Making Business Matter

Presenting to Make an Impact

Join Darren Smith in this webinar where he discusses 10 top tips using the mnemonic 'presenting' on how to make a presentation that has an impact.

Find out more about how you can change the way Learners deliver impactful presentations, whether they are internal or external. Also, help learners develop their knowledge and understanding of how to convey key messages, fully engage an audience, and deliver maximum influence.

Significantly increase your impact and influence when presenting with our Presentation Skills Training Course.

10 Top Tips

Procrastination

Have you ever put a job, a task, anything off until the last minute? Maybe you are too busy because the presentation is going to take so much time and effort that you just can’t find the time to do it this week.

STOP! Many people put presentations off because of what we like to call ‘the tinkering effect’. This is because, if you start a presentation early, you will keep changing it, adding new images, better content, and changing the font. DON’T DO THIS! Create the presentation until it is ‘Good Enough’. Don’t overspend time on it.

Rewarding Stories

You can show content in a table or a graph but this can be seen as offputting, boring. If you were to talk about a rewarding story, the chances are, that these will be remembered because no one wants to sit and read graphs and tables. After all, research shows that rewarding stories are remembered 22 times more because we can all relate to a story.

Think of a time when someone has told a story while presenting. You remember it, right? Now that same presentation, what graphs and tables did they show? Not so easy. This is presenting with impact. Tell rewarding stories. It doesn’t need to be a 20-minute story, just let it flow.

End in Mind

Stephen R. Covey, author of First Things First once said, “everything is created twice”, once in the mind and then in reality. The aim is to create an end in mind within your presentation. He called this Future Thinking meaning what do you want to see, feel and hear when presenting.

Mohammed Ali, when he was training, saw Joe Frazier on the Canvas. He said in an interview that Joe Frazier would go down in round 5 with a left hook and Joe Frazier heard. This embedded in Joe Frazier’s mind and he went down in round 5. The moral of the story, share your end in mind with your audience at the start of your presentation. This will help with presenting with impact.

Sir Aristotle

Sir Aristotle had a technique for presenting. Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them then tell them what you have told them. Also known as the Army Technique.

When presenting, tell your audience what you are going to be doing. During the presentation, you will tell them the content and at the end tell the audience what you have just told them.  Start by explaining your objective, then deliver your objective and finally remind them of the objective. Embed the objective in their minds. Use the Army Technique.

Engaging Headlines

You head to a presentation. You see 4 headlines. 1. Total UK Population. 2. Total UK Population 1962 – 2022. 3. Total UK Population Growth Over 60 Years. 4. Better Health Care Doubles UK Population in 60 Years. Which one grabs your attention? It’s number 4 right?.

You read a newspaper and the thing that drawers your attention is the headline. Why? Because they are not ‘boring’ and they give an insight. Don’t just label your presentation because every part of your presentation has to earn its place. Use engaging headlines.

Nerves

Nerves will always show up when you don’t want them to. You’re about to do a presentation, you have prepared for this, you know your content, you know your stuff. You’re ready to start presenting with impact. You step out in front of your audience and bam, nerves hit you. What do you do? You have high energy, you want to calm down but you can’t because you can’t go from a high state of energy to calm in seconds.

Explore the HBDI Assessment Tool

Join Andy Palmer and Sarah Garratt in the tenth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode is about ‘What is the H.B.D.I. Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument assessment’. Exploring a number of questions to understand this assessment tool.

You Can Read the HBDI Assessment Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Welcome to MBM's Weekly Training Booster. We are Weekly Training Booster number 10. This week we're going to talking about what is the HBDI, Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. Today I'm joined by my colleague, Sarah, who's going to ask me some questions to help bring this to life, and I'll do my very best to answer them. Sarah, thanks for joining us this week. Great to have you here. Let's start, what's your questions for me on the HBDI assessment?

Sarah Garratt:

Okay. Thanks, Andy. First question, what is the HBDI assessment?

