Squeeze

It's no ones favourite subject on the podcast today... meetings. Not many people love them, but most of us spend a good deal of our lives in them, so listen for top tips on how to make meetings matter.

It's been a little while since our last episode, so it's time we had a catch up! We talk about the break from squeeze, whats changed for us at iManage, and what's coming next.

Its been a while since our last episode, but today we are bringing you something a little different… and if you're a fan of motor sport like bob and I, something a little bit special… We're talking to Operations Director of the McLaren Racing team, Piers Thynne.

What if self control was our super power. So finally tuned that we knew exactly when to exercise it, but also when to go with instinct and impulse. That would be pretty useful. For most of us self control is something we could do with developing. Today we talk about four strategies for improving your self control.

What is your relationship with risk? Are you somebody who values the chance to make a bold decision and put something on the line, or do you operate exclusively in the realm of near certainty, finding your comfort in knowing. Today we explore these ideas and the upsides and downsides to both ends of the spectrum. Enjoy the podcast, I’ll catch you on the other side.

Many of us have areas of our lives that we are dissatisfied in, but many times we don’t move from that space of dissatisfaction into action. Why not? Today we explore the idea of executing and making things happen in your life.

As the second national lockdown begins Will and Bob talk to us about resilience. The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties has to be one of the most valuable traits in the current climate, both professionally and personally. So today we draw from the example of Lucy Hone to draw out three critical elements of resilience.

We’ve avoided talking too much about COVID on this podcast although it’s impossible to ignore the business and behavioural implications of COVID as we talk about other things, but given our most recent Boris speech which seemed to increase the duration of covid related limitations, today we talk about the new normal, how we are all coping with it, and what we have learned 6 months into these huge changes.

Well we are back after our summer pause, I hope you were all able to have some kind of break over the summer despite all of the limitations. In this episode we are talking about what it means to be an intreprenuer, that is an entrepreneur within an organisation.

“There is a way to do it better, find it.” So said Thomas Edison, potentially the greatest American inventor of all time. Innovation is the secret sauce for most organisations doing business today, and failure to innovate is demonstrably linked to failure to grow, and even to the death of some companies altogether. So how well is your organisation supporting innovation from the inside?

The patterns of behaviour and habits that you have tell stories about you. Are you aware of the things you unconsciously do, the attitudes and presuppositions you bring to the table in your relationships and communications. Are you in control of your habits, or do they control you? Is it time to develop new patterns and habits to help you develop and move forward?

Have you reached your potential? It’s a hard question to answer isn’t it? Most of us would probably want to say no, not just out of a sense of British humility, but also in acknowledgement that there is more in store for us, we haven’t reached our peak yet. You might find your own potential is hard to define, it has an intangible, transitory quality to it, but perhaps given the shake up that the world has been going through, now is a great time to reimagine, refocus, and recommit to personal progression.

Being a leader means being flexible. Being a leader means understanding those you are leading. The danger of simply having one or two modes when it comes to leading your teams is that you approach issues from entirely the wrong perspective, and either fail to develop somebody or worse still, do damage to someones motivation or potential skill set. So today we look at a tried and tested leadership model which will help you be a dynamic and attentive leader.

We sometimes think that if we haven’t learned, then we haven't been taught well… its easy to blame the teacher, but what does it take to be a good learner? Surely that has a big part to play in the equation. The same is true when it comes to a coaching relationship, so what kind of attitudes and perspectives are present in a good coachee?

Interviewing online is a new and challenging proposition. When you are not present in person you loose out on so many of the subtleties of communication and the social and aesthetic clues about a companies culture. We have to work even harder to make great first impressions online, today Bob and Will give advise on how you can stand out from the rest.

Malcolm Gladwell famously theorised that to become an expert in any task or action you must perform it for 10,000 hours. This was in his book Outliers. Whether you think 10,000 is the magic number or not, practice certainly is the key to progression, this is true in musicianship and sportsmanship, and almost every other pursuit including business. So how often are you practicing your skills?

From the moment we are born, we are told stories. Stories about hungry caterpillars, Gruffalos, lions witches and wardrobes. But it doesn’t stop when we leave primary school. It doesn’t even stop when we leave education all together, because storytelling is part of the fabric of effective communication, any communication no matter the topic.

