Martin, Author at www.evolution-development.com

Evolve or Die: How to Take Control of Change

The disruption of this year’s global pandemic has impacted businesses and individuals in just about every industry. Some have struggled to bounce back. Others have found ways to adapt, survive and even thrive in the ‘new normal’ we’ve found ourselves in.

The cold-water shock of the last few months has demonstrated a point I include in all of my coaching and training: change is constant. We can’t avoid it, and we can’t resist it. The best way to deal with change is to plan for it; to have a clear vision of where you want to go, what you need to get there, and what’ll happen when you do.

A few years ago I put together a book with Mark Peters (then MD of Pirate FM) called Evolve or Die: the Ultimate Self Help Book. It was designed to help individuals and businesses map out a path for change, so that they could move with the evolving world around them. Over the last few months I’ve revisited the book, and put together an online course to work alongside it: it’s designed to help you get the most out of the whole process, so you finish the course and book with a solid, actionable, realistic plan to get you where you want to be.

A good time for change

I work with lots of clients – both individuals and businesses – who have been making major changes to the way they operate as a result of the pandemic. Many people found that working more flexibly offered them a better quality of life, more productivity, and better job satisfaction, and they’re now making long-term changes to the way they work. As challenging as the last few months have been, this time has also been a period of reflection and reevaluation for many of us: what do we want our lives to look like? Are we working in a way that supports our goals and our values?

What you’ll get from the course

The Evolve or Die book is designed to be the ultimate self-help guide: you write your own story. Each section will ask you questions about what you’d like to achieve, where you want to go, and how you’re going to get there. The online course will walk you through each chapter, and provide guidance on how to fill out your book, to help you get the most out of the process. You’ll finish with a plan that’s specific to you and your goals, ready for you to put it into practice.

Who is this course for?

The course is for anyone who’s found themselves in a time of change: maybe you’d like to make changes to the way you work, or plan for some personal goals. You might be thinking of a career change, or perhaps you’d just like to prepare for the uncertainty that coronavirus has brought about. It can be used as a business planning tool, or for a specific, short-term objective.

You can take the course here. Registration costs £30 and includes a free copy of the Evolve or Die book.

If you’ve got questions about the course, feel free to get in touch. If you’re looking for more business-focused planning tools or training, have a look at our business coaching page. You can also view our other online courses here.

Stress is a Good Thing: 5 Tips For Better Stress Management

Stress is probably one of the most common concerns among the clients I coach and businesses I work with. Too much stress can make it hard to enjoy the good things in life, and make it more difficult for us to reach our full potential – it takes up a lot of ‘mental space’ that could be put to good use elsewhere. I’ve spent over 23 years developing a range of resources and trainings to help people combat stress: here are my top five tips for managing stress and being the best you you can be.

I’ve also just launched my newest online course, The Stress Management Toolkit, so if help with managing stress is something you’d find useful, you can sign up here.

Understand that stress is a good thing

This might seem like an odd statement if you’re currently feeling stressed and overwhelmed – but in fact, some stress is a good thing. A little bit of stress pushes us to do our best and stay motivated; it encourages us to work hard and stay focused. If you’ve ever had a job where you were completely un-stressed with absolutely no pressure to do well, you’ll know what I mean. What’s important is finding a balance between ‘no stress at all’ and ‘so stressed it’s affecting you negatively’ – that’s the sweet spot that’ll help you achieve your goals.

Think ‘life balance’, not ‘work life balance’

Work-life balance is great, and very important – but I like to think of it instead as ‘life balance’. This takes into account all the facets that make up our lives: personal development, family, finances etc. In my Stress Management Toolkit course, we’ll work through an exercise I developed to help you evaluate what’s important to you in your life, what your life balance looks like now, and how to work towards a balance that makes you feel fulfilled.

Take time to pause

If you’ve had a busy or stressful day, it’s really important to take time out to stop, breathe and reset. This is especially important if you’re working from home, as it’s easy for your workday stress to carry over into the rest of your time. Think of the glass of water analogy – holding on to our stresses and worries all day will make them seem much bigger than if we can learn to put them down and step away from them every so often.