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff. All right. So the HBDI assessment, or the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument, is a psychometric test that allows people to understand their thinking preferences. And once they can understand their different individual thinking preferences, they can then start to understand and value, become more tolerant of others.

So what we've really got here is a metaphoric model of how our brain works, taking into account the left and right hemispheres and the upper and lower parts of our brain. And what the HBDI profile [inaudible 00:01:06] and says is that, each of these four quadrants is responsible for different thinking, decision making and communicating preferences. Now the thing with the HBDI profile is there's no better or worse profile, there is no right or wrong. What it does, is allow us to start to understand why we have differences and similarities between different people and using this model can be truly powerful for many, many reasons.

Sarah Garratt:

Okay, thank you. And would you say that it was a personality test or not?

Andy and Sarah discuss the HBDI assessment tool

Andy Palmer:

No, not at all. So the HBDI profile unlike others, does not measure personality. It also doesn't measure temperament, it doesn't measure intelligence, it just purely looks at our preferences to these four different quadrants. And we can use our whole brain and that's absolutely critical to remember, we just have preferences. Now we can have a preference to what is referred to as the, A quadrant or the blue quadrant and that's about facts, it's about understanding logical, analytical, factual, here and now information. If we then continue round and I'll bring each of these quadrants to life.

So that's our blue quadrant. If we move down into the green quadrant or the B quadrant, this is about organization, it's about sequence, it's about steps and stages. So people with a high degree of preference here, super organized and they can see the steps and the stages required in terms of understanding their individual thinking processes.

We continue around and we move round into the C quadrant, which is the red quadrant, this is about feelings, it's about people's interpersonal skills, their communication skills, understanding the needs and the wishes of others is super important to those with a high preference here. And then lastly, we've got that D quadrant, the upper right or yellow quadrant.

That's about holistic, conceptual thinking. It's not about the here and now, but it's about synthesizing and integrating with other people in the future and understanding the why of what those thinking preferences are like. So not about personality, more about preferences to thinking and decision-making styles.

Sarah Garratt:

Okay. Thank you. And HBDI profile, in terms of the quadrants, are we able to utilize every quadrant or are we just limited to one specific?

Andy Palmer:

Yeah, it's a very good question. It's a very good question because more often than not, when we are introducing the whole brain thinking model,

Russian Supermarket Discounters

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirty-ninth episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss the Russian Supermarket Discounters Opening Stores in the UK. How it will affect the UK's supermarkets. Particularly Aldi and Lidl. Plus, supermarkets like the 'X5 Retail Group' and their innovative approach and different model.

You Can Read the Full Russian Supermarket Discounters Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to Grocery Guru. This is episode 39 and we are here with that grocery guru. Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Grant:

Morning Darren. Yes, very good. Thank you.

Darren A. Smith:

So, this week we're going to talk about the introduction into the UK of the Russian supermarket discounters, and I've got some information here, but I probably haven't got the experience you've got. What's your recollection of Russian supermarket discounters coming to Britain?

Andrew Grant:

Well, they haven't. So this is... Yeah, this is really interesting actually. They're called Mere and they want to open 30 stores in the next year, sorry 300 stores in the UK in the next year. The first one is opening towards the end of this month.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes. Now, I do remember when discounters came before, and you probably do, Europe Tesco. What's your recollection of that?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, well this is the interesting thing, because I can remember being at Tesco, the first Aldi opened, and we'd already seen, I'd already seen Aldis in Germany and I still got this vivid recollection of going into an Aldi in Germany and in the chiller cabinet, the deli cabinet, there was a rusty knife hanging from a string and people were cutting their own lengths of salami. I'd never seen anything so unhygienic in my life.

And so, the minute we found out that the first Aldi was opening, we thought, there's no way British shoppers are going to be picking knives up out of cabinets and cutting their own lengths of salami and sausage. They won't shop in those sorts of conditions. And then of course, well everybody knows the history, Aldi and Lidl landed, just touched something within the British psyche for a quality bargain, and I think quality is the important thing, a quality bargain and together they've now got a share bigger than Asda and Sainsbury's.

