Sound Snacks
Here are our snack-size insights on a range of work and personal issues.
Click on any title below for the full article.
Anecdotes
Anecdotes liven up interviews and make you 'human' to the interviewer. Anecdotes can be used to highlight certain skills, talents and qualities you have, rather than just hoping the interviewer will get them by osmosis.
Anger Management
Anger Management - Seems Anger is one of those things that we tend to shy away from dealing with, even though we're all affected by other people's uncontrolled anger (and of course our own).
Appraisal Skills
Appraisals can be a terrific forum for review, development and communication; or they can be a 'tick the box' exercise that is relatively meaningless.
Assertiveness Skills
It can be rather daunting to think that in really difficult and stressful situations Assertiveness is the best approach.
Be Yourself
Just Be Yourself - At a job interview being yourself means personalising what you say, using self-disclosure and telling stories and anecdotes that help the other person 'see' you for who you are.
Behaviour Change
Humans are creatures of Habit and Pattern; it's how we survive. That's why Behavioural Changes are sometimes difficult things for us to deal with positively.
Being Assertive
Being assertive means you have to find those things you know you can do when you don't actually feel assertive.
Body Language
The many non verbal body language signals we give when communicating can be very powerful.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming explores leading edge techniques to literally help you to expand your thought processes and be truly productive with your new ideas.
Business Meeting Skills
Business Meetings: Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. How can you have a Better Business Meeting? Help with Business Meetings Skills and Meetings Facilitation.
Business Skills
Key Business Skills are not just basic skills such as communication, influencing, negotiation and line management. They are also likely to include advanced skills such as leadership, presentation, strategic thinking and project management.
Business Writing with Impact
There is a lot more to impactful writing, but these three key writing questions will set you on the right path.
Career
A Job is for Christmas, a Career is for Life. When was the last time you had a good, long hard, look at your Career?
Change Fatigue
With many organisations facing continuous change our most common reaction is an ostrich like attempt to try to keep our heads down until it's all over.
Change Management
Change is a constant. Change is good for you. Too much Change is bad for you.
Communication Skills
If we start with the premise that mis-communication is the norm, then we have a far greater chance of making our Communication Skills work.
Conflict Management
Conflict is an issue most of us shy away from. Why? What is so scary about a little bit of conflict?
Copywriting in the Digital Age
Copywriting in the Digital Age is designed to help you master the challenges of communicating to an audience electronically. Want to make your website compelling, attractive and have your audience humming your tune?
Corporate Events and Event Management
How do you keep delegates awake, engaged, and motivated at your annual away-day conference?
Counselling
'I'm fine; there's nothing wrong with me.' Difficulties in the Workplace, difficulties at home, stress getting too much to handle.
Creativity
'There's no such thing as Creativity; you just assemble what's already there.'
George Balanchine
Cross Cultural
A Culture Clash of some sort occurs as soon as two people get together.
Curriculum Vitae
Here's what Curriculum Vitaes (or as they are called in the States, resumes) are good for: getting you the interview.
Customer Facing
In the USA they're now calling it 'the human moment' - when businesses actually come Face to Face with people rather than using technology to get their message across. Customer service.
Customer Relationship
Too often we see Customers as a nuisance, as difficult, even as incidental to the business.
Customer Service Perspective
Customer Service perspective is something most customers think is an oxymoron. The very idea of actually serving a customer seems to go against the grain for many of our big service companies.
Delegation
'I haven't got time for Delegation! It takes more time to explain to someone what I want done than it does to do the job myself in the first place.'
Difficult People
People are Difficult. There are few fantasies in life that are more potent that the "if only" ones.
Downsizing
Downsizing; for some it's a lifestyle choice, but for most of us it means the organisation we work for is no longer vibrant and outward looking, but hunkered down and fearful for it's own survival.
Email Etiquette
Communication by Email can be hugely liberating or deeply frustrating depending on peoples understanding of the limitations and constraints of the medium.
Empathy
For those of you reading this title and thinking it's going to be about some kind of touchy feely soft skills love one another diatribe... forget it.
Employment
Employment is not just about having a job. Employment means a great deal more to most people; community, friends, a sense of purpose, self esteem and much more.
Empowerment
What exactly does Empowerment mean in the way it gets used these days?
Equality and Diversity
Equality and Diversity can be a real strength or an absolute minefield.
Executive Business Coaching
An outline of a practical approach to Business Coaching, Executive Coaching and Mentoring for yourself or colleagues.
Exhibitions and Trade Shows
Companies spend thousands upon thousands of pounds getting their Exhibition stands, conferences and roadshows to look absolutely brilliant.