Download our free mindfulness check-in audioTaking a few minutes to pause can help you start your day feeling calm and productive.

Accept that you’re doing the best you can

One of the key concepts of NLP is that we’re all doing the best we can with the resources we have available. Managing work, family commitments, and your own personal goals and ambitions can be challenging, but adopting the mindset that you’re doing the best you can will take the pressure off, and make you more compassionate to yourself and to others.

Only YOU are in control of your stress

It might seem like stress arises from external causes: too much work, a difficult-to-manage team, too many personal commitments. However, if you accept that you are in charge of your mind, and only you decide how stressed you are, suddenly you’re the one in control. It’s really empowering to consider that you have the ability to decide how you react to any given situation: you can react with stress, or you can choose to react in a more measured way that’s much easier to manage.

If you’d like help with managing stress, try our online Stress Management Toolkit course. For more focused support, we also offer one-on-one coaching – get in touch to find out more about how we could help.

We also offer business coaching and training, such as Resilience Training, Civility Training, or bespoke business training to suit you.

5 Things to Consider Before Rolling Out Flexible Working

Our recent survey showed that working from home offers numerous benefits for many workers – and their employers. Respondents indicated that overall we are more productive, better motivated with increased job satisfaction when working from home.

I’ve spoken to lots of businesses who are now planning to make changes to the way they work – in fact only 7% of businesses surveyed plan to return to the way they were before the lockdown. I think this is a really positive development to have come out of the upheaval of the last 12 weeks: a better work-life balance for employees and a better bottom line for businesses.

However, while we look towards a flexible working future it’s important that we consider the challenges that these changes will bring about. Here are a few of the most important points to consider if you’re a business planning to move to flexible working.

Consider staff wellbeing and mental health concerns

Working remotely comes with its own set of challenges: away from the office environment, employees can feel isolated and problems that do arise may pass under the radar.

Consider one day per week or month in the office for staff working from home, when they can connect with the rest of the team face-to-face and catch up. Workplace messenger apps like Slack can be set up with channels for general chit-chat or discussion of ideas.

Dealing with changes to routine can be challenging for some teams: consider resilience training or a stress-management course to ensure your staff can roll with the punches.

Communication is key

When staff are working from home, we lose out on the opportunity to stop by someone’s desk or pass them in the hallway for a quick chat. Planned, regular check-ins are essential and will help make sure no one slips through the cracks – why not meet for a coffee over Zoom or FaceTime?

Acknowledge that for some workers, home-working isn’t viable

The majority of people we surveyed found that working from home was a positive experience – however, we also heard from people who found it difficult to do their job this way. For some people, the ability to separate work and home by working in another location is essential. Employees may find working at home too distracting, lack the space to work comfortably or simply feel too isolated to thrive working on their own at home.

Make a plan

Most businesses I’ve spoken to managed to hit the ground running as they switched to working remotely almost overnight: an impressive feat involving, in one case, the purchase of 300 laptops for their suddenly home-working staff! However, rolling out flexible working long-term requires strategic planning [LINK] to make it work for both businesses and employees: training managers, preparing staff, and putting systems in place to ensure productivity, organisation and employee wellbeing stay on track.

Adapt or die

I’ve heard from a lot of people that one of the benefits of Zoom meetings is that they are shorter: when we meet online, we cut out a lot of the ‘filler’ that often takes up in-person meetings. This highlights my final point: it’s important that we don’t try to replicate exactly the way we worked before working online became an option. Your previous weekly staff meetings may have lasted two hours, but it’s likely people will lose interest or fall victim to ‘Zoom fatigue’ well before the two hours is up: shorter, well-planned meetings take up less time but can just as easily cover the important points. Flexible working means a move away from presenteeism: it’s less about showing up from 9-5, and more about focusing on outcomes and getting the work done in the most efficient way possible – even if that means a move away from conventional working hours or practices.