Darren A. Smith:

And I've got something similar on my recollection as a very junior buyer in, I think, it was the early 90s was, there was a guy called Tom Viner, who I think was probably CEO at the time. His initials were RTV, which I never quite understood, and then I realized his first name was Rudolph, but no one was allowed to call him Rudolph because they started doing red nose jokes.

Anyway, so Tom was at a conference at the front and he was saying, he read out this clip from newspaper. It said the discounters are coming. And his point was, we all went, "Yeah, that's bad, Tom." He went, "No, this was written in 1902." He was trying to say to us that it comes every few years, it's cyclical that the discounters come and not to worry, but actually I think he was wrong because to your point, they've got a hell of a market share.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. But I think my take is that this is actually really good news for the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury's, because it's going to give Aldi and Lidl one major pain in the whatsit to have to sort out. So this Mere group, they're planning to undercut Lidl and Aldi by 20% to 30%. I mean that is cheap, that is cheap as chips. But when you look at the pictures of the stores and anybody that's interested should have a look, there's an article of the Leipzig store that Mere recently opened.

I mean, their model is quite interesting. All the stores are leased. On the cheapest possible buildings that they can find as long as it's near a main road. But the most interesting thing about the model is, suppliers own the stock until it's sold to a customer. So suppliers deliver direct to store,

Have Morrisons and Asda Taken Their Eye Off the Ball?

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirty-eighth episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss the latest Kantar market share showing 12 weeks to 20th July 2021. Asda and Morrisons losing share, Tesco gaining, and Aldi & Lidl showing flat growth.

You Can Read the Full Kantar Market Share Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to your weekly episode with The Grocery Guru. This is episode 38 and we are here with that guru, Andrew Grant. Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Grant:

Good morning.

Darren A. Smith:

Now, Andrew. I know that the market shares have just been published and you've got a unique take on what you think is happening.

Andrew Grant:

I'm not sure about a unique take, but yeah, we always wait for Kantar data that comes out 20th-ish of every month, because I think it's the most comprehensive view of what's happening in the market. I think we've covered it maybe two or three times since the pandemic started. And yeah, there's some subtleties in the figures for me. I mean, overall, total multiples are still up 11% on two years ago. So as we said, a few episodes ago, with the pandemic technically ending, people are going to go back out to pubs and restaurants. They're not going to do as much home shopping and therefore, the multiples are probably in a fairly rough ride during the summer.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a rough ride, maybe a few little bumps. I mean, they're down 4.6% on the year. Tesco down 3.7, Sainsbury's down three, so that's probably not too bad. So probably expecting worse.

Darren A. Smith:

Let me just put that back in people's heads. So year on two years ago for the last, what, 12 weeks to 23rd of July, the multiples are up 11%. That's right, isn't it?

Andrew Grant:

On two years ago.

Darren A. Smith:

On two years ago. So up 11%, but on a year ago they're down 5%, give or take.

Andrew Grant:

And obviously a year ago was the peak of the pandemic. So yeah, if you take a two year view, the grocers have been really successful at riding this pandemic. But within the numbers, a few interesting things. Co-op and Iceland are the worst performers, not surprisingly, a Co-op is on every street corner.

They don't have many big superstores, so they were the big winners of the pandemic when people just literally didn't want to shop at a big store where there were those other people who could potentially pass on the virus, they popped to the local Co-op. And to a lesser extent, I guess, Iceland being sort of city center or town center location. So I can understand why Co-op figures don't look brilliant, although they're us still up in double digit from two years ago.

Darren A. Smith:

So they're up 12% on two years but they're down 15% year on year?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. But what's for me is I think a little bit of the slightest star of some blue water between Tesco and Sainsbury's and Asda and Morrisons is starting to appear. So Aldi and Lidl have come back, they're flat on last year. So probably something in there about they don't have home shopping, and home shopping is down. I forget the numbers. You may have them more to have. Oh yeah. So online groceries dropped by 2.6%.

