Inspiring People - Expression for Growth

14May 2019 by Lucy Clarke 1 Comment

Becoming a salesman

Customer Relationships, Great Questions, Inspiring People, Selling, Winning Habits

A story of a headmaster, the engineer and disappointment Imagine the scene; a budding mining and explosives engineer in his mid-twenties. The phone call to his proud father, a respected head teacher of a well-known school. “Dad, you know that career track I have sunk the past 8 years of my life into? The one where I get to run my ‘very own’ coal mine? Well…I’ve quit. I am going to be a salesman…..” The silence was deafening, the disappointment palpable…..I remember it like it was yesterday and that moment was 30 years ago. Sales people get a bad rap…deservedly so. So….what is really interesting about this tale is WHY? What is it about the ‘sales profession’ that so many people dislike? (I think I can actually hear you responding…

20Apr 2019 by Claire Winn No Comments

Inspirational Leadership is a mystery to many, rare to observe and magical when it happens.

Inspiring People

Becoming an inspirational leader and understanding and applying the behaviours in your role, everyday, will make a big impact on your business. Leadership is a mystery to many and too difficult to access and apply, because is it just that…a mystery. However, it is an important skill. It is also true, that poor leadership causes so much angst in our society (from our politicians to our CEOs, our middle managers to our teachers, and so many more)…surely we can think of it in simple terms, and help the ‘every day leader’ succeed. Most of us are ‘everyday leaders’ – only a few of you will have saved the world, launched a multi-billion-dollar company, led the masses into battle, or created and led a political movement. However, we can all learn to be great leaders. Our leadership…

08Apr 2019 by Claire Winn No Comments

A motivated, inspired workforce is the single biggest factor in driving business performance.

Inspiring People

Connecting, adapting, motivating and inspiring people is an essential business skill, which is missing at so many levels in so many organisations resulting in a big impact on productivity, employee performance and ultimately profit - the bottom line for any business. These ‘soft skills’ are so often undervalued. In fact, to many, the ‘soft stuff is the hard stuff’ – as managers and leaders in our workplace today we become adept at processes, systems, strategy and priorities…but so often forget the impact we are having on those around us. Knowing how to connect, emphasise and create a deep and meaningful rapport with our teams is a key motivational factor and is fundamental to our success in our jobs, and life itself. Emotionally Intelligent behaviour will count far more than how smart we are, or what grade…

25Mar 2019 by Lucy Clarke No Comments

It’s time to re-think webinars

Customer Relationships, Inspiring People, Virtual Meetings

Technology is improving; travel budgets are shrinking; people’s time is becoming increasingly scarce. Those three factors are leading more organisations to hold virtual meetings and training sessions, instead, or in complement to, face-to-face meetings and workshops. Great, right? …right? I'm not bored at all....!! Well, maybe not. If you’re like most of us then you’ve experienced terrible webinars and dysfunctional virtual meetings. Let’s face it: many things can make webinars uninspiring, boring and dull. Most often, it’s when they are treated as a ‘one-way’ communication tool. This is demoralising for everyone involved: the people ‘receiving’ the message get bored and find distractions elsewhere; the person ‘transmitting’ the information gets little feedback from the group and feels isolated and frustrated. These types of webinars rarely achieve desired outcomes and are often…

04Feb 2019 by Lucy Clarke 1 Comment

An outcome focused first approach to delivering results

Creating Connection, Inspiring People, Programmes, Selling, Uncategorized

Top 10 tips when recommending development solutions As Stephen Covey said “start with the end in mind”. So why do so many people say “I need a training course for….” At Expression for Growth we start with the end in mind and are passionate, curious and respectful as we seek first to understand, and then check our understanding, ahead of recommending any solutions to organisations we engage with. Here are our top ten tips to doing this successfully: Define the desired results (behaviours, engagement, commercial results).Identify the problem/s to resolve e.g. what results are not being met?Ask questions to a variety of people to understand what is going on; the good, the bad and the ugly!Understand the behaviours that exist. Why are they not doing it, what makes it so…

28Jan 2019 by Lucy Clarke No Comments

Creating a collaborative environment

Commercial Collaboration, Creating Connection, Inspiring People

Inspire, enable & support each other as we learn every day In a recent post I shared 5 top tips to build agility, aka our core strength. This post shares a very practical approach to creating a collaborative environment to inspire, enable and support each other as we learn every day. Picture a traditional wedding cake; it has many layers, is often the same taste on every layer, it is heavy and it is a traditional style and structure. Now let’s consider other types of cake, like cupcakes. What emotions do cupcakes conjure up? Variety of flavours, colourful and bite sized; yum yum! Training at work can be viewed like the old style wedding cake, a big event for a large group of people, a big meal, some speeches (some…

21Jan 2019 by Lucy Clarke No Comments

A strong core, by being constantly curious and courageous

Inspiring People, Well-being, Winning Habits

Strong Core Like all organisms we must adapt to the changes in our environment, or die! Previously I have shared my views and antidotes to the impact of mass disruption upon our world - our new upside down world. We can all get locked into things that we know. But it takes courage to have freedom, to leave the past, be present in the now and explore the possibilities of the future. So I wanted to explore our attitudes to agility. Let’s consider, what does agility mean? It could mean agile working, lean six sigma, black belts, sit ups until your stomach screams or maybe yoga. One thing is for certain, to have agility we must have core strength. Let’s imagine, what happens as a result of having agility, by…

10Jan 2019 by Lucy Clarke No Comments

Living with purpose; the antidote to a disruptive world

Inspiring People

The biggest word in our world today must be: disruption. We are challenged every day, it is a chaotic world where disruptive business models are the norm. The rate of change has never been so fast and the time between changes is getting shorter and shorter. We live in a period of mass disruption and don’t we know it! A recent example: a few years ago catching a cab or taxi was a pretty traditional ritual. Then Uber came along and disrupted the business model and our user experience. In cities the world over Uber became a noun for taxi. While in Singapore during the last few years, catching a cab was via Uber. No big deal eh, pretty normal. However, today when I am there, I don’t get an…

19Nov 2018 by Sylvie Molina

Setting up a small business – the essence of success

Featured, Inspiring People

Top 10 tips of the thinking behind the inception of Expression for Growth Sixth December 2000 was a big day in the Selwood household; we had taken the plunge, we had incorporated the business, bought the computers, leased a printer, bought two desks, cleared out the spare room….and there we were, starting from scratch. The purpose of this article is to share with you what was in our minds when we decided to set up Expression for Growth, and what, I know, has made us the successful business we are, nearly two decades later. So, what did we do….or rather, NOT do? I would love to be able to share with you that we modelled our business on a five-year business plan, with projections for turnover, profit, cashflow forecasts,…

08Nov 2018 by Sylvie Molina

The WHY behind setting up my own company

Featured, Inspiring People

A story of parents, failed training courses and THE magic ingredient In this article, I share what was the underlying motivation behind setting up Expression for Growth back in the year 2000. Three out of four of my parents were teachers (and the other a salesman), and having been brought up in that environment, I swore that I would never enter that profession; the stress, the hours, the commitment, far, far beyond (what I saw as) the call of duty, put me off. So I became a mining and explosives engineer, and then a salesman (obviously!). Here I am, 45 years later, at the other end of my career journey having created and run an award-winning multinational management development organisation operating in six languages, with a base in the UK…

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