If you’re planning a move to flexible working and would like some support, get in touch. I can offer one-to-one coaching for managers, help with strategic planning, or offer tailored staff training designed around your business’ individual needs. I’ve also got a number of free resources available on my Resources page.

The results are in: how will Coronavirus change the way we work?

I’m really interested in the way that work has changed over the past six weeks as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.

With a huge percentage of the workforce quickly making the shift to working from home, we’ve had to quickly adapt to a new way of working, new ways of communicating and new ways of managing our time.

You may be finding that working from home suits you: you might find it easier to concentrate at home, with more time for family and less time spent on your commute. On the other hand, you could be missing the social aspect of the office, or struggling with distractions at home.

As we look towards an easing of lockdown measures, I think it is important we identify the positive lessons we can take from this period of flexible working. I’m not suggesting that everyone should be working from home all the time – but that offering flexible and remote working as an option makes for a happier, more satisfied and less stressed workforce. The old system wasn’t perfect, so why return to it? If there are ways we can find a better balance in our lives through flexible working, shouldn’t we – as individuals and as employers – explore those?

The results are in

Last week, I ran a survey asking questions about flexible working: the good, the bad, and how it’s going to change the way respondents work. The results were really interesting. Overall, respondents found that working from home made them more productive, and had a positive experience:

75% found that they were more productive working from home
78% felt partially or completely satisfied with the new way of working
63% felt more motivated to start their day, compared to their usual way of working

What challenges do we face while working from home?

The most common challenges among the people surveyed were:

Social isolation (43% of respondents)
Finding communicating with coworkers more difficult (40%)
Difficulty staying motivated while working alone (36%)

To make flexible working a viable option, it’s important we listen to and address these concerns. When managing a team remotely, it’s important that more attention than ever is paid to connecting with employees, whether that’s a short virtual coffee break or – once social distancing measures are safely relaxed – making time to catch up in the real world.

What are the benefits we get from remote working?

The most common benefit of remote working was clear: 84% of respondents enjoyed spending less time commuting. Other common benefits included:

More time with family (58%)
Fewer distractions (53%)
Ability to complete home maintenance tasks (like tidying up or laundry) during work breaks (53%)
More time for exercise or hobbies (48%)

Several respondents commented that they felt calmer and more relaxed while working from home, as they were able to better balance home chores, and spent less time travelling and rushing around.

Other notable results

A high percentage of respondents kept to a regular working schedule while working at home; this may go some way to allay fears that unmonitored employees will lose focus. A move to remote working will require an adjustment in the way we measure ‘work’: a shift away from presenteeism, requiring staff to be present 9-5, Monday to Friday, towards an emphasis on the quality of work produced, productivity and efficiency.

85% kept to a regular working schedule at home every day or most days
75% have a dedicated workspace at home

How many of us are really going to make changes to the way we work?

The answer to this question was almost unanimous: only 7% of respondents are looking forward to returning to the same work set-up as before.

53% will make some changes to the way they work
7% are going to make major changes to the way they work
The remaining 33% found the question didn’t apply to them (for example, employees who don’t have a choice in the way they work)

The key thing to remember here is that, although the practical, logistical elements are important to consider when planning a change to a more flexible way of working, the psychological and emotional elements are just as, if not more important to consider.

For some people, work is their safe place and the thought of having to work from home indefinitely leaves them with a feeling of dread.

So it’s not just a case of supplying everyone with a laptop, a desk and an ergonomic chair, we need to consider the wider implications of making the change – how we can meet employee’s needs for social interaction and our duty of care for their mental health as well as making sure they are rewarded, skilled and motivated.

Of course this is all relevant in a non-flexible workforce so it’s not too difficult to do, we just need to think about it, be creative and innovative in how we transfer this to a more flexible way of working.

Need help managing your team remotely?

If you’d like to learn more, you can view the entire survey on the Resources page on my website.