Inspiration, we all need a bit every now and then don't we. A spark to light the match that sets the fire, something to remind us why we do what we do, something to motivate us to keep pushing forward. It’s no different in our organisations, if we want our people to be motivated, we need to keep inspiring them, so how do we do that? I know who we can ask…

Evolution is the change in the characteristics of a species over several generations and relies on the process of natural selection. Why do species change and adapt? Because of environmental pressures and competition. Our 21st century environment has just undergone a dramatic change, and it hasn’t taken millions of years, the changes literally happened over night. So how is this new environment forcing us to change, to adapt, to evolve? How might we have to redefine ourselves in this new and unfamiliar world.

We are getting super practical this week with a podcast all about presentation skills. Some people love to present and some people avoid it at all costs, but with some help from bob and will today we think you can go out and deliver an engaging and effective presentation no matter the industry, no matter the topic. So grab a notepad (unless you’re driving), and enjoy the podcast

The current health crisis has shown us people at their best and at their worst. The temptation during a crisis is to protect your own castle, and the people inside it, and there is some good sense in that. But what becomes of generosity during times like these? Is not the time to be giving things away?

Do you enjoy meetings? Then your officially a weirdo! No, i'm sure there are some people who do like a meeting, but I think for many of us meetings take a large portion of our time during the working day, and most people think they could be more efficient and less frequent. So today we are talking about making meetings matter.

We are being warned to settle in to the new normal when it comes to ways of working, however things progress in the coming weeks it seems certain that some things will never be the same again. That fact drives pressure and uncertainty into our lives, and dealing with that can be challenging. All this in todays podcast.

One of the biggest challenges when working remotely is how to keep motivated. When we are away from the office and away from colleagues, it is easy to begin to feel disconnected from the vision of the organisation and therefore demotivated to carry out your role in that vision. In this podcast we explore the different types of motivation, and seek to inject some motivation back into the most deprived areas in a remote working scenario.

We are living through truly unprecedented times during this Covid 19 crisis. The effect on business has been monumental with vast numbers from all industries being forced to leave their places of work and set up shop in their homes, i’m sure this is true for many of you listening now. Working from home does have a few benefits, but it also carries many challenges, primarily to do with isolation, loneliness, lack of motivation and, todays topic, communication issues. We’re going to be thinking about ways in which we can improve our teams communication, addressing some of the pitfalls of remote working.

Today we are talking about how to make coaching a part of the culture of an organisation, rather than having a kind of interventionist approach when it comes to coaching. How can coaching become developmental and formative for people on an everyday basis? Luckily we have a couple of guys with some thoughts on that…

If you were to make a list of the most valuable character traits for people in a working context, what would make up your top 5? Good communicator? Leadership skills? Charisma? Maybe punctuality or commitment? Public speaking abilities or work ethic? I wonder where creativity would rank on that list, if it even ranked at all? Maybe for some of you creativity is something you rank highly, but there is a tendency to under value creativity and underestimate the positive impact that fostering and cultivating creativity in your people can have on your organisation as a whole. Thoughts on this in todays podcast.

How smart are you with your emotions? Are you aware of the things that trigger certain emotions. Are you in control of those emotional reactions, cognisant of their impact on your behaviour as well as their impact on the people around you. Are you able to read other peoples emotional states, and work in those scenarios to bring about positive outcomes? Today we are talking about emotional intelligence and literacy.

This week we are considering micro communications… Not all our messages are explicit, some of the ways we communicate are much more implicit, much more subtle, and arguably these micro communications are more impactful. We can send signals with facial cues, hand movements, tone of voice, eye contact and in more more ways. So how aware are you of what you are saying beyond the words that are coming out of your mouth? All this in todays episode.

I wonder if you feel like you have achieved your potential in life? Or if not yet, then are you driving towards fulfilling your potential as a goal in life. How do you measure and monitor that progress, and if you are in a management or leadership position, how good are you at spotting and nurturing the potential around you in the workplace? Do you fear elevating others above yourself, or do you enjoy seeing the people around you progressing towards their potential? We talk through all this in todays podcast, so sit back and enjoy.

Are you the type of person who commands the attention of the room when you speak. Are you able to charm people and win them round with your words and manner? Today we are talking about gravitas and charisma. How are these traits helpful, and is it possible to learn gravitas and charisma? Enjoy the podcast.

We all have an impact on the people around us, whether we are aware of it or not! So how can we manage or even drastically change the impact we are having so that it is beneficial for ourselves and for the organisations we work in?