Darren A. Smith:

Yep.

Andrew Grant:

So I think Aldi and Lidl have picked that up. So Aldi and Lidl are flat. Tesco seems to be doing really well. Tesco's put on 4.4 points of market share is almost unheard of in the last 10 years, but Asda are losing market share as are Morrisons and twice the decline of Tesco and Sainsbury's on a year.

Darren A. Smith:

So we've got Tesco hitting the high of 27% market share.

Andrew Grant:

Yep.

Darren A. Smith:

They're doing well. And you think they're stealing that predominantly from Asda and Morrisons?

Andrew Grant:

No, no, actually. I think it's a bit more complex than that. I think Tesco in particular, and we've said it before, have found a way to neutralize Aldi and Lidl.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay,

Ultra Fast Groceries

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirty-seventh episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss the rise of rapid groceries, also known as ultra fast groceries. These start-ups are being discussed by JP Morgan and Credit Suisse as having the ability to take serious market share in the UK.

You Can Read the Full Ultra Fast Groceries Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to the Grocery Guru. We are episode 37 and we are here with that Grocery Guru, Andrew Grant. How are you?

Andrew Grant:

Very, very warm, Darren.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes. It's 31 here in town. It's hot.

Andrew Grant:

Well yeah, the official temperature is 31, but I think in this office, it feels like 40. So yes.

Darren A. Smith:

Now, if I was very smart, I'd make the link between hot weather and ultra-fast groceries, but I'm not that smart. So would you tell us about an ultra-fast grocery?

This week Darren and Andrew discuss ultra fast grocery deliveries

Andrew Grant:

Well, I think you could say that their share prices are on fire.

Darren A. Smith:

They're going like hotcakes?

Andrew Grant:

Something like that, yeah. So no, we spoke about it a few weeks ago, didn't we? This rapid grocer I think is going to be the term that is used. So people like Getir and what have you, where they promise to deliver in 10 minutes. And I think both you and I are a little bit cynical, where to say okay, it's a nice thing to have and the odd person in a city center might run out of crisps or something, but the reason I've brought this back today is J.P. Morgan, the investment house, I read an article last week where they reckon, and the headline of the article was Rapid Grocery Will Create an Existential Threat to Mainstream Grocery. They're predicting, wait for this, that the rapid delivery grocers could capture 50% of the UK grocery market worth 200 billion a year.

Darren A. Smith:

And for someone like J.P. Morgan to make that forecast, we're putting a lot of stead by that, and so we should.

Andrew Grant:

Well, I don't know. It depends how cynical you are. I know both you and I have healthy doses of cynicism running through our veins, but I've always thought don't brokers come up with stories in order to pump up a share price and then come up with another story to deflate the share price that they make money on the up and the down? Isn't that what they do?

Darren A. Smith:

Well, a bit like Elon Musk with Bitcoin or Dogecoin.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. So whether it's one of these things, let's just pump the hype so that we can make even more money out of the shares that we've hedged, or leveraged, or whatever they do. But they were reckoning, and this is the bit that got me is whether you believe they'll get 50% of the market or not, but they're [inaudible 00:02:39] these startups, this says why so much money is going into them and why the share prices have gone crazy is they're making net returns of 10 to 15%. Now, we've spoken on here many times about UK grocers being the most profitable in the world, but they still only make about two and a half P net profit in the pound, which is a lot of hard time, effort, and energy for two and a half P for every pound you sell. They reckon these guys, because they're operating out of dark warehouses on industrialist estates and under railway arches, they're using transient labor, are getting 10 to 15% returns. Now, just do the maths, Tesco worth what? 80 billion, 100 billion, making 4%. If these guys suddenly carve out 200 billion making 12%, whoa.