If you are currently managing a team that’s working remotely, or you work for yourself and would like some help staying motivated, feel free to contact me to find out how I can help, whether that’s through coaching, online courses, or tailored training programmes for your team.

We can help the Senior Management team develop a strategy for moving to a more flexible approach to working, help you to manage a flexible team and help you to manage your time more effectively, be more productive and improve your work life balance while working remotely. So, if you’re thinking of creating a more flexible and higher performing workforce, get in touch.

Flexible Working Lessons From the Lockdown

Five weeks into the lockdown, those of us who are working from home are beginning to settle into a new routine. You might have struggled to stay productive working from home, or found it difficult to adjust to the ‘new normal’, but the feedback that I’m hearing is that overall individuals and organisations have quickly adapted to remote working.

As we look towards an end to the lockdown measures – whether that’s in a matter of days, weeks or months – I think it’s important that we take stock of the positive developments and lessons that we’ve learned over the last five weeks.

So what are some of the changes we’ve made to the way we work that we can carry into the next phase of this year? I’ve listed what I think are the most important ones below – feel free to let me know your own thoughts in the comments below.

1. Working from home works

I’ve spoken to several organisations over the past few weeks who had always planned to roll out remote working as an option for their staff – but hadn’t got around to it because of the need for planning, committees, discussion and red tape. The lockdown forced us to quickly adapt to new ways of working, and it’s showed that for many of us, flexible working is a viable option that brings with it a number of real benefits.

2. Reduced company costs

A client of mine recently shared the positives he’s found in meetings over Zoom and Microsoft Teams: a quarterly meeting that used to require a full day’s travel and an overnight stay has been replaced with a three-hour video conference call, with the same aims and objectives achieved. While it’s important we don’t lose the social aspect of company gatherings, reducing the need for travel could be an easy way to reduce organisational costs overall.

3, Reduced travel time

One of the most common benefits I’ve heard from clients who were previously office-based is the amount of time saved by getting rid of the commute. Workdays are an hour or two shorter, and when the day’s work is done, instead of arriving home tired after a long drive, you’re already at home with time for family or hobbies.

4. Better communication

With no face-to-face communication, we’ve all had to step up and ensure that teams stay connected. In many cases, this has resulted in better and more effective communication than we had before the lockdown began. Whether it’s a weekly catch-up or a ten-minute chat over coffee, regular check-ins have become more commonplace – and have shown us that we don’t need to be in the same room as our teams to stay connected.

5. Improved life balance

This is another positive that I’ve heard echoed by everyone I’ve spoken to recently. Working from home means that we can spend our work breaks productively, checking off small tasks like laundry or preparing dinner during the day, so when the work day is over, there’s more time left for family, reading, exercise – whatever it is that makes you feel in balance.

Of course, there are a few caveats to the benefits of working from home: we need to be careful to maintain the social aspect of work that can be lost when remote working. Staying in contact with your team is more important than ever, and making time for coffee breaks, water-cooler chats and downtime is key to making working from home viable in the long run. Remote working isn’t for everybody: while some of us have found new freedoms, others struggle with the isolation or balancing childcare and family commitments with work.

The answer isn’t a blanket transition to home-working across the board, but a measured approach that takes these new lessons into account. We’ve seen that working from home really works – the challenge now is integrating what we’ve learned in a way that creates more productivity, happier staff, and eventually an improved bottom line.

If you’d like some support, individually or for your organisation, for a remote working team or the transition out of lockdown, get in touch.

About the NLP Business Practitioner Course

As I’ve just announced the dates for the next NLP Business Practitioner Course, I thought I’d talk a bit about the content of the course and answer some common questions.

The course uses NLP techniques to change the way you approach your work and personal life. You’ll get a broad understanding of the basic principles of NLP, and how you can apply these to your career and personal life.

You’ll learn:

Results-focused selling techniques
Better communication – both at work and in your personal life
Stress management
How to become a confident presenter and public speaker
A foolproof method for setting and achieving your goals

Who is the course for?

