It’s that time of the year when all the “best of” lists surface. Here’s mine. My 15 from 15. In other words, my most popular Talent Development blog posts from 2015.  I hope you find them interesting and useful.

Talent Development Tips – The Most Popular Posts on my Talent Development Blog – 2015

1. Six Steps to Help Your Employees take Ownership and Responsibility

This is the most popular post on my blog year in year out. That shows that this is still an area of challenge for a lot of leaders. Do you need to achieve more and more with less and less? Are you under pressure to meet hard to achieve goals and targets? At times such as these, you need all employees to take full ownership and responsibility for themselves and their actions. This blog post outline six steps to help you. Read more >>

2. 25 Inspirational Quotes about Career Development

Everyone likes a good inspirational quote. They condense learning and experience into memorable bite-sized experiences. By themselves they’re nothing. But add their backdrop, and they’re reminders for what you can’t remember. Here are some of the best inspirational quotes about career development that I personally love. I thought you would find inspiration from them too. Read more >>

3. Leadership Development Insights From HR Vision Amsterdam

I was invited to speak at a number of Conferences in 2015. In June I was invited to chair the Leadership Development track of HR Vision Amsterdam. HR Vision is a series of conferences for senior-level HR executives. It’s designed to deliver outstanding strategic insights into the critical challenges facing HR and business today. This blog post shares my experience of the conference. Read more >>

4. 25 positive quotes about mentoring

Another set of quotes! But this time about Mentoring. Quotes are a great way of summing up learning and experience in a way that inspires others. Inspiring others is a key role that mentors play. Here are some of my favourite positive quotes about mentoring. If you’re a mentor I hope these quotes inspire you in a way that allows you to inspire others. Read more >>

5. Valuable Top Tips for Conducting a One on One with Employees

This is another post that remains popular year after year. There has been a large focus on performance management during 2015. A good way for managers to develop performance is to conduct regular one on ones with their employees. This blog post outlines some practical tips for conducting one on one meetings. Read more>>

6. Future-Proofing Our Leaders

2015 saw the launch of my Talent Development Mastery podcast. One of my first interviews was with Pip Clark of Assessment & Development Consultants (A&DC). Global megatrends are having a dramatic impact on the way businesses work. In this interview, Pip talks about the research A&DC have carried out to understand how the world will look in the future and the way leaders will need to operate if they are going to be successful in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. Read more>>

7. Developing High-Performance Executive Teams

My Talent Development Mastery podcast continued with me interviewing Nick Pope, the Global Learning Director at Unilever. In this interview, Nick shares what he has learnt from his research into the conditions that create and sustain high-performance Executive Teams. And he talks about how he applied that in Unilever to unlock collaboration and build capability at the most senior levels of the organisation. Read more>>

8. Creating a Mentoring Culture

One of the most quoted “rules” in leadership and talent development is the 70:20:10 model. The model is based on research that shows 70% of adult learning comes from experience in the role, 20% from a reflective discussion (coaching and mentoring) and 10% comes from formal learning. Yet the majority of organisations still admit that 90% of their investment in learning is spent on the 10% of learning that comprises training courses, e-learning etc. In another interview for my Talent Development Mastery podcast, I spoke to Gregor Thain of IHG about what he has done to bring the 70:20:10 model to life and to create a mentoring culture that builds leadership development across the business. Read more>>

9. The Power of Transition Coaching to Facilitate Change

In today’s world, change is happening all the time. And, since people generally like certainty it can cause significant challenges in organisations. In this episode of my Talent Mastery podcast, I talk to my ex-Accenture colleague Clare Norman about the challenges of facilitating organisational change, the importance of supporting people through the process and the powerful role that Transition Coaching can play. Read more>>

10. 5 Lessons for Leaders from Thinking Digital

One of the best conferences I attended in 2015 was Thinking Digital at the iconic Sage Centre in Gateshead. Thinking Digital is an annual conference for those curious about how technology is shaping our future. The conference has run successfully in the North-East for a number of years. In 2016 it will also run in Manchester and London so read on to find out more. Read more>>

11. 5 Creative Ways to Build Trust in a Team

According to a survey by Watson Wyatt, an organisation that has high trust outperforms low-trust organisations by 286%. That’s an impressive statistic! But how do you develop that high trust? And what if the team members are around the world in different geographies and time zones? This blog post describes 5 creative ways you can help build trust in a team. Read now >>

12. How to Develop an Agile Approach to Leadership Development

Do you have tasks on your to-do list that never quite get done? Are you stuck in a cycle of short-term thinking that never lets you see beyond the end of the week? Or even, when things really heat up, the day? How can you possibly expect to deliver the business results you’re capable of in this situation? And how will you achieve your own vision – and reach your own goals and aspirations? This blog post shares some advice. Read more >>

13. My Biggest Talent Development Mistake

Even with decades of talent development experience, I have sometimes let my own employees down. This blog post shares a personal story of how I got it wrong and the steps I took to try and rescue the situation to keep one of my best employees. Read more >>

14. What Mentoring Tools and Techniques are Available?

People are unpredictable. When you’re entering a new relationship, you’re entering the unknown. It’s no wonder that when managers embark on mentoring, they are keen for tools and techniques that might help them. At the heart of any mentoring relationship is a conversation. So the core mentoring tools and techniques are ones that enable and facilitate conversation. This blog post shares a core set of conversation tools to start with. Read more >>

15. How to Remove Fear from Career Conversations

Office politics. Egos. Challenging economic times. It’s no wonder both managers and employees can find it hard to talk about career development. Opening up a conversation about a sensitive issue like career progression can weigh heavily on even the most experienced shoulders. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a manager or an employee. Where would you start? How should you begin? And what will the results be? This blog post shares a way to remove some of those fears. Read now>>

What an eclectic list of blog posts! This reflects the variety of my life in 2015.  And I imagine it reflects the variety of interests and challenges that my readers face,

I’m looking forward to an equally varied, challenging and fun 2016.  If there’s anything you’d like to see a blog post about please let me know and I’ll be happy to write it.