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Blogging about the world of leadership, learning, development, coaching, and life at work
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Behavioural economics : what's it got to do with L&D?

Mark Gilroy December 14, 2018

In recent years the study of behavioural economics has become a popular lens to view human behaviour, with best-selling books on the topic now a mainstay of most retailers. Behavioural science has journeyed from the academic world into the wider arena. As a consultant and coach, I’ve become intrigued by how behavioural economics might be applied to the arena of learning and development. 

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In Musings, Coaching, Team Development Tags behavioural economics, unconscious bias, change, loss, fear
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Podcast : Play, games and wellbeing

Mark Gilroy November 27, 2018

After appearing as a guest on The 3 Good Podcast, hosted by Sukh Pabial earlier this year, we thought we’d go for the hat trick with our third episode together. Sukh’s podcast covers the themes of positive psychology, wellbeing, resilience, mental health and emotional intelligence.

In this episode, we pick up a theme from our previous episode, and talk about

  • How the past year of podcasting has been for Sukh

  • Our favourite games, and what they make us good at

  • How play impacts our wellbeing

  • The concept of ‘supernormal stimuli’ and how this taps into our evolutionary wiring for distraction

  • Surprising research about the benefits of playing games, including weight loss, avoiding PTSD, resilience, empathy, and connectedness

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In Podcast Tags games, wellbeing, podcast, resilience, ptsd, empathy
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Podcast : Value through vulnerability

Mark Gilroy November 5, 2018

Value Through Vulnerability is a podcast dedicated to putting the human back into humanity. How? By sharing ideas, opinion & challenges to improving the level of self awareness, vulnerability & inclusivity, at home, at work and in the world.

In this episode of Garry Turner’s podcast, we cover a range of topics including:

  • My unusual career journey and some of the lessons I’ve taken from it so far

  • Defining what vulnerability is and isn’t

  • Exploring identity work with individuals and teams

  • The way we present different aspects of the ‘self’ through different forms of social media

  • The immune system analogy when working with diversity in teams

  • A model to describe varying levels of maturity when it comes to diversity in organisations

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In Podcast, Resilience, Technology at Work, Team Development, Coaching Tags podcast, inclusion, diversity, social, identity, self
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Podcast : The impact of social technology on wellbeing and resilience

Mark Gilroy July 6, 2018

In this episode of The Three Good Podcast, Sukh Pabial and I talk about the impact of modern social technology such as email, social media, and apps on our well being and resilience. We explore some of the latest research into this area, and discuss some top tips to help us regain control of our devices.

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In Podcast, Technology at Work Tags podcast, technology, resilience, websites, social, media, play, games
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Be the grit you wish to see in the world

Mark Gilroy July 3, 2018

Have you ever heard about how natural pearls are formed?

Me neither. If you’d asked me this up until recently, I probably would have mumbled something about oysters. It turns out that the specifics are pretty interesting. I was thinking about this amazing process recently, which had me wondering about the profession of people development, and whether any helpful analogies might be drawn.

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In Team Development, Musings, Coaching, Leadership Tags pearls, wisdom, development, change, grit
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Podcast : Emotion at Work - anniversary special

Mark Gilroy May 31, 2018

In this special episode of Phil Willcox's Emotion at Work podcast, we celebrate his 1st anniversary by turning the spotlight on Phil for the first time, reviewing the past 12 months and 23 episodes of his show.

The topics we covered included:

  • Whether we would rather be able to hit 'copy and paste' or 'undo' in real life

  • Knowing the distinction between contentment and happines

  • How and why Phil came to specialise in emotion, credibility and deception

  • Looking at what happens "within" vs what happens "between", and the interplay between the two

  • Personal stories in which both of us have lost face and credibility at work

  • Tactics for repairing face when it has been lost

  • The merits of using methaphors of masks/houses when discussing the many faces that we wear

  • The challenges involved in finding men to talk about stories of emotion at work

  • Potential themes and guests for future episodes of the Emotion at Work podcast

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In Resilience, Musings, Podcast Tags podcast, emotion, shame, face, grief, loss
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The Not-To-Do List

Mark Gilroy March 21, 2018

I’m a big fan of a to-do list.

Almost every year I pick a new To-Do list app to try out, and spend enthusiastic hours moving all my tasks/projects/workflows across to it. And believe me, I’ve tried them all - Omnifocus, Wunderlist, Clear, Any.do, ToDoist … all the way through to my current favourite: Things 3. Not to mention the low-tech solutions of various journals, notebooks and post-it note arrays.

