Features
New leader, old story: How teams decide before you speak
Reputation walks into work before you do, and teams cling to old stories. Chris Dodd explores how labels form, why cynics shape perceptions, and how leaders earn credibility socially through visibility, listening and consistency. Behaviour, not title, rebuilds trust, lifts morale and stops you battling an outdated version of yourself. One thing I learned very early in the Royal Navy, is that your reputation normally arrives before you do. Long before a new Captain, senior leader, manager, or supervisor even…
Align, coach, reflect, consolidate: A leadership rhythm for turbulent times
During upheaval, leaders often cling to process, but progress comes from staying close to people. Karl Green sets out a practical cycle: align the senior team on direction and commitments, coach through uncertainty with actionable feedback, pause for a midpoint reflection, then consolidate learning to build resilience and growth together. When organisations go through significant change, such as rapid growth, a merger, redundancies or a strategic reset, the instinct for many leaders is to default to process. When change hits,…
Trust is biased, and your team is proving it
Trust breakdowns rarely start with incompetence. Maryam Rezaei argues they begin with bias, familiarity and the meanings we attach to tone, silence and directness. She explores psychological safety, real listening and what repairs trust: new experiences, not explanations. For L&D and leaders, trust is a skill to practise every day. Do you trust your teammates? If you do, why do you trust them? Are you careful, distant, or unsure with other people, even before anything has clearly gone wrong? These…
Compliance theatre is over: Accredited online learning is the grown-up option
With budgets squeezed and the UK Employment Rights Act 2025 raising the stakes, distance learning is no longer second best. Nathan Tod argues accredited online qualifications can satisfy compliance, boost retention and cut costs, if L&D stop treating learning as an event and start building continuous development into work culture. The pressure on learning and development (L&D) professionals has rarely felt greater. Budgets are tighter, expectations are higher, and the Employment Rights Act 2025 has introduced a new layer of…
From completion to capability: Making skills visible where it matters
Completion rates look reassuring, but they hide whether people can actually perform. Leonidas Palaiokostas argues organisations face a skills visibility gap, leading to wasted hiring and underused talent. Leonidas shares four capability signals and shifts: verify skills in real work, empower managers, build inventories, and connect skills data to opportunities. Completion rates are often treated as a reliable signal of training success. In practice, they rarely tell the full story. It’s not uncommon for teams to reach 100% training completion…
Supported staff need supported leaders
Daily stress is becoming normalised at work, and surface-level wellbeing initiatives are not shifting the needle. Touchdown PR share different experienced voices that argue for proactive support: equip frontline managers, reduce admin friction, redesign workloads and build psychological safety. It also explores where technology can genuinely help without replacing culture. As we move further into 2026, leaders across every sector are continuing to navigate a period defined by rapid technological change and economic uncertainty. From the widespread integration of AI…
The generation we can’t afford to lose
With youth unemployment at its highest since 2014 and junior roles drawing 100+ applicants, employers can’t afford to pass on. Giles Smith argues we’re debating costs while the education-to-work system fails a generation. The answer is redesigning organisations for an AI-shaped future, with creativity and junior talent at the centre. Last week I attended an event where some industry leaders argued against hiring young people. I found that hard to understand, given the talent and potential we have seen through…
The leaking talent pipeline: How AI is quietly undermining leadership succession
AI is speeding up work while quietly eroding the early-career experiences that shape future leaders. As entry-level roles decline, judgement, emotional intelligence and organisational fluency have fewer places to form. Leena Rinne argues succession strength must be measured in capability, then rebuilt through deliberate practice, feedback and engineered development pathways. There’s a shift happening inside organisations right now that doesn’t show up on any succession plan. As AI absorbs more entry-level and early-career work, organisations are gaining speed but losing…
The mid-career crisis employers aren’t talking about: How L&D can fix the mid-career plateau
Somewhere between ‘settled’ and ‘stuck’, mid-career talent hits a quiet dip that drains energy and invites exits. Drawing on workplace happiness data, Kimberley Rowbottom shows why employees at the five/ten-year point feel least recognised and developed. Potential solutions include personalised pathways, visible appreciation and renewed social connection across the organisation. We’re at a critical, yet overlooked, inflection point in the employee experience: the mid-career dip. According to the Global Workplace Happiness Report, employees with five to ten years of tenure…
The skills obsession is creating a performance blind spot
Charles Jennings highlights the issue no training programme addresses: behavioural patterns inside teams that derail performance. He shows why Behavioural Risk should be on every L&D leader’s agenda, shifting focus from individual upskilling to interaction. Diagnose dynamics, track psychological safety and knowledge flow, and strengthen collective outcomes where strategy sticks. Learning and development teams are stretched. Skills taxonomies and individualised learning pathways are growing more sophisticated. AI is seen by L&D leaders as both a challenge and an opportunity. And…
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