening, and have podcast recommendations for you. There are […]
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Welcome to the Safe Space – where managers can share their issues, and gain advice from top learning & development consultants. Here at =mc we encourage every participant we meet on our programmes to get in touch if they have specific issues they want to follow up on. From this we hear some common problems, […]
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We are currently recruiting for trainers here at =mcLearning, and it is a very interesting process given the current challenges with recruitment in the UK. Here, lead recruiter and =mc Director Yvette Gyles shares her thoughts on the process so far, and what can be done to make a recruitment process successful. We have been […]
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Managers are often tasked with demonstrating leadership in their role. Telling someone to be more of a leader can however be confusing. What is management? What is leadership? Why do managers need to lead? Why do leaders need to also manage? Many researchers, academics and theorists have put forward a variety of definitions of management […]
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Help! I need to develop my team, where do I even start? A training budget is wonderful. It is precious, and needs to be used wisely. It needs to deliver impact, results, and a return on investment. But how exactly do you make sure training is right for your team right now? We often hear […]
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Leadership is shifting focus (again) We listened in on a conversation between one of our leadership experts, Yvette Gyles (=mc Learning Director) and Cassie Edmiston (Head of Fundraising and Communications, Prisoners’ Education Trust), discussing the challenges of leadership in 2022. »Yvette: Thanks again Cassie for taking the time to talk to me about all things leadership. We last […]
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Performance management is often conflated with how to manage poor performance. But it is also about managing good performance, and developing the people who are already doing well. Sometimes as managers it’s easy to focus on fixing the issues within your team, rather than nurturing the people that appear to need less attention. But if […]
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5 ways to make the most of your away day As restrictions lift, more and more teams are coming back together, working in a hybrid way and thinking of ways to reconnect. We have been asked to help facilitate several team away days and team sessions across numerous charities and social good organisations. Often we […]
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Here at =mc we encourage every participant we meet on our programmes to get in touch if they have specific issues they want to follow up on. From this we hear some common problems, issues, challenges, and worries. In this regular feature we share some of those challenges, and our advice, for dealing with them. […]
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Let’s talk about scope creep. One of biggest (and most infuriating) issues affecting project managers. Imagine: you firmed up the scope of your project months ago, you’re knee deep in delivery, everything should come in on time and to budget… and then a key stakeholder suggests an additional output. “Wouldn’t it be great if we […]
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Here at =mc we encourage every participant we meet on our programmes to get in touch if they have specific issues they want to follow up on. From this we hear some common problems, issues, challenges, and worries. In this regular feature we share some of those challenges, and our advice, for dealing with them. […]
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Leadership is multi-faceted and complex. That’s why there are so many books on the topic as well as blogs, videos, articles, training courses and podcasts. At =mc Learning we know this from our leadership courses, which often start with the following questions: what do you think are the characteristics of effective leaders? Who do you […]
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Starting a new job always comes with a mix of excitement and trepidation, as you wonder what it’s going to be like. Working in multiple locations also comes with its own challenges. Here at =mc we’ve always worked in a hybrid model: some office time, some home time, some on-site time. And that model seems […]
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Throughout any project there are challenges that can spring up, and attempt to take us off track in progressing our projects. Even when we’ve carefully laid out our project plan; the context, our stakeholders, and even our own project team can throw a spanner into the works. Throughout our Project Management training programmes, we find […]
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