This course is for anyone looking to improve their professional skills, or get better at setting goals, communication and managing stress.

I’ve delivered this course to over 800 people, from a variety of sectors, backgrounds, and walks of life. Among the mix of delegates we’ve had an MP and a prospective Parliamentary candidate, a Head of HR for a multi-national FCMG manufacturing company, the Executive Director of a University, a Chief Procurement Office for an NHS Trust, a Special Constable, Members of the Fire Service, Doctors, Dentists and Nurses, lots of coaches and trainers, salespeople, charity workers, B&B owners and my absolute favourite job title: Head of Supply Chain (Submarines).

The overwhelming response that I get from delegates across all disciplines is that this course will change the way you think and behave not just at work but in all areas of your life. Most people see an improvement in their relationships (at work and at home), the way they manage their time, and their motivation, as well as the obvious improvements in skills such as presenting, selling and negotiating.

This Course has had a hugely positive impact on every aspect of my life – work, personal, relationships and my personal identity. I enjoyed sharing my experiences with others and taking time out for my personal career development.
Rachel Picken – MPAD

What is NLP?

NLP examines the way we think and behave, and the way other people think and behave, to help you achieve positive outcomes. You can read more about NLP and how it can help in a professional setting here.

What are the dates and times?

The course is delivered over six Fridays, one per month for six months. In between sessions, you’ll have the chance to put into practice the skills we learn in each module, and I’ll be on hand via phone or email to support you or answer any questions you might have.

Who’ll be teaching the course?

The course will be delivered by me, Martin Crump – you can read more about my background and experience here. I designed the NLP Business Practitioner Course to take the benefits of NLP training and apply to them to a business environment. After 23 years delivering a version of this material, I’ve refined and updated the content to reflect feedback from delegates, new research, and my own learning.

What I can offer you on this course is the benefit of over 23 years’ experience coaching and training businesses and individuals; I’ve worked with a wide range of clients, from large multinationals to sole traders, and I’ve seen the benefits that NLP training can have to pretty much anyone – or any business – looking to see improvements in the way they work.

Whatever your job role, your life goals or your interests, this course will make a difference. As Andy McMinn said of the NLP Business Practitioner course: “Presuppose this course will change your life – because it will”.

You can find more information and booking options on Eventbrite.

The importance of follow-up coaching

Stop me if this sounds familiar: you’ve attended a great workshop or a couple of days’ training and returned to work full of inspiration. You’re going to revolutionise the way you manage your time, communicate with others and prioritise your tasks.

But first, you’ve got to clear your inbox, answer the phone, and catch up on everything you missed while you were out of the office. Before you know it, your well-meaning notes make their way to the bottom of a drawer and you’re back to where you started.

Follow-up coaching: a two-part process

I see business coaching and training as a two-step process. First, the training itself, where you learn new skills, tools and techniques to improve the way you work. Then comes the important part: implementing what you’ve learned and making real changes to your process.

It’s the second part that often proves tricky, once you’re out of the supportive training environment, facing a busy day and the demands of your calendar and colleagues. This is where follow-up coaching can help: it gives you or your staff the opportunity to feedback, get help with stumbling blocks, and make sure that the training you’ve invested in takes root.

Plan for success with follow-up coaching

There are other ways to make the most of any training course – planning is key, and a bit of consideration over the goals you’ve got before you embark on learning will help you ensure you got what you came for.

If you’re sending staff on a course, set up a pre-course meeting to discuss what you hope to get out of it – and if it’s you that’s taking the training, do the same for yourself. Set yourself or your staff some relevant goals, and schedule in a check-in meeting for a few weeks after to measure progress.

Make the most of your investment

When you invest in training for yourself or your staff, you want to get the best return on your money – after all, it’s not just a financial investment, but also an investment of your time.

In my experience, organisations that invest in follow-up coaching after training are the ones who see the most change. These are the people who see training not as a box to be ticked, but a way to really empower their staff, make positive change and, of course, improve their bottom line.

