In this episode we talk to Katie Ledger.  As a corporate coach Katie  helps to develop leaders and teams that perform under pressure and consistently achieve inspirational levels of achievement.  With the team at Complete, Katie is bringing a new way for coaches to develop capability in their clients based on data, research and insight that has been built up over the last 70 years.

It is called the Complete Values for Practitioners and it step changes the nature and impact of coaches or consultants delivering team performance improvement by using a developmental approach.

Unlike traditional personality tests, the Complete Values Profile is a developmental assessment. It defines a leader’s current level of development and, crucially, where someone needs to focus to unlock a new level of performance. That means it’s perfectly suited to a coaching intervention.

Katie takes us through what the values system is and what role it plays in helping us understand the world.

If you are a coach then you will want to sign up for the Webinar on Values Profiling here.

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn here

Many brands are closing stores and moving purely online, unable to bear the cost of expensive physical stores.  Simon Calvert sets out what retailers should be doing to win the battle of staying relevant and accessible to customers.

Connect with Simon here

We walk in the footsteps of a thousand generations…what sort of world are we leaving for the next generations?  This is the question that Jamie and Sara, founders of Wyapa Wuurrk, set out to answer and in the process created a movement based on the philosophy of earth connection practice.  It is all based on ancient Indigenous wisdom that focuses on taking care of the Earth as the starting point for creating Earth Mind Body Spirit well-being.    Living in harmony with their environment is what sustained Australian Aboriginal people to be one of the world’s oldest, continuous living culture – for over 100,000 years!  Jamie and Sara are clear that this practice can sustain us for another 100, 000 years if we just open ourselves to this lifestyle shift.

Jamie is a custodian of wisdom passed down from Aboriginal Elders and in his own journey he realised that every human being once lived on this earth in harmony with the environment.  Many cultures lost this way of life long ago. Aboriginal culture survived longer than most and this gives us the opportunity to recreate this earth connection practice.  I have personally sought out nature for most of my life, finding my happiest moments deep in a forest or a long way up a mountain.  This conversation with Jamie and Sara helped me make sense of this intense feeling I have to surround myself with nature and how to truly embrace this every day. Wyapa, means "connected country" and through a combination of Earth mindfulness, narrative meditation, a series of physical movements and taking action to look after the planet, Wayapa® provides a sense of belonging to the Earth while creating holistic well-being.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Wyapa experience is that you can do the mind, body and spirit work but if you don't connect to the earth then you will likely be living with a feeling that something is missing.  Our route to the future is through our past and I personally can't wait get around a campfire with Jamie and Sara.  I hope you enjoy this episode exploring what it means to be deeply connected to the planet and how this might just be the catalyst to bring all of our wellbeing practice to bear as we look to go beyond survival and actually thrive with the planet.

Connect with Wyapa here

In this episode we talk to Danijela Prahovic about the strength based approach to building resilient teenagers and helping them to find their inner spark and start their life into adulthood with purpose.  Danijela has devoted her life to helping teens and young adults navigate the complex transition into adulthood. She has founded InnerSparQ, a digital platform to provide a self-paced programme that teaches vital life skills to adolescents.  Danijela loves to talk and as she says, she can talk underwater but one thing she does even better is to listen to the problems and challenges teens and your adults are facing.  She has distilled her experience into tools and techniques and particularly strength cards to help then learn life skills through a process of positive reinforcement and blended learning all accessible through a series of online resources.  Danijela's mission is to make this content accessible in a low cost manner but to make sure that they can start to take accountability and choose the way they feel that best serves them.  With 50% of mental health issues surfacing in early teens it is easy to see what drives Danijela to help many to find a better way of growing up and showing up.

Connect with Danijela on LinkedIn here

Visit the InnerSparQ website here

In this episode we speak to Emma Buratti, defender of beautiful sound and voice coach extraordinaire.   Emma unveils that 38% of communication is in your voice, and most people are under investing in training their voice to truly unlock their charisma and communication potential.  

Are you spreading your e's and a's?  Apparently I do and I had no idea it was something I could control.  Emma sets out the 6 steps she uses to coach clients and offers a unique insight into the power of building a voice note by note.  What is the secret? Stop everything that impedes the voice of you mind by stripping back your dialect, cleaning your voice up to create an upright sound column instead of swallowing your own voice or pushing it through your nose.  Sound travels in the vowels, a, e, i, o, u.....  so flip the consonants and focus on your vowels as everything else is impeding your ability to communicate effectively.

