Just a few short months ago, as the lockdown was ending, we were all looking forward to returning to restaurants, shopping, and travel. Now, almost overnight, we’re all hearing stories about customers behaving angrily over minor inconveniences — diners blowing up at waiters over slow service, shoppers furious about shortages, travelers refusing to obey flight attendant instructions, and bankers facing increasingly irate customers with complaints.

The prospect is a market leader in customer experience and is known for product excellence. Today, however, the marketplace is shifting. To continue to be successful, they need to be excellent at serving an increasingly diverse customer base.

As senior leaders explored their own unconscious biases and acknowledged their lack of experience in diverse environments, the need to shift behaviors became a priority.

Participating leaders were new to having conversations about equity, inclusion, and belonging. As the organization became more diverse and inclusive, it was anticipated that these conversations would arise more frequently…

Having good conversations about wellness is key to building the kind of resilience you will need as you journey out of the pandemic and into the new, hybrid workplace. Being able to engage in these conversations with colleagues decreases day-to-day stress and increases the sense of feeling supported.

If you are an HR Business Partner, Learning Consultant, or Director, you bring strong technical or business skills to your role, but you may be missing a set of skills crucial to your success: influencing skills.

Training designed to improve the customer experience for diverse customers often teaches key concepts like racism, oppression, privilege, bias, and microaggression. Addressing these knowledge gaps is essential. But just as important, maybe more so, is teaching new skills and behaviors.

The COVID-19 crisis offered an opportunity to innovate and to test new approaches to virtual skills development, some of which were extraordinarily successful. Here’s what we learned from those studies.

Unconscious bias can derail a sales conversation in several ways. Being aware of your own biases and understanding how they influence your customer’s journey can improve your relationships and increase your close rate.

Unconscious bias can derail a sales conversation in several ways. Being aware of your own biases and understanding how they influence your customer’s journey can improve your relationships and increase your close rate.

Many organizations have begun to prioritize improving diversity and inclusion. Over the last five years there has been a 113% increase in the number of executives that hold diversity and inclusion titles.

Since corporate training began, Learning and Development professionals have struggled to determine the return on investment (ROI) on training programs. While the reaction level or “smile sheets” administered during or post program are often very positive, the next three levels - learning, behaviour change, and business results - are traditionally more difficult to measure.

With a unique and challenging year behind us, now is the time to reflect on how the pandemic is bringing digital conversations to the forefront in 2021. Sales success will be determined by how well these conversations flow and convert.

One of the important lessons of 2020 is that organizations that deliver effective changes quickly will continue to have a competitive advantage. I had the pleasure of hosting several virtual roundtable discussions throughout 2020 that focused on how organizations were adapting their Leadership Development strategy to address the immediate needs forced on them by the Covid-19 pandemic as well as social change driven by Black Lives Matter and the Me-Too movement. Several themes emerged from the discussions.

Until recently, it was enough for successful leaders to bring a combination of interpersonal skills, academics, and business savvy to their roles.

A podcast interview with Kyle West, the CEO of K.West Partners, a bespoke recruitment service tailored to enable employers to secure the top performing sales talent.

Over the last several months, most companies have been re-examining their diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy, and with good reason.

The lockdown has been hard on just about everyone. But for people working in training and development, it’s been particularly rough. Sure, they made the same shift to working from home that we all did, but, unlike the rest of us, the intensity of their work increased massively at the same time.

The events of the past months have us all questioning our business models, from where and how we work, to how we help our leaders, managers and employees adapt to change while they continue to run the business. One of the lessons that has become apparent is that many of our old learning and development paradigms have been broken and it’s time to question whether we bring them back.

The most important things that happen at any organization are conversations. They are the reason we innovate, collaborate, sell, lead, coach, change, succeed, or fail. Given its significance to success, why is it that most organizations and individuals take their ability to execute a great conversation for granted?