I’ll usually offer coaching either one-to-one, or with small groups, and we’ll work through the process of implementing what’s been learned on the course into the work environment.

If you’d like to schedule some follow-up coaching or chat about a package of training and follow-up coaching, get in touch.

Why is resilience at work important?

A 1990 study by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in America showed that one-quarter of employees considered their job to be the most significant source of stress in their lives. In an increasingly connected world, the stress of working life is a bigger issue than ever: when things go wrong – as they invariably do – it’s hard to step away from the strain. This has a knock-on effect on our performance, our health, and our motivation.

It’s impossible to avoid change and challenging situations completely: what we can do is change how we react to them (as we say in NLP: you are in charge of your mind, and therefore your results). Resilience is the ability to bounce back, and it empowers us to take risks, adapt and stay positive in the face of challenges.

Why a resilient workforce works best

From an employer’s perspective, a resilient workforce is desirable for a number of reasons: lower staff turnover, better employee satisfaction, and improved performance and attendance. In the last few years there has been a wealth of research on the benefits of resilience at work, and I’ve been working with an increasing number of organisations to provide resilience training to their staff.

If you’re interested in how resilience training could improve your bottom line and give you a more productive, happier workforce – or you’re just not sure what all this talk of resilience really means – read on.

What is resilience?

Resilience is our ability to deal with the ups and downs of working life, to manage stress, and cope with change. It allows us to deal with the unexpected, with the challenges of working with other people – to fail, make mistakes, and get up and try again.

Resilience at work can be seen as the other side of the same coin as civility in the workplace: in an ideal world, you’d have a civili workplace where everyone feels comfortable, and a resilient workforce who can cope with the stress of everyday life.

Resilience and NLP

Resilience is an implicit part of the teachings of NLP. NLP advocates resilience through taking back control in situations where we feel out of control: that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback, that we are in control of the way we respond to any given situation, and that we have the resources available within us to deal with challenges.

How to foster resilience

The good news is that resilience – like presentation skills, good communication and civility – can be taught. With good training and effective strategies, resilience can become a habit even for those who struggle to deal with stress.

If you’d like to chat about resilience training for you or your staff (usually delivered over a half-day or one-day course) get in touch.

NLP and Civility at Work

How to boost staff performance, client enthusiasm and improve your bottom line.

If I told you there was a behaviour that happens in pretty much every workplace around the world, that causes a 20% drop in performance in those who witness it, reduces staff time at work by up to 48% and causes client enthusiasm for the organisation to drop by 75% (Porath & Pearson), would you be interested in finding out what it is?

I’m talking about the simple but incredibly powerful notion of civility. There’s been a spate of research recently about the importance of civility in the workplace. It’s something I find incredibly interesting, as the implications for the clients I work with – business leaders and decision makers – is huge, and it resonates with what I’ve found and been teaching as a coach and trainer for the last 23 years. It’s great to see so much evidence that stands behind Evolution’s message: NLP is at the core of effective communication and the training I’ve been delivering for over 23 years. It’s essential in getting the best out of your staff and colleagues and achieving successful outcomes.

Just a note here – this does not mean outlawing banter and taking an overly-PC attitude to workplace chat. Civility is all about understanding the best way to communicate with the people around you: treating the people you work with, and who work for you with kindness and respect. You should be able to be authentic, to be yourself, but have the skills to understand your audience. Civility allows room for disagreement – it does not mean that bad work should be praised or poor attitudes rewarded. It does mean that employees feel confident in asking questions, and that issues can be raised before they become a problem.

A 2013 Harvard Business Review study collected data from over 14,000 people over a period of 14 years to track the causes, costs and cures of incivility in the workplace. Their research found across the board that incivility ‘erodes productivity, chips away at morale, leads employees to quit, and damages customer relationships’ and that dealing with the knock-on effects can soak up weeks of managerial attention and time.

