Our website uses cookies to give you the best possible browsing experience whilst you’re here. If you continue without changing your settings, we’ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on our website. However, you can change your cookies settings at any time. To read more about cookies and how to manage them please take a look through our cookie policy.

Archive for February, 2017

The Tango and How to Build Rapport when Networking

Posted by Eva Provedel

In creating business relationships we all know it’s a good idea to build rapport when Networking, but if it’s not immediately there how do we get it?

You could do worse than learn to dance the tango…

I have been dancing tango for seven years, and if there is something I have learned it’s that partnered dancing is just like human relationships: complicated and beautiful. And there are techniques to navigate them effectively.

If you get it right, you can unlock huge potential and build on each other’s experience and ideas. Divergent points of view can become the catalyst for exploration and co-creation, and a common goal can channel the energy of the team above and beyond the reach of any one individual.

Of course, this may be no easy thing.

Read more

Inherent Bias – An uncomfortable truth

Posted by Bronia Szczygiel

We often explore Inherent Bias as part of our Bridging the Gap programme.

It’s interesting to note how people react to the idea that they might hold an inherent bias towards a particular majority group, or against a minority group. Especially the idea that they might be biased against their own minority group (for example, women scientists being biased against women in senior science roles).

There’s often a pretty strong reaction – usually rejection of the test (the test is rigged or doesn’t make sense), denial of their result and / or offering of their credentials to demonstrate they don’t have it.

Read more

Reading people’s emotions; 8 practical tips – Leadership part 3

Posted by Matteo Trevisan

In part one and part two exploration of Leadership through reading peoples’ emotions – (i.e: Emotional Intelligence) I covered several key areas. here are the main points to consider:

  • Emotional Intelligence is a strong factor to effective leadership and an important element of E.I. is the ability to read emotions. (for more on effective leadership see our Leadership Course).
  • Quite a few mammals are able to read our emotions so we can conclude words are not the most essential source of information.
  • The seat of emotions is our face. There are at least seven universal expressions: anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. These and more can be learned from experience.
  • Combined with facial expressions we also assimilate voice volume, pitch and body posture to create a holistic judgement about the person’s internal states.
  • This information needs to be processed by the brain at many levels. To do this the brain is constantly making predictions about the world around it.
  • These predictions lead to creating virtual models of other people’s minds in our own brains.
  • The ability to create these virtual models, combined with predictions made from accurate information, allow people’s brains to literally synchronise.
  • This synchronisation is a strong indication of true understanding and connection between two people. You are ‘clicking’.

So that’s a good look at the theory. What do we do about all this in practice?

Read more