Spring is definitely in the air and today I have been having a spring clean of my home office. I’ve put up new lighter, brighter curtains, tidied away some clutter and put a lovely bunch of flowers on the window sill. I find that I immediately feel more energetic and creative myself, ready to meet the challenges of current and …
Organisational and personal values
Values are important to me. Maybe that’s why I work in the not-for-profit and academic sectors. It certainly helps with running my own business – the values that frame my working life are entirely my own, not something that has been dictated or developed by others. This ensures that the work I choose to do fits with my vision of …
4 communication skills for leaders
The recently-released State of the Sector report from Gatehouse comes to some rather alarming conclusions about the internal comms skills of line managers (and the support they receive). Whilst I agree that line managers are a key group, we also need to remember how important our leaders’ communication skills are. There are many different skills which leaders need to develop …
Choose the right words to change the world
Actions speak louder than words, they say. But I’m not sure that’s always true. It is an area that I have been pondering recently, since it seems that every time I switch on the news or open a newspaper, I’m faced with ever-more dispiriting stories of things that are going wrong in the world. I started wondering how – or …
Are you getting communication right?
“How do I make sure that people read my newsletter?” “How do I make people look at my website?” “How do I make sure that people listen to me?” These are questions which I regularly hear from charities and universities that I work with. And I usually have to answer with another question – how sure are you that you …