Each time I switch tools, I marvel at the new features and convince myself: this is it. This is the one true to-do system that will allow me to organise my life in a way in which David Allen himself would be proud.

But there are inherent problems. Enter: the not-to-do list.

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In Team Development, Technology at Work, Leadership Tags list, productivity, motivation, inversion
7 Comments
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Podcast : Talking about optimism

Mark Gilroy March 6, 2018

I was thrilled to be invited to contribute to The 3 Good Podcast, hosted by Sukh Pabial. Sukh's podcast covers the themes of positive psychology, wellbeing, resilience, mental health and emotional intelligence.

In this episode, Sukh and I talked about optimism.

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In Resilience, Team Development, Podcast Tags brexit, dan ariely, psychology, optimism, podcast, tali sharot
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How is virtual learning like running an airline?

Mark Gilroy February 26, 2018

The practice of facilitating in a virtual environment is unique in so many ways. When planning a piece of virtual learning, one of the key challenges is that it can appear incredibly abstract. If you’ve never designed a piece of e-learning, webinar content or other virtual learning solutions, it can be helpful to pick a meaningful analogy to make things more concrete.

In this post we’ll be using the analogy of an airline when considering the planning, design and delivery of virtual learning.

So, if you’d like to take your seats and place your luggage into the overhead compartment, we’ll get started…

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In Technology at Work Tags webinars, learning, virtual
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Emotional literacy - how important are emojis?

Mark Gilroy December 20, 2017

What's your favourite emoji, and what does that say about you? Stastically, it's likely to be the 'tear's of laughter' emoji, but perhaps yours tells a different story...

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In Technology at Work Tags emoji, emotions, language, communication, state, HR, future, workplace
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Talent : time for a rebrand? (#DISRUPTHRMCR session)

Mark Gilroy November 19, 2017

Last month I was invited to speak at the inaugural #DISRUPTHR Manchester event. DISRUPT is an information exchange designed to energise, inform and empower executives, business leaders and people in the HR field. DisruptHR is built on the belief that how we’ve approached people and talent in the past won’t be the best way to approach it in the future.

The evening was full of short, focussed talks from professionals who shared their ideas on how we can move our talent thinking forward. Borrowing from the genius of Ignite, each speaker had to follow the rules: 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide, 5 minutes.

My presentation took the theme of talent, and posed the question: is it time for us to examine how we talk about, measure, and develop talent for the workplace of the future?

Oh, and it rhymed.

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In Musings Tags disrupt, hr, ignite, pool, grid, matrix
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Book review: Coaching for Innovation: Tools and Techniques for Encouraging New Ideas in the Workplace

Mark Gilroy November 7, 2017

Coaching for Innovation demonstrates the integral role that coaching can play in providing a competitive edge, by fostering the bigger thinking that leads to idea generation and innovation.

As I picked up this book, I found myself wondering whether there is a need to differentiate coaching focussed on innovation from any other kind of coaching. After all, isn’t any coaching initiative designed to foster new thinking, shift perspectives, and consider alternative approaches? Do coaches ever brand themselves as ‘creativity coaches’ in the same way some do as career or life coaches?

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In Reviews, Coaching Tags innovation, creativity, coaching, mentoring, ideas, culture
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One hundred percent solitude

Mark Gilroy October 6, 2017

How would you feel about being enclosed inside a pod filled with water for 90 minutes, entirely alone, with nearly all your senses switched-off?

I have a noisy mind. I practice mindfulness when I can, I try and cut down on caffeine, and attempt to externalise excess 'load' using journalling. Nonetheless, there's a lot of mental chatter up there, and I'm always keen to experiment with ways of becoming more comfortable with solitude. Letting the mind 'be', without feeding it with more input.

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In Resilience, Reviews, Musings Tags solitude, mindfulness, meditation, flotation, isolation
6 Comments
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12 recommended podcasts for learning & development practitioners and coaches

Mark Gilroy September 2, 2017

For years I discounted podcasts, considering myself a non-auditory learner, until I gave it a try. To my surprise, I discovered that there are rich rewards to be found in the world of podcasting.

Yet with over 250,000 unique podcasts to choose from, with more than 8 million episodes available, getting started in building your subscriptions can be overwhelming!

Here are 12 of my favourite podcasts that cover the learning & development arena.