Darren A. Smith:

That is staggering. Now, on top of what you said, so one of these guys is Gorilla.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

Gorillas, excuse me. Gorillas. And I had a look, and these guys are already in ... Don't know if you're able to see that, but this many countries. So we're not just talking about a UK phenomenon here, we're talking about eight European countries that they're already in.

Telling Stories at work

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the ninth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about telling stories at work and how to improve your presentation skills. Using stories to achieve greater engagement with your audience. Everyone can tell stories - Tell me about an accident you had, or a time you were embarrassed.

You Can Read the Storytelling Episode Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello and welcome to week nine with Andy Palmer. We're talking about the Weekly Training Booster. And this week, Andy, we're going to talk about storytelling and how to tell stories at work.

Andy Palmer:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think for me, this is one of those learned skills that actually become incredibly useful because the majority of us spend a lot of time influencing, persuading, communicating, ultimately presenting to people. And what we're ultimately looking to do is to improve that ability by becoming far more persuasive. And storytelling can just be a super powerful way of doing that.

Darren A. Smith:

And my understanding of storytelling is it comes from when our ancestors sat around a cave, where we can sometimes see Dances with Wolves with Kevin Costner. And they're telling stories around the campfire and they're really intriguing. And partly, there's no telly to distract them or mobile phone, but the storytelling, that's how it was passed on for years and years and generations.

Andy Palmer:

Absolutely. So, I mean, way before recorded history, at any time before recorded history, it's the vehicle in which humanity passed information from generation to generation. And yeah, I think it still plays out true now.

And yes, there's all those influences, but actually, if we all think back, we can probably remember that story our grandmother told us when we were a kid. Maybe, that cartoon that we saw on the TV when we were five, maybe the thing we learned in school about how the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. And they're the things that stay with us because we have such strong emotional connections to stories, as opposed to just simple information gives.

Telling stories at work will help to improve your presentation skills

Darren A. Smith:

And one of the stories that I remember was back when I was in corporate and this guy was doing a training course on time management. Now, I got intrigued by time management, as you know for the last 20 years.

But, the story that stuck with me from that whole day was this guy said, "I want you to remember, I've got tickets."

Now, he started with that and that was intriguing. I have no idea what he was on about, he's a mad American. And then, he told this story about how he had tickets for a baseball game. And did I know that during that day, he was the most productive he's ever been? Because at five o'clock he had to leave the office because he had tickets. And were we surprised how productive he was? No, we weren't, because he had a goal. And it was brilliant, loved it.

Andy Palmer:

For me, that is the power of bringing stories to life by having a single central clear message. His clear message was, "I have tickets." Now, there was a whole load of other stuff going on, but that's the bit that stuck with you.

When we can come up with that simple clear message and that could be as much as, "I've got tickets," or, "I want to launch a new line," or, "I want to run a promotion, I want to negate," whatever that thing may be, if we're absolutely crystal clear on what it is, and then we can surround it with an appropriate narrative, we become so much more engaging in the way in which we're delivering that thing, whatever that thing may be.

Darren A. Smith:

And I agree. I was at a workshop, a different workshop some years later, with a guy called Richard White. God bless him, he's now passed on. But, we were in a storytelling workshop. There was 30 of us there and most of us started moaning as people, I think,

The Urgent and Important Matrix

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the eighth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about understanding the urgent and important matrix. Also known as the Eisenhower matrix. A tool for helping you to understand how to improve your time management.

You Can Read the Urgent and Important Matrix Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Welcome to week number eight of our MBM weekly training booster. Good afternoon, for those that are watching it live, and hello to anyone else. It's a hot Friday afternoon here for us. Today, Darren, we are going to talk about the Urgent versus Important Matrix of helping to support a time management system, sometimes called the Eisenhower model. So I'm going to ask you to give us a brief overview and then we'll get in and explore it further.