Training your voice correctly is all about repetition, but you need have someone to help you interpret what good sound sounds.  Like any muscle you need to practice and warm up but you need to do it right to become a true athlete of the voice.  While it takes 6 to 12 months to really make an impact, Emma shares stories of helping podcasters and CEO's with tips and techniques that can shift your capability in just 2 hours. 

Emma spent 10 years of building her voice note by note to finally achieve an E flat.   She is carrying on the tradition of her mentor, Alma Caesari who is now 96 years old and she is sharing this skill with the world through her programme "the voice of your mind".

If you produce more air than sound and find your voice in strange places then you will now doubt find Emma's voice a delight to listen to and as intoxicating as I did.

Connect with Emma on LinkedIn here

For the The Voice of your mind website click here

Jennifer Letorneau is a relationship coach and she recently released her playbook for new dads that want a deeper connection with their family.  Life changes, limited time and lacking that deeper connection that you both crave? ....Jennifer has the answer and we explore the highs and lows of being a dad, family life and just what you can do to make sure you grow an even stronger family unit.

Jennifer talks about her own experience of success and failure in marriage and she has a hugely positive message about how being a dad is about having a profound impact on the generations to come.  As a father this really resonated with me and while I am not calling for a relationship coach just yet I think I would be very happy to set aside my own discomfort for the sake of building an environment that my wife and children can thrive in.   That is the power of Jennifer's message!

Contact Jennifer on LinkedIn here

Vincent Hynes is the founder of total movement and has created a blueprint to engage with your body.He teaches people to practice his base to face programme to maintain joint health and mobility.  Getting a range of motion is key but Vincent is more concerned about giving people the skills to treat themselves and he has been experimenting with moving his treatment practice online.  His focus is extensive and operates on 3 areas providing a holistic approach to maintaining a strong body  Keeping your muscles toned, maintaining your mobility and breathwork are key and Vincent shares what he has learned from trainers such as Steve Maxwell and breath coach Patrick Mckeown and how he has integrated this into a lazy trainer programme requiring just 20 to 30 minutes twice a week.

We talk deeply about the change in physical training and treatment and Vincent tell us the answer to your health is under your nose. We breathe 20 000 times per day and doing it wrong can keep your sympathetic nervous system in a state of stress.  Vincent shares his stories of the benefits of barefoot walking, training to avoid injuries and his experience and using technology to take his decidedly hands on business to the world through Zoom.

Contact Vincent here

Visit Total Movement here

In this episode...Eradicating Back Pain with preventative care...saying no to cut and swallow pain management techniques and remove 85% of all back pain related sick days...circa 10% of the total sick days!

Dr. Barry Harpur is an Osteopath and a researcher with University of Portsmouth where he is leading a defining study that will set out the global standard for assessing back pain and developing pro-active maintenance programmes.

Why does this matter?  In the UK 12.5% of all sick days are due to back pain.  The UK spends £12.5bn a year treating back pain and the US spends $100bn on treating back pain with over 500 000 spinal fusions every year.  "So what" you say....I know I did until you hear Barry telling you that 85% of all backspin is not specific.  There is no diagnosis other than back pain.  What are they treating them for he asks?  They are treating them for pain and operating on them when we know the source of it is somewhere else.  Once you have gone under the knife you have had it!  So as with so much about human health it is lifestyle related.

Sedentary lifestyle, smoking, overweight, stress are all contributors.  Yet, we have control over it and this is where Barry brings some real hope.

Our bodies are built for entirely different movement regimes than we enforce today.  Barry sets out that our forward orientated view of the world needs to be supported by training on 3 plains of movement and in the episode he shares some of his finding into the backpain phenomena and his work on injury prediction.

I quote Barry:  We have an epidemic of backpain and and once you push the button on surgery it is game over.  We need to work on a preventative care programme to really make a difference.  Here are 2 examples:

If you cannot laterally sidebend evenly left and right have a 60% chance of developing non specific back pain

People with no curve in their back or a very large curve, hyper-lourdosis, have 15% more likelihood to develop non specific back pain.

But we can influence these areaeas and reduce the back pain.