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In Reviews, Technology at Work, Leadership, Coaching Tags audio, learning, coaching, podcasts
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Creating virtual learning environments - four classic mistakes and how to avoid them

Mark Gilroy August 3, 2017

In volatile and uncertain economic climates, it’s essential for businesses to leverage the latest technologies to adapt to client demands. For our business, key component in staying VUCA-proof has been the introduction of webinars and virtual classrooms to cater for train-the-trainer accreditation sessions. Although our traditional “on the ground” workshops have remained popular, in recent years we have found a strong demand for learning in a virtual classroom. Whether it’s for dispersed teams, clients who have limited travel budgets, or the time-poor learner, webinars have helped our business stay agile.

That’s not to say that we haven’t made any mistakes. Here are some that we’ve encountered, and some ideas for how to avoid them:

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In Technology at Work Tags webinars, technology, virtual
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Robots, emotions and kung fu

Mark Gilroy June 14, 2017

Last week I attended the CIPD Northern Area Partnership (NAP) conference. A strong theme throughout the event was how we, as professional developers, can adjust to a world that is becoming increasingly led by technology. How can we put the ‘human' back into human resources, when the focus is on using machine learning to automate so much of our work?

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In Musings, Technology at Work Tags asimov, artificial, machines, NAP, the matrix, intelligence, emotion
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How to read 10 books in a day

Mark Gilroy May 9, 2017

No, seriously. To be accurate, this is a post about how I managed to read 10 books in about 3 hours.

Here's the thing- I love reading. I also love TV box sets. And movies. And podcasts. And magazines. All this before we even get to the worlds of twitter, blogging and other social media feeds. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling a sense of 'content anxiety' in a world of near-abundant input. There is so much fantastic content out there…but making the time to consume it all can feel like a real challenge.

Enter Blinkist: an app-based service, which offers access to professionally curated insights from over 2000 best selling books, chunking them down into a 15-min read, known as a 'blink'.

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In Technology at Work, Reviews Tags evernote, blinkist, review, reading, non-fiction, podcasts, curation
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The Healthy Learning Platter

Mark Gilroy April 6, 2017

I recently encountered Dan Siegel and David Rock's concept of the Healthy Mind Platter : a set of daily mental activities which make up the full set of psychological minerals that your brain needs to function at its best. A balanced diet of ingredients that help build wellness.

It left me wondering whether there could be a similar concept for learning - a Healthy Learning Platter. A set of universal learning activities which, if fulfilled to a level appropriate for the individual, allow for unstoppable learning to flourish, every day.

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In Musings, Leadership, Coaching, Team Development Tags #learnconnectdo, everyday, learning, #cipdldshow
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Creating alternate realities

Mark Gilroy March 31, 2017

Disclaimer: this is not a post about science fiction and infinite universes with overlapping timelines.

Although on second thought, maybe it is. I'll leave you to make up your mind.

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In Musings, Resilience, Coaching Tags odyssey planning, design, thinking, empowerment, creativity, scenario, assumptions, stanford
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Is personality a myth?

Mark Gilroy February 17, 2017

Personality: a helpful word that lets me talk about my 'me-ness' and your 'you-ness'.

It's usually understood as a set of consistent characteristics that are fundamental to an individual and those that they have contact with. 

Walter Mischel transformed this idea. In 1968 he wrote a book which challenged the way we looked at personality and our lives. He's also the man behind one of the most well-known psychological experiments: the marshmallow test.

But our futures are not to be found in a marshmallow (or two).

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In Musings, Resilience Tags personality, mischel, context, marshmallow, situation
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Archive