Darren A. Smith:

Cool. This is a cracking tool, the Urgent versus Important, or Important versus Urgent Boston Matrix. So imagine a Boston Matrix. I'm going to flash one up, but I don't think everyone will be able to see that quickly. And what it says is, there's two axis. Urgent, and there's another axis of important. And once you cross check those and you get your four windows, you end up with what you can do and how you can think about time management, and whether a task is urgent, or whether it's important and how it overlaps with each other.

Andy Palmer:

That makes great sense. And I keep referring to situational base needs. Whenever I'm doing training of late, whether it's people management, situational leadership, or whether it's category management and talking about situational category management, adapting to the situation. And I think this is just another good example of, based on a situation that you've got and your situation be dictated by urgent and important allows, and that then, of course, dictates the options that you've got. So from what you've just said about those four quadrants, what sits within those four quadrants? How would you bring that to life?

Understand and utilise the urgent and important matrix

Darren A. Smith:

So let's roll through. The reasons it's called the Eisenhower Matrix, is supposedly, President Eisenhower came up with it. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter. So you can either call U and I Matrix, or the Eisenhower Matrix, or the Urgent and Important Matrix. If we take that Matrix, and we say something is neither urgent, so we look at this axis, or important, then it's right down here. So we've got a time demand or a task that's neither urgent or important. Now this is the crazy space you get into. You say, "Well, if it's not urgent and it's not important, what should I do with it?" What do you think?

Andy Palmer:

What should you do with it? Well, it's actually probably not do anything with it, but again, you don't need it slipping through your system. So I'm going to hazard a guess that some sort of reminder, some sort of park it somewhere, put a date on it, come back to it. That type of [crosstalk 00:02:32].

Darren A. Smith:

It could be that. I mean, if it's not urgent and it's not important, you probably shouldn't do it now. Now if you get some JFBI's in your business, we all know what that acronym stands for. And sometimes, you've just got to get these things done. "That's okay. The boss wants it, the customer wants it. I'll just get it done. Fine. Not particularly urgent, it's not important, but over the next couple of weeks." So what we ought to do with this, is try and do as few of these as possible, because you can imagine, if you and I are operating in a space where it's neither urgent or important, what the hell are we doing? We can't be being productive.

Andy Palmer:

Yeah. Absolutely. All right. That makes sense. So we can either dismiss that, get rid of it. If then we were to dial up one of those axis, and let's say, something becomes more important, what does that look like?

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah.

Football Bonus, HFSS, Morrisons & A Tough Autumn

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the Football Bonus episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss England being in the Euro 2020 final which gives a football bonus & stress on the supply chain, driver shortage, labour shortages for frowers, rapid groceries - Wheezy, HFSS, Morrison's bids and a tough Autumn Ahead for the grocers and their suppliers.

You Can Read the Full Football Bonus Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to the Grocery Guru. This is episode 36, and we are here with that guru, Andrew Grant. How you doing?

Andrew Grant:

Morning Darren. Yes. Pretty good. Thank you.

Darren A. Smith:

Lots going on at the moment. I know we've got a few things we want to share with our audience, but we can't not mention the football.

Andrew Grant:

What's that? Sorry, Das, I missed it.

Darren A. Smith:

It's a sort of football-like brown thing we might win.

Andrew Grant:

Oh, yes. There's a small match on Sunday evening, I believe.

Darren A. Smith:

There very much is. And I know you're a big football fan.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, it's one of those weekends, obviously putting aside the sort of, the passion for the national team, but as an [inaudible 00:00:48], we all remember these weekends. They don't come around very often, but a Royal wedding, a Brit winning Wimbledon, England football team getting through to the semifinals and now the finals; it's not in your budget. You weren't expecting it. You've spent this whole week ordering in gazillions of whatever it might be; crates of beer, burger buns, barbecue briquettes, whatever. And it's all froth on the top of your budget, I mean, happy days.

England football team being in the final have meant a football bonus and driver shortages

Darren A. Smith:

It's like getting a football bonus, isn't it? You didn't know it was coming and there it is. Lovely.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. And then obviously the trick is by this time next year, make sure you've moved categories because you're going to have the mother of all spikes to try and overcome.