Barry is building an app that will be able to support a very quick clinical test based on the most valid and reliable tests which he will teach people while creating a standardised test that can be used by all healthcare  practitioners worldwide.  How they asses back pain will be standard but how they treat it will be their own treatment protocols.

The industry is run by financial gain and pain is designed and built in the mind yet with this new protocol there is a better model for healthcare to test.  How this standard for backpain develops will be fascinating.  Imagine reducing the 12.5% of sick days that are attributed to it by 85%!!!

There are 6 key exercise that Barry teaches for people to help themselves. " We build the body from the ground up.  If the foundation is off, the feet or the ankles , it will manifest up the spine and throughout the body" . Train people in full range of motion so that when they unexpectedly move in that way that they do not injure themselves. 

Barry has a fundamental understanding of the problem of backpain at such a profound level that you have to think that anything we are getting this wrong .....remember 500 000 spinal fusions in the US alone!  and that we have such a simple solution for.... must surely be able to break free from the bleeding edge and make it into our daily routine.

Dr. Barry Harpur practices out of the Kinesis Clinic in Portsmouth and runs a Digital Academy called Backpain36O.clinic

Connect with Barry Harpur on linked in here

Go to Backpain360.clinic here

The Bleeding Edge Podcast here

I talk to Yuki Inose, a serial entrepreneur with several businesses in Tokyo, Japan.  We discuss th evirtues of being lazy and building your business around these leanest of business practices.  Yuki practices modesty to the extreme but he does give us some insights into how he has created a successful chain of gyms, facial salons, a fashion label and a Tokyo members bar.  Yuki drives clients between his businesses.  Most interesting is how they move between a members bar and a gym that he runs in Tokyo.  In his latest venture he is building an online community. In Japan they are called Online Salons and it is big business with users paying $10 per month with memberships of up to 60 000 people.  That is a pretty good membership model for a virtual group.  In Yuki's version of this community  He teaches people how to be healthy, how to get fit and he is gaining traction in building this new following by engaging the community to understand what they need and build new products for them.

Japan has gone through a lot with the Tsunami, Fukushima, C-19 and as a result it has lost the Olympics.  A challenge given the $5 trillion investment and a distinct lack of innovation that is causing it to lose ground to China.  Having said that, modern Japanese culture is on the move and traditional command and control values are shifting .  The strength of the older generation is perhaps lost on the younger generations but they love to travel and they love to be free which is very outward looking compared to the Japanese of the past.

Yuki also cant stop talking about how cheap Japan is at the moment and I am keen to put it to the test.  I hope I will be able to report that he is right!

I hope you enjoy this episode and if you hear any noises in the background that is just the fire crackling! 

Your first instinct might be to think that corporate training going virtual is not the most riveting subject to be listening to but that was until Corrina Towers started talking about it. Corrina leads training engagements for First Friday and specialises in building high performing sales teams in retail, life sciences and property development.  Her clients have included business such as Tesco, Polo Ralph Lauren and she has recently developed a virtual training capability for several clients that were in the midst of implementing new systems when lockdown happened.

Any significant change in an organisation has to pass through a training stage before new systems and ways of working can be implemented.  Systems Training in particular is typically a complex blend of new technology, features, process and sometimes even new roles.  Training out this complex combination has typically relied heavily on face to face training sessions but not any more.

The model has been re-invented to move to a full virtual delivery and a deluge of new virtual delivery skills, optimised content and technologies are required to make it work.

Corrina shares her observations about what has changed and we discuss in some detail:

What are the componenets of a virtual traning model

What is different about the way that we deliver

What technology do we need

What skills do people need

When does virtual training work

When does it not work

What does the future hold for traiing… if we are going t go virtual with everything and we will ceratainly see that this a

Corporate training has shifted to a new model.  Face to face and lecture style training has it's place but the virtual movement is proving a point that it can be done with being physically present.  But it is not straightforward and there are many more ways to fail if you don't put in the right foundations, content, capabilities and technology.

What has stayed the same is that training is best done in groups.  Small teams that can learn and develop together.  Group size is key and we talk about the interesting features available on platforms such as Teams and Zoom.    The bigger the group the more people can hide in the shadows.  How you Involve them, engage them and make connections is still key but done with completely new skills.  

We even discuss Zoom fatigue...Zoomed out and Teamed Off.  All of this and more on the Bleeding Edge of Virtual Training Delivery.

Connect with Corrina on LinkedIn here

Visit First Friday here