Putting civility to work

How to put this idea to work in your organisation? Incivility might be something you’ve observed in your workplace – you might have been on the receiving end, or be aware that it’s something you yourself need to work on. Telling staff ‘just be nice’ will often be met with resistance, or accepted in theory but left by the wayside in practice.

The best way to model civility in the workplace is from the top down. Decision-makers and managers set the tone for the rest of the staff: almost all of the studies in civility have shown that if managers treat each other and those under them badly, this will trickle down to the rest of the organisation and – crucially – impact that organisation’s bottom line.

Coaching can help. I’ve delivered innumerable training sessions to groups of people who’ve started the day sceptical and openly unwilling to learn. In almost all of those cases, the most resistant people have approached me at the end of the day with their minds completely changed. Here’s some feedback from a few such sceptics who’ve undertaken training with Evolution:

I have been turned from a sceptic into a convert. My eyes have been opened.
Richard Lunnon – Babcock Marine

Common sense that has opened my eyes! I feel an improvement in the way I communicate already!
Melissa Butler – Cheshire Fire and rescue Service

I’m currently working with a number of organisations on a four-day programme, spread over the course of a year, teaching NLP core skills and the idea of civility in the workplace.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how to roll out civility – and in the process improve efficiency, output and employee satisfaction – using NLP, get in touch.

‘This is war!’ How NLP saved an NHS trust £1.6million

Got 10 minutes? If you’ve been considering training for your staff that’ll improve your bottom line, improve communications and result in a happier team, let us tell you a story about David*, a Chief Procurement Officer for a large NHS trust who saved £600k on a single project using NLP.

First, a bit of background. David works in procurement, an essential function in a wide range of industries and business sectors but one that can be fraught with misunderstanding and confrontation.

The language of procurement can be peppered with strange acronyms and it can be hard for people to hear past a wall of words studded with, “You have to…”, “We must…” and “You can’t…”. Procurement is all about building relationships: with suppliers, with departments and with individuals within your own company. Flipping the script from one of negativity and conflict, to positivity, civility and respect can mean the difference between a successful contract won or lost, or hundreds of thousands of pounds saved.

NLP training can give supply chain leaders and procurement managers the tools, skills and knowledge to foster a culture of positivity that will forge stronger relationships and add value to the process.

Back to David. David is Chief Procurement Officer at a large NHS trust, responsible for a team of over 30 people who spend more than £150 million per year. Not long after he joined the Trust he was involved in a major project to enhance endoscopic surgery. This was the biggest project of its kind in Europe and his customer was a “prickly and vocal” Consultant Surgeon.

At the start of the project he was forwarded an email from this Consultant that simply said, “This is War!”, a rather forthright way of summing up the classic tension of two opposing philosophies familiar to many procurement professionals – the desire to spend and the need to save.

Choosing communication rather than confrontation, David used the skills he had gathered on one of our NLP Business Practitioner courses to steer the project to a successful conclusion and at the end of that journey the same Consultant sent the following email to 150 NHS leaders:

Dear All

Re: Laparoscopic stacks – skills training

See enclosed photo – the new HD stack systems in the skills training room in the Radiology Academy – result!

Many thanks to all being involved in this initiative to bring us out of the dark ages (literally!).

The stacks for the rest of the hospital to follow shortly.

A special thanks to David XXX, whose god-like skills in the laparoscopic stack tender have saved the Trust ~£600k

David and his team continue to add value and save costs for the NHS: for example, they went on to make a saving of £1million on a £3 million annual spend through collaborative working with various teams within the Trust.

The Consultant Surgeon now champions procurement within the Trust and leads a commercial team in addition to his work in theatre.

At Evolution we have a particular understanding of how NLP can benefit procurement practitioners and we have delivered training courses on that subject to a wide range of industry sectors, particularly in manufacturing and engineering.

If, like us, you see the benefits of building better relationships using clearer communication – or you’d like to hear more about how NLP can improve your bottom line – then please get in touch and we can discuss your specific needs.

*Names have been changed.

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Author: Martin