Experiential Training
Having the experience is so much more vital than listening to someone talk about having an experience.
Facilitation
Impact Factory offers training in facilitation, meetings, away days, conferences, brainstorming sessions, impromptu get-togethers among staff, inter-departmental talks.
First Impressions
Making a Good First Impression really does count for a lot, however it is possible to retrieve the situation and leave them with a last impression that's just as powerful.
Group Dynamics
Like many of the most fascinating things in life, group dynamics are always in a state of flux.
Headhunters
Headhunters don't just go out to find someone to fit a job. No headhunters make it their business to know who is out there achieving above the norm. So if you want to be hunted, raise your profile.
Human Resources
Human Resources is not just about hiring and firing people. It's also about peoples development, wellbeing and level of support in the company they devote much of their waking hours to.
Induction
Most Induction Training is dull and boring. People troop in and are spoken at for anywhere from an hour to three days (or more!).
Influencing Skills
Most people's jobs require them to Influence Other People a lot of the time.
Innovation
If you have a job where you are expected to produce new ideas, fresh approaches and original concepts much of the time, there is no doubt you will be under extra pressure.
Interpersonal Skills
People interacting with other people, that's what Interpersonal Skill means.
Interview Dress Code
Interview Dress Code - At a job interview there is no set dress code, but the closer you can get to the company feel the better off you will be.
Interview Questions
What Interview Questions should you expect to be asked and how should you prepare for them?
Job Hunting
Job Hunting - Thinking of Job Hunting as a job in itself can transform the way you approach getting a job and your feelings about yourself as a jobless person.
Job Interview Techniques
You'll hear all sorts of rules about Job Interviews: people decide about you in the first 10 seconds; you have to make a good first impression; always ask insightful questions.
Leadership Development
Can you take someone who is not a Natural Leader and put them through a programme that will turn them into one?
Management Training Skills
Management Training - There you are, you've aspired to be a manager, you got the promotion.....and then what?
Managing Conflict
Of all the issues that people tend to avoid, Conflict ranks at the top of the list, along with Public Speaking and swimming with sharks.
Managing Former Peers
One of the hardest professional moves to make is that from Workmate to Manager.
Managing People
Unless you live on an island populated only by yourself, you interact with people every day of your life. Therefore, you are continually 'Managing' the people you know and meet.
Managing Pressure
These days a lot of people feel as though they're being asked to do the impossible. Stress and Pressure builds up at work and Managing Pressure becomes an essential skill!
Marketing
Marketing is not just about brand and corporate image. You can apply marketing thinking to yourself when looking for that perfect job or position.
Media Skills
Dealing with the Media - Interviewers and Journalists - can be quite daunting for the uninitiated.
Meeting Skills
Love them or loath them, Meetings are a necessary evil. They're supposed to be about the transfer of information, about communication and moving things forward. How many of you are thinking one out of three wouldn't be bad?
Mentoring Skills
Why Mentoring? Many people think that when they're hired to do a job, particularly if it's a well paid and/or high flying job, they're supposed to know everything, be able to handle everything with ease.
Motivation
Motivation is one of those vague catchall words that mean completely different things to different people.
Negotiating Skills
Negotiating Skills - "Heads I win, tails you lose." That's the way to handle Negotiating, isn't it?
Nervous Energy
Nervous Energy - If you begin to shift your thinking that nervous energy is your friend and not your enemy, you can use it to your advantage in a Job Interview.
Networking in Business
Networking is something many of us resist doing because we think of it as something only pushy or agressive people do.
Outplacement
A euphemism for 'You're Fired'; or real help for employees who are surplus to requirements? Well it all depends on who is outplacing you.
Outsourcing
Be careful what you outsource. Our entire web content is developed 'in-house' as we are the only people who really know what we do.
Performance Management
Let people know how they're doing, give them useful feedback and ensure they are working as effectively as possible.
Personal Development
If you stay the same, never change, stay fixed and inflexible, it's unlikely you're doing much personal development.
Personal Effectiveness
Most people want to feel useful in their lives. They want to feel as though they are making a contribution of some kind.
Personal Impact
Impact is a strong word. It happens when something or someone comes into contact with something or someone else.
Personal Presence
Some people, it seems, just have that certain something, a Personal Presence that's very hard to define, but that makes such an impressive impact that others who are less dynamic fade.
Pitching To Win New Business
Converting hard won New Business opportunities into actual work is a trick many of us would like to be better at. How can you improve your average?
Positive Attitude
Positive Attitude, Feedback, Acknowledgement, Affirmation; whatever you call it there are some very good reasons to tell people what works about them.