  • December 2018
    • Dec 14, 2018 Behavioural economics : what's it got to do with L&D? Dec 14, 2018
  • November 2018
    • Nov 27, 2018 Podcast : Play, games and wellbeing Nov 27, 2018
    • Nov 5, 2018 Podcast : Value through vulnerability Nov 5, 2018
  • July 2018
    • Jul 6, 2018 Podcast : The impact of social technology on wellbeing and resilience Jul 6, 2018
    • Jul 3, 2018 Be the grit you wish to see in the world Jul 3, 2018
  • May 2018
    • May 31, 2018 Podcast : Emotion at Work - anniversary special May 31, 2018
  • March 2018
    • Mar 21, 2018 The Not-To-Do List Mar 21, 2018
    • Mar 6, 2018 Podcast : Talking about optimism Mar 6, 2018
  • February 2018
    • Feb 26, 2018 How is virtual learning like running an airline? Feb 26, 2018
  • December 2017
    • Dec 20, 2017 Emotional literacy - how important are emojis? Dec 20, 2017
  • November 2017
    • Nov 19, 2017 Talent : time for a rebrand? (#DISRUPTHRMCR session) Nov 19, 2017
    • Nov 7, 2017 Book review: Coaching for Innovation: Tools and Techniques for Encouraging New Ideas in the Workplace Nov 7, 2017
  • October 2017
    • Oct 6, 2017 One hundred percent solitude Oct 6, 2017
  • September 2017
    • Sep 2, 2017 12 recommended podcasts for learning & development practitioners and coaches Sep 2, 2017
  • August 2017
    • Aug 3, 2017 Creating virtual learning environments - four classic mistakes and how to avoid them Aug 3, 2017
  • June 2017
    • Jun 14, 2017 Robots, emotions and kung fu Jun 14, 2017
  • May 2017
    • May 9, 2017 How to read 10 books in a day May 9, 2017
  • April 2017
    • Apr 6, 2017 The Healthy Learning Platter Apr 6, 2017
  • March 2017
    • Mar 31, 2017 Creating alternate realities Mar 31, 2017
  • February 2017
    • Feb 17, 2017 Is personality a myth? Feb 17, 2017
    • Feb 10, 2017 5 things I love about journaling with the Day One app Feb 10, 2017
  • January 2017
    • Jan 17, 2017 Let it go Jan 17, 2017
    • Jan 3, 2017 Big Questions (part 1) Jan 3, 2017
  • December 2016
    • Dec 2, 2016 Emotion, authenticity, deception and credibility Dec 2, 2016
  • November 2016
    • Nov 29, 2016 A deception epidemic - why do we lie? Nov 29, 2016
  • October 2016
    • Oct 31, 2016 Reclaiming email Oct 31, 2016
  • September 2016
    • Sep 29, 2016 Everyday leadership Sep 29, 2016
  • June 2016
    • Jun 22, 2016 Errors of prospection - why it's hard to think realistically about the future Jun 22, 2016
    • Jun 17, 2016 How to build better habits : 4 amazing apps and 1 great technique Jun 17, 2016
  • February 2016
    • Feb 26, 2016 Digital mindfulness - making the case for single-tasking Feb 26, 2016
    • Feb 17, 2016 Keeping an eye on things that move slowly - the importance of pace layers Feb 17, 2016
  • January 2016
    • Jan 29, 2016 The problem with authenticity Jan 29, 2016
  • December 2015
    • Dec 15, 2015 Leadership lessons on legs - searching for wisdom in Vietnam Dec 15, 2015
  • November 2015
    • Nov 27, 2015 7 transformative tips to stop email taking over your world Nov 27, 2015
    • Nov 5, 2015 What can 4-year-olds teach us about teamwork? Nov 5, 2015
  • October 2015
    • Oct 19, 2015 "Three feet from gold" - maintaining integrity in the face of failure Oct 19, 2015
    • Oct 6, 2015 3 outstanding apps for modern mindfulness practice Oct 6, 2015
    • Oct 1, 2015 The dark side of leadership Oct 1, 2015
  • September 2015
    • Sep 22, 2015 The power of multiple networks Sep 22, 2015
    • Sep 18, 2015 5 neuroscience nuggets from the world of positive psychology Sep 18, 2015
  • August 2015
    • Aug 20, 2015 Great expectations Aug 20, 2015
  • July 2015
    • Jul 30, 2015 Do we sometimes pretend to be busy? Jul 30, 2015
    • Jul 21, 2015 The Apple Watch review that I nearly didn't write Jul 21, 2015
    • Jul 16, 2015 Crisis : what happens when the boat starts sinking? Jul 16, 2015
    • Jul 8, 2015 Small giants - choosing 'great' over 'big' Jul 8, 2015
  • June 2015
    • Jun 30, 2015 What shaped me Jun 30, 2015
    • Jun 22, 2015 6.2 good things from #CIPDNAP15 conference Jun 22, 2015
    • Jun 16, 2015 4 things I've learned after 3 years attending the CIPD NAP conference Jun 16, 2015
    • Jun 12, 2015 5 key reasons why psychometrics could start transforming your coaching conversations Jun 12, 2015
    • Jun 6, 2015 3 winning ways to develop resilient teams Jun 6, 2015
    • Jun 4, 2015 The beginning... Jun 4, 2015
 

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