As I sit here, reflecting on the journey of Zestfor—a journey that spans 15 years—I’m reminded of the power of milestones. These markers in time hold immense significance, both personally and professionally. But this month, there’s two additional reasons for...
As a leader, you may have spent some time already in your career focusing on your personal brand. You might have dedicated time trying to define, or even cultivate a certain reputation which matches your values. What kind of leader do you want others to perceive you...
A new year is an opportunity to take your leadership to a new level. It’s a chance to reflect on the challenges you’ve overcome in the previous year and consider how you can evolve in the months ahead. The last year certainly hasn’t been as easy to manage as most...
Continuing our theme of improving your impact and influence as a leader, we're discussing the value of building a powerful personal brand today. Branding is something we commonly associate with businesses and organisations. However, the reality is that every...
The Christmas decorations are away, and that leadership book you bought last year is calling you from across the office to be opened. You are ready to take your new leadership mindset to the next level and claim the success you want this year. These are all logical...
In our current socially driven world, you would not think humans have an issue speaking up and sharing their opinions. Though being a 'keyboard' anonymous warrior is vastly different from an employee in a large organisation feeling uncertain and potentially...
The world of work has changed significantly over the past few years as both organisations, and their employees have been pushed to the limit. Our expectations of each other are at the core of how we now show up in the workplace. For employers, the standard of...
Over the last few posts on the Zestfor blog, we have shared various ideas around leading in a remote-first world as employers and their employees navigate a new way of working. The hybrid model isn't new although the impact of increased remote working as a standard...
Look at any hybrid working poll on LinkedIn, and you will notice how many employees appreciate the benefits hybrid working can bring. The good news is many employers agree with this sentiment, as we can see from the uptake of the hybrid working model. In a recent...
Continuing from our last post about why we now need new rules of engagement as we manage our teams, let's talk about the most critical place to start when it comes to managing change. No, it's not with your employee; it starts with our team managers and leaders and,...
The last few years have changed our employees in ways we are only just understanding. Consequently, as managers and leaders, we must change how we work with our people. Let me set some context by reminding you what the human brain of your employees has been dealing...
On the way back from delivering a leadership training programme in Europe, I read Harvard Business Review’s latest post on retaining talent, which stimulated me to write this post. Currently, we are in the grip of a global skills shortage that is impacting most...
In our last blog, we talked about speaking up at work and the many benefits this brings for everyone concerned. Today we are continuing the theme as we explore building better workplace relationships. As human beings, we thrive when we are part of the 'pack' and,...
Speaking up at work isn't easy, no matter your title or role in the organisation. A recent research report from the Fierce Conversations group led by Susan Scott, the New York Times bestselling author and TEDx speaker, suggests that over fifty percent of us don't...
As we finally start to regroup after a challenging few years, many leaders' attention is now moving towards creating a team culture that works for employees, the company and its shareholders where virtual working is fast becoming the norm for many organisations. ...
I decided to write this post today to celebrate World Values Day. This year's theme is reconnecting, something I suspect many of us crave after the crazy couple of years we have all experienced. For those new to the values conversation, I want to share what they are...
Overwhelm? It’s a feeling many of us experience as we navigate an ever-growing to-do list, peer pressure, remote working that seems to have no start and finish, and the strange thoughts that pop up in our head all related to how much we must do. I know I have...
People-pleasing? It might seem like a different topic for a leadership blog, and yet people-pleasing can happen to any of us at one time or another. The incidence has increased over the last year as many of us have juggled personal and work priorities to keep...
Achieving more has been a theme for many leaders I have spoken to over the past year. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on navigating hybrid working and how working remotely had to be considered at multiple levels. It's great that the daily commute has been reduced...
Cast your mind back to quarter one of 2020, when suddenly working remotely became necessary rather than something good to do when you needed thinking time away from the office. Fast forward to quarter one a year later, and working from home is the next "new norm". ...
In our ever-increasingly digital world, it is vital to cultivate and maintain positive virtual interactions. Our ‘online personas’ can significantly impact how others perceive us, ultimately affecting our working relationships, personal brand, and business. The...
According to a recent HubSpot report, the amount of people working remotely has increased by 400% in the last ten years; home working didn’t just start because of Covid-19. And with 99% of people stating that they would like to work remotely at least some of the...
As the world adapts to a remote-first environment, leaders everywhere realise the importance of providing consistent coaching and feedback as their teams navigate this new working landscape. A recent H.R. Executive article highlights how coaching has 'exploded'...
Critical thinking is an invaluable tool that we use every day; it is essential in navigating the world and crucially, the workplace. Individuals with excellent critical thinking abilities can analyse information and extrapolate the best outcome from any given...
Uncertainty is all around us in our Covid-affected world. Things we used to think of as unmoving have shifted, such as the distinction between home and work, our freedom, and safety. We now live with daily uncertainty and have done since the start of the pandemic....