PowerPoint Presentation Skills
PowerPoint is a marvellous invention. But it's just another aid, another tool... a very trendy blackboard.
Presenting Skills
Presenting is something many of us are required to do, but which few of us ever master.
Proactivity
Proactive people make things happen. Passive people have things happen to them.
Procrastination
'Don't put off until tomorrow...'. Somehow turns into "Don't do today (or even tomorrow) that which you could possibly put off till forever". And if we have such busy lives (as we increasingly seem to have), we don't really have time to Procrastinate, do we?
Project Management
Project Management - The theatre's been booked, the marketing done, the tickets sold: the curtain must go up on a certain date at a certain time. How to Manage a Project!
Promotion
Are you waiting to be promoted? Or are actively seeking promotion? People are rarely promoted from a position of passivity.
Public Speaking Skills
Public speaking is something most people try to avoid. It can however, with a little effort, be mastered by all of us.
Qualifications
Qualifications are important, but many companies believe relevant life experience and a healthy attitude to learning and development are as, if not more important than shiny qualifications.
Real Time Management
Time Management is more a matter of managing your patterns and behaviours when confronted by conflicting demands on your time, than it is about planning your time better.
Recruitment
Recruitment is all about the fit. Both sides need to feel good about the idea of working together and that can only happen through a painstaking process of weeding out the almost good enough.
Redundancy
You are being made redundant. It's absolute. It's guaranteed. Your life is now going to change. Redundancy can be a curse or a blessing, but it certainly won't be boring.
Report Writing
Report Writing is a craft that can be learnt. Our courses help people write in a way that encourages people to engage with the writing.
Resume
What does your Resume say about you? Is it a list of everything you've ever done, or is it an entertaining glimpse of the real person behind the qualifications?
Role Play
Role Play in training is a much maligned art form. Most people have had a bad experience of poorly run role play and want nothing to do with it.
Saving Face in Negotiations
Often in a negotiation people will continue to hold out not because the proposal on the table is inherently unacceptable, but simply because they want to avoid the feeling or the appearance of backing down to the other side.
Fisher & Ury 'Getting to Yes'
Saying No
Just say no! If only being assertive were as easy as traditional assertiveness training makes out.
Self Confidence
There are certainly times when all of us wish we could go into a shop and ask for a pound of Confidence please (or rather, 500 grams of Confidence please).
Self Deprecation
Self Deprecation used sparingly can help give an impression of modesty, but if over used will quickly test peoples patients.
Self Disclosure
Self Disclosure can make you more approachable, welcoming and interesting. When used judisiously during a job interview, personal disclosure will give the interviewer a more rounded picture of who you really are.
Self Esteem
Most people measure their Self Esteem through externals: did I get a Good Appraisal, did I get the raise I asked for, do my colleagues think I'm a Team Player, did I get Praised by my manager?
Soft Skills
In the hard world of business, 'soft skills' seems such a squishy term for one of the essential competencies people need in order to be successful: interpersonal aptitude.
Strategic Thinking
The words vision, strategy, mission and values are words bandied around a lot in the corporate world. But what do they actually mean and how can you make them more than just words?
Stress Management - Managing Stress
Managing Stress - It is unlikely that our workaday situations are going to change much in the next few years.
Stress Management Quiz
Are you stressed or under pressure? Try the Impact Factory Stress Quiz and see how you are managing your pressure...
Successful Time Management
Important as being well organised and able to prioritise are; often, time management depends on the prospective time manager developing an awareness of what's going on internally for them. When it comes to time management skill, awareness can be the crucial skill.
Teambuilding
Whichever route you choose to get your team working well together - to get the kind of teambuilding you want - there are a few key elements to consider that are crucial.
Technology
Most of the time when people use a piece of Technology to Communicate with they think that they are received at the other end as though it's them. It isn't.
Teleconferencing
Having a Teleconference can seem like a good use of everyones presious time, but there are a few things to watch out for.
Telesales Training
The tone of your Telesales call could well be what's losing you business.
Tell Me About Yourself
Tell Me About Yourself - How you can make an interview a more interesting and informative process and increase your job interview prospects no end.
Training Trainers
A lot is expected of trainers: they have to deliver information or concepts or new ways of working into companies. They often have to introduce an entire workforce to a new mission or set of company values.
Verbal Skills
Most of us spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about our Verbal Skills, and with some justification. After all, from our earliest days we are encouraged from all sides to do two things, to walk and to talk!
Video Conferencing
Communication by video conference can raise one or two unforeseen difficulties.
Workplace Bullying
Workplace bullying takes many forms, but two in particular stand out that happen in the workplace
