Monkey Puzzle Blog

Stressful life events don’t have to be work-related to impact on performance or the workplace. It’s human nature to be affected by the challenging events that life can bring our way. Unfortunately, taking them into work is often unavoidable.

The four stages of team development by Bruce Tuckman is a core management model most leaders are familiar with. Teams start by ‘Forming’ and then go through a series of stages that eventually see them arrive at ‘Performing’ – with the advantages of being self-motivated, autonomous and competent.

Leaders and managers often ask us to run training or coaching programmes to help them deal with difficult behaviour - it’s the most common request for training we get. It’s not surprising, difficult behaviour in the workplace is time consuming and frustrating. Even the most cohesive team may experience it.

We work with many CEO’s passionate about what their organisation does, but less so about the time pressures that come with leadership roles. People have a habit of looking to the top for solutions, so it’s no surprise that many CEO’s discover that people and organisational issues are the real time suckers.

Do you identify as a perfectionist - or know someone who believes it makes them or their team, more productive? The truth is - it’s often not the success enabler it’s thought to be. In fact it could be causing some pretty serious damage.

Don’t wait until the new year to make big plans for 2019. Every year millions of us make New Years Resolutions that few people ever achieve. If you want to be different from the crowd, get thinking now about what you want to achieve and make a plan with these top tips:

Christmas is usually such a mix of people, different styles, generations and needs that it can be really hard for everyone to have a good time. It is possible with a bit of planning and forethought. Consider these three needs:

I’ll let you into a little secret - no one’s Christmas actually looks like their Facebook post would have you believe. Most of us are just grateful we’ve managed to serve something resembling a dinner and not poisoned anyone in the process.

There’s a reason Christmas Eve is the most common time of year for people to fall ill. Exhausted with the pressure of organising and burning the candle at both ends, most of us roll into the festive season and our bodies take the opportunity for a break - and make us ill. Avoid that this year with a bit of thought and careful planning.

It can be hard as a manager, leader or HR professional when people do behaviour that is troublesome or difficult to know how best to handle it. We usually suggest that you spend some time trying to ascertain what’s behind the behaviour before deciding, but this can be easier said than done ...

Helen was a well qualified, competent L&D Manager in the retail industry. Having reached the top end of middle-management she was looking to move up to a Director position but was disappointed not to get promotions on two occasions ...

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a collection of techniques that help people do more of their good ‘programmes’ and change their unhelpful ones. The techniques get your conscious and unconscious mind working together for you, making it much easier to make changes than by will power alone ...