The events of 2020 tested our understanding of what makes a great team. And a few traits have been recognised as being invaluable to leaders – resilience is one of them. Resilience is a topic that had been gaining traction in leadership circles even before the...
Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams and other digital platforms are now a part of the fabric of our working lives. Digital communication has been one of the success stories of 2020, and it has allowed the world of work to be able to continue with some semblance of...
Many of us hoped that when the lockdown rules were lifted during the summer that it would be the last time we had to endure significant restrictions on our lives. But it is now apparent that we are going to have to accept that continually changing restrictions are...
In recent months, even the most upbeat of individuals might have struggled to stay positive; with the pandemic testing the limits of our ability to remain optimistic. But now, as we settle into the ‘recovery’ stage and pick up the pieces, we can reflect on the...
One thing that many of us have realised due to Covid-19 is that times of crisis can lead to unexpected changes for the better. While the effects of the pandemic are yet to be fully realised, many businesses have taken this opportunity to press reset, and to find new...
The events of the last few months have changed the way we think about the very fundamentals of work. Millions of UK employees were placed on the government's job retention furlough scheme, and ONS figures for April found that 49.2% of adults in employment were...
The COVID-19 outbreak has forced millions of us to work from home; many of whom have never done so before. If the last few weeks have marked your first ever work-from-home period, first of all – congratulations, and secondly, if you’ve found it difficult to...
Staying focused when working remotely can be challenging, even for seasoned professionals. Constant distractions - from that pile of laundry that needs ironing to your dog wanting a brisk walk – staying focused can be harder than you think. But with more teams...
Before we get into developing your ideal agile virtual team culture, it’s worth thinking about what exactly we mean by ‘agile’. An agile team is a cross-functional group of individuals that have the necessary people and skills to produce a successful outcome. It’s...
Organising meetings that are productive and efficient is a fine art. And never more so if you are developing a virtual team who are too far away for regular face to face meetings. A recent study on trends in high performing global teams concluded that ‘the human...
Diversity has become a big issue in the workplace over recent years. As a leadership coach, I’ve worked with many managers and leaders who are doing their best to incorporate diversity and inclusion in their workplace. Be it regarding age, disability, gender or...
It’s a digital age that we’re living in. And for leaders, that means embracing technology when running webinars or online training for virtual teams. You may already have experienced FaceTime or Skype on your tablet – this is just the next step! ...
Your team is crucial to the success of your business. Managed well, a team can accomplish much more than an individual – working together and using each other’s skills and abilities to unleash creativity, embrace innovation and build a pathway to success. But what...
Influential leaders need to have many traits to successfully lead their team. They need to be resilient, focused and willing to lead from the front. They also need diplomacy, self-awareness and transparency to establish trust in their team. However, there is...
I read an article recently about emotional intelligence, that suggested this will become a prominent component of business principles in the not-so-distant future. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is no longer the remit of more ‘hippy,’ laid-back companies who tend...
Many managers and leaders find themselves handling complex negotiations at some point in their career. Before you arrive at the negotiating table, it’s a wise move to ensure you have several options in the bag for possible favourable outcomes. These should include...
Female representation in the corporate world’s top jobs hasn’t improved much. In fact, it’s hardly improved at all according to a recent report by McKinsey & Company, despite many companies signing up to promote gender equality. In the (not so distant) past, it...
Introverts. They’ve got a bad rap. They are considered to be quiet, shy, reserved, over analytical and lacking in empathy. Extroverts, on the other hand, are seen as outgoing, opinionated, team players who are going places. But in fact, this is not the case. The truth...
While I realise we are living in the digital age with communication platforms such as WhatsApp, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Signal and Slack we do however have many conversations face to face throughout the day; at least I am hoping as leaders we do? The question...
Last time we talked about why there is immense value in revisiting your personal power in our current working environment. You can refresh your memory by reading why it’s time to develop your personal power post here. In part two of our series, we have several...
Personal power? Some people might think it’s a phrase that went out of fashion years ago. Maybe, though in today’s disruptive business landscape we need it more than ever; let me explain. This is part one of a two-part series where we explain why tapping into your...
Leaders, managers and contributors; we all play our part in growing organisations. Though the truth is, do, we have the skills now needed in a changing disruptive economy, to be successful in the various roles we all play in our teams and departments? Possibly;...
If you get a group of HR people or leaders together today, the conversation of employer branding, staff engagement and company culture are likely to raise its head. It’s not surprising when you consider we are in the middle of a worldwide skills shortage that...
Mid-career blues can happen to the best of us. A great example of this phenomenon in action is portrayed in the iconic film Educating Rita. If you are a film junkie, like me, treat yourself to a copy this Christmas. When it was released, it received a clutch of...
