How can I improve my confidence?

Confidence is an integral part of our own personal success.  With it we make bolder decisions, try and little harder and frame difficulties as obstacles, without it we become more cautious and only see barriers.  Not having confidence, in ourselves, the people around us or the situations we find ourselves in is one of the most common ways we get in our own way.

In this podcast, Rob and Paul explore what confidence is, and how we get it.  Do we need confidence to do the things we do, or do we get confidence from doing them?  This is the classic psychological chicken and egg…   

Why do I procrastinate when I need to get stuff done?

Ever wondered why you can find so many things to do when you have something important to get done or why social media seems more interesting than the piece of work in front of you?   

Most of us procrastinate from time to time, some of us more than others.  In this podcast, Paul and Ricky explore why we do and how it is often misunderstood (especially by those that don’t do it as much). Importantly, they explore the different strategies for tackling procrastination when it gets in the way.  

If you know someone who might find this or any of our other podcasts useful, can you do us a favour and share this with them?    You will be helping them and helping us.  Thanks

What is the best piece of advice you would give?

In this special edition, one-hundredth episode of the podcast we explore the four key topics, Productivity, Change, Culture and Leadership to see if we can get each of them down to one piece of wisdom, well one piece each from Ricky, Rob, Rich and Paul.

Without creating any spoilers, you may have guessed that we did not get it down to one, or one per topic! However, we did come up with some real nuggets for each of the areas, so listen in for a quick grounding in how to get things done in your organisation, department or team.

How you can create questions to achieve laser-like clarity?

Continuing our short series on the power of questions, in this podcast, Rob and Ricky explore the role of questions in creating clarity.

Questions are one of the easiest ways of engaging our minds. In fact, they are sneaky, as it is almost impossible not to think about a question when asked, even if you don’t want to answer it. Questions can help us sort through the noise to discover exactly what we want, when we want it, and how we will know when we get there.

What should I do when I realise that my workshop plan might not be working?

So, you have spent hours working out how best to run your meeting or workshop, you have a plan, you have the timing perfect… then the workshop starts, and you watch as your plan gets up and leaves the building!

In this podcast, Paul gets experienced facilitators Richard and Rob to share some of their secrets so that you look like everything is running to plan; you end up exactly where you said you would end up, even if you don’t quite know how you got there.

How do I handle difficult people without impacting the whole group?

Our series on facilitation continues with one of the most difficult things that anyone running a meeting or facilitating a session has to deal with, people!

There are a number of reasons why someone might not be playing along with the process or playing nice with the group, and as the facilitator, you are the person who is best placed to intervene.  However, this is more than just laying down the law, and a little understanding of what might be causing the issue will help to identify strategies that may make life better for you and for them.

Rob and Richard explain to Paul some of the reasons why people come across as difficult in sessions and share some of their strategies to get the back on board.

How do I create psychological safety in our meetings?

Continuing our series on facilitation, Paul asks Rob and Richard how they create the trust and ‘safety’ required to get honesty and openness from workshop participants.

Creating a safe space is one of the primary responsibilities of a facilitator.

If you get the environment and dynamic wrong, it may cause people to close down, limiting the ideas, challenge and acceptance of the group. Getting it wrong makes the facilitator’s role harder.

A series of simple interventions, from the room layout to the first few minutes, can make all the difference, even though the group may not even notice you are doing it.

What do you need to think about when planning a team workshop?

The Thinking Focus team have facilitated workshops all over the world.  We facilitate thinking for companies large and small, as well as charities, and government bodies; if you have something that you need the team to think about, then the team can help.

In this short series, Paul talks to Richard and Rob to understand how master facilitators work, giving you some inside tips on how to be a better facilitator, so you can get better outcomes in the meeting you are running.

This first podcast explores the thinking of the facilitator when they are planning the workshop, from the goal to the group; what do you need to know?

How do you switch off autopilot?

We spend most of the time with our brains on ‘autopilot’.  We are thinking at a subconscious level, causing us to act without being truly aware of what we are doing.   This handy little trick helps us get through the day, making the most of the energy available and freeing up our conscious mind to work on the more important stuff, like ‘what’s for dinner?’.

Rob and Ricky explore in this podcast how you can turn off this automatic process, so you can take conscious control of the things that you really need to think about, not just respond to.

Why is reflection so important for embedding learning?

Every time we learn something new we have to connect that to our world, to understand how that new piece of information or skill will work for us.  Knowing is not enough, we have to integrate the new into our existing understanding of the world.  That takes reflection.

In this podcast, Ricky and Rob explore why reflection is so important and offer up different strategies that will help you reflect, and therefore embed, your learning.