Darren A. Smith:

Can't you still just blame COVID? Can this not go on for years?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, but it doesn't get taken out of your budget, unfortunately. I'm not sure finance directors know that there's things such as football and COVID, it's just next year's budget is.

Darren A. Smith:

So we've got lots of people planning for this bonus weekend. It gives them extra on top of their budget. Fabulous. All right. That makes sense. And what about taking that forward? What does that look like?

Andrew Grant:

Well, it's an interesting time, isn't it? Because we spoke, I think a few episodes ago, about the challenges the grocers are going to have this year. Obviously they got a massive pandemic boost when everybody... when all the other shops were shut. And they're now obviously in the... they're now lapping that fantastic performance. And I saw some stuff from NielsenIQ this week, which said that actually sales in supermarkets fell 2.4% in the four weeks to the 19th of June, which actually probably isn't bad. If you think, they got something like 10% bonus, only to be 2.4% now a year later, is pretty good.

Darren A. Smith:

Well, that's much better than I would have thought. The average was 10% up in sales, so now we're saying only 8% up, minus two. Okay. [inaudible 00:03:10].

Andrew Grant:

We had Sainsbury's quarterly update performance. They increased their profit expectations, I think; doing pretty well, growing market share. And interestingly, the takeout I took from it, was their online business, their online grocery business, as opposed to Argos, is now steadying out. The growth rate is steadying out, but at 20% of their overall business.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, one in five. Okay.

Andrew Grant:

So if you remember a year ago, we said it had doubled to 20%. So it doubled in a year, sort of five years worth of growth in a year,

Use the GROW Model For Your Employees

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the seventh episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about the GROW Coaching model; Goal, Reality, Options, and Way Forward. An overview of this coaching model to help you to begin coaching.

You Can Read the GROW Coaching Model Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Welcome to our next MBM Weekly Training Booster. We're at number seven. Today, we're going to be talking about the GROW Coaching Model and how to use the GROW Coaching Model. So Darren I've got, and as I've said before, in previous videos, I've got issues. Another one that I've identified is my inability to manage time. So you said you would kindly sit down with me, use something called GROW to make me better. Can you give us an overview of what this GROW thing is you keep pushing at me?

Darren A. Smith:

I can, there are a number of coaching models out there, like Oscar, GROW, a bunch of others. The one I really want to focus on because it's the most popular is G-R-O-W, the four stages of GROW. It was designed by a guy called Sir John Whitmore, who was originally a racing driver, not many people know that. And he came up with this four stage model for helping someone to coach someone else. G is the goal, where do I want to get to? R is for reality. Where am I right now? O is for options. What things could I do? A way forward is basically choose the options before I'm going to go into.

Andy Palmer:

Brilliant. So if we decided that I do need to resolve my time management issues, how would you be using each of those stages with me, to help unlock this?

Darren A. Smith:

So the first question we'd ask you around the first stage, which is goal. So one of my questions would be where do you want to get to on your time management? And you might say, where I want to get to, Darren, is... What you say?

Andy Palmer:

Finishing on time more often, being able to prioritize my workflow, because I tend to work on all the wrong stuff at the wrong times. And ultimately, maybe to try and manage when stress, cause I'm just incredibly busy. [inaudible 00:01:49] I've got a job.

Darren A. Smith:

And they will be great answers, because I would then follow up that with some subsequent questions to try and get you to define that goal. What does it look like when you're there? How were you feeling? What does it look like? What does it smell like? How euphoric would that be?

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff. All right. So once we've got our goal, we know what we're aiming for. We can then move into our reality stage of trying to figure out maybe what's not working so well right now. Is that right?

Learn how to use the GROW coaching model

Darren A. Smith:

It could be. So we've got our bit over here. Where does Andy want to get to on time management? But now trying to establish, how far is he away? That's his reality. So I might say to you, considering your goal, how would you compare that to your reality? If this is nine out of 10, what score would you give yourself now?