Feedback… the work strikes fear into many of our hearts! It can feel like standing in front of a firing squad, or going on trial in front of a jury… but does it have to be that way? Today we talk about the positive role that feedback can have, and give lots of practical advice about how to deliver feedback that can change things for the better.

Self care seems to be a buzz word in our modern culture, but what does that term mean, and what does caring for yourself look like in a workplace context? In an age of immediate and constant feedback, are we loosing touch with the ability to self regulate, to take time out for ourselves, to be a little selfish for the good of our physical and mental health? All this in todays podcast.

For a number of complex cultural, political, and economic reasons, businesses in the western world seem to have drifted further and further away from the idea of building a safe and supportive community for employees, and more to towards prioritising performance outcomes and bottom line profits. What impact has that had both individually, and corporately? Is it time to reverse just a little bit, and start prioritising the people in our organisations?

If you had to name a guaranteed shared experience in this life, I think stress would be a pretty good guess. Stress is commonplace in our lives, maybe we have periods of low stress and periods of high stress, but it's pretty much a constant theme. So what does this mean for us? What are the positive and negative outcomes of stress, and how can we monitor and manage its impact on our ability to function at a high level. All this in todays episode, so relax, and take it all in.

We might be a couple of weeks late with todays topic (Christmas does seem to be a time of excess for most of us) but today we are talking about self control. What does self control look like, why is it a desirable and attractive attribute, and how can we grow as individuals in this area? All this in todays episode.

Well its that time of year when people resolve to change their lives for the better, start going to the gym, stop eating chocolate, read more books, watch less television… but we all know that often times these resolutions don’t last quite as long as we might hope. Todays episode is all about commitment. What does being committed to something mean, and how can we be more committed to our goals both professionally and privately.

How influential are you? What makes somebody an influencer? Today Bob and Will discuss the highly valuable skill of influencing, giving pointers on how we can begin to develop the necessary skills to effect favourable outcomes.

Well it’s a big week for us here in the UK with a general election thing place. Usually we talk soft skills on this podcast, not politics, but Bob and Will couldn’t help themselves, and cleverly weave in this weeks topic of behaviour with a touch of election chat at the beginning. But don’t worry, the politics doesn’t last for long, Bob and Will discuss the roots our our behaviour and how and why we might want to reflect on it and in some cases change it.

Remote working, virtual working, flexible working, home working – these are all familiar business terms, yet though remote working reaps plenty of benefits for both businesses and individuals, it does also present all kinds of new challenges. It todays episode we face up to those challenges and give pointers as to how managers may be able to mitigate the negative implications of remote teams.

There are certain traits, skills and habits that seems to be present in all highly effective people. Is this a coincidence? Or is there something about these traits that catalyse effectiveness? And if there is something special about these traits and habits, how can we identify, categorise, and begin to practice them in our own lives. All this and more in todays episode.

Coaching seems to be one of those skills thats attribute to everyone and their mums. But maybe that is because in general we are not all clued up on what great coaching really is. What are the special skill that a great coach has, and what does an effective coaching session look like. We also think about what it is like to be coachee, and how we can get the most out of being coached.

Learning is a fundamental part of life. It comes naturally at first, then it feels like its forced on us during years of schooling, and finally we reach adulthood where there is nothing left to learn, right? This week Bob and Will give us the lowdown on how we learn, an important topic for anyone who wants to maximise their potential in any field.

Life’s a bit of a battle sometimes isn’t it. We don’t always feel like doing the things we know we ought to do. Well in this episode Bob and Will talk about inspiration, motivation and self determination, breaking down the distinctions between these ideas, and understanding how to effect change in ourselves and in others we manage.

In this episode Bob and Will talk about intention and perception. Is there ever a disparity between the way you intend to be understood, and the way others perceive your communication or actions? Is there ever value in the disparity between intention and perception? And how do these concepts relate to business.

In this episode Bob and Will give us an insight into why they believe teams should stop aiming to be high performing, and start aiming to be high functioning.

Hello and welcome to Squeeze, a management training podcast designed to help squeeze the best out of you. Each Monday our experts in behavioural training, Bob Bannister and Will Karlsen, sit down to discuss personal effectiveness, helping you to fine tune your management and leadership skills.In this, the first ever episode of Squeeze, you’ll get to know our experts Bob and Will - who are they, and what made them think they were interesting or insightful enough to make a podcast! We’ll also give you a bit of a roadmap for future episodes of Squeeze.