Andy Palmer:

And I guess flushing out with a number of different questions coming at it from multiple different angles just helps that we're, [inaudible 00:02:43] classes that kind of conscious incompetence. I now know what I didn't think I knew before. I know with the view to help understand that differential between where I want to get to and actually the real reality of where I am now. That then moves us into our options. And again, we're looking to explore things that can help solve it, I guess?

Darren A. Smith:

They are, so again, GROW and coaching's all about the answers within you, all I'm trying to do is ask you the right questions to pull it out your head. What I'm not doing is giving you the answers, because we move into more mentoring, which is very different. This is all about, I should be able to coach you to do anything, as a coach. I don't need to be a subject matter expert. So I might say to you,

How to Use the Six Thinking Hats Theory

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the sixth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about the six thinking hats. Designed by Edward De Bono, these 6 hats help teams to solve problems with this incredible problem-solving tool. You can choose how you sequence the hats to get the best results.

You Can Read the 6 Thinking Hats Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Okay, good afternoon or good morning, depending on when you're watching this. Welcome to MBM's weekly training booster. This is number six; how the time flies when you're having fun. Okay. Today is about how to use, and how to understand the Six Thinking Hats, the tool that's been developed by Edward De Bono. For me, Thinking Hats is a super powerful way of helping unlock the potential and to support team thinking. So Darren, give us an overview of De Bono's Six Thinking Hats.

Darren A. Smith:

It's a way of problem-solving as a team. That's its best application, I think, having used it for the last 20 years. It can really help a team to focus, without having to worry about being sidetracked on positioning themselves in the discussion, my opinions here, your opinions here. So it can really help a team to focus and solve a problem. And the Six Hats are various colors, they were created by, as you said, Edward De Bono, and I'd like to share them all with you.

Andy Palmer:

All right, good stuff. So what I'm going to ask you to do then is pick a hat, give us an overview of any one of them, anyone that comes to mind for you?

Darren A. Smith:

Well, let's do the one that people would most heard of, which is the black hat.

Find out how to apply the 6 thinking hats theory with this training booster

Andy Palmer:

Okay, and what's the black hat?

Darren A. Smith:

The black hat is being a naysayer or a negative Nellie as some people would call it. So you're in a discussion, and the idea is that the team together wear each hat at a time, a metaphorical putting on a colored hat. So at this point, each member puts on the black hat altogether, and we have a problem to solve. And the problem might be that project XYZ isn't working. And then what we do on a flip chart is write down all the problems with this project, "Well, it doesn't work because Bob's not engaged, the client doesn't like it, we're going to run out of money." And we'd list all the problems, all the things that are going to go wrong, all the negativity.

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff. And I guess that then allows people to get those thoughts out of their head and, at the same time, manage their own perception that maybe they're not being negative. They're actually just trying to spot stuff that can happen, the risks that are going to be associated with the project, to then figure out if we need to accept, mitigate, transfer them, or whatever we need to do with them. So it's a good way of unlocking that thinking where naturally the majority just don't want to go to that black hat thinking. But this helps us to take us there.

Darren A. Smith:

And you can also imagine Bob and Ron in a room, and maybe Bob's negative and Ron's saying, "Oh, but we don't want to be negative." You can see the tussle going on. Whereas if we'd all agree to put on the black hat and we're all negative together for a few minutes, great.

Andy Palmer:

All right, absolutely. Good stuff. All right. Pick another hat, what other colors and what [crosstalk 00:02:54]?

Darren A. Smith:

Okay, we'll go opposite and we'll talk about the white hat of the six thinking hats. Or, as we call it an MBM terms, the detective hat. And this is saying, "What do we not have? What facts and information should we go and seek in order to solve this problem?" So we don't understand enough about the customer on this project, or we don't have enough data, or we need to find out what the shopper thinks. That's our white hat.

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff. And it'd be particularly useful when we're trying ...