There’s a lot of confusion about the workplace coaching and mentoring roles – mainly because they employ similar skills. What do these two activities actually involve? What are the differences and similarities between them? And how do they differ from instructors and sports coaches?

So what are the differences between the two roles?

The difference lies mainly in what you are trying to achieve and over what sort of time scale. A workplace coaching programme can be quite short – maybe less than a day – or it can develop over a long period. By contrast, the workplace mentor’s relationship with a mentee usually takes place over a longer time scale. It could often be six months to two years – or indeed a lifetime.

Let’s look at the differences between the coach and the mentor.

Having looked at the differences, here are some similarities:

• A coach can also be a mentor and a mentor can be a coach, or the roles can be rolled into one
• Mentors and coaches use the same skills to help people reach significant decisions and take appropriate action
• Successfull mentors and coaches both depend on building a relationship based on trust and openness
• Neither are there to solve problems but rather to help identify issues and plan ways through them.

The key point is that whatever role you play, it’s vital to give the person being coached or mentored unbiased support and guidance.

Are workplace coaches and mentors the same as instructors?

It’s important to note that the role of the coach or mentor is quite different from that of the instructor. If you’re an instructor it’s likely that you will define targets or objectives in advance for learners. Instructors tend to decide which teaching or learning methods best suit the task in hand and control the order in which elements will be tackled. By contrast coaches and mentors allow learners to do things their own way. To be successful you have to be prepared to let go of your learners rather than take them over or take charge of them.

You may start by asking your learners whether or not they need some support. What role do they want you to play? When do they want to be supported? What kind of support do they need?

This kind of empowering support leads to effective learning. The reason is simple: when you control people you have to spend time supervising their behaviour. On the other hand, if you treat people with trust and respect, you can inspire them and encourage motivation and ownership.

Learn more about the roles of the coach and the mentor in our audio book ‘Coaching and Mentoring for Success’. It’s available from Amazon, from audible and from our website.

http://www.word-smiths.co.uk/books/coach-mentor-success.html

Scroll down the page to download our quick questionnaire to work out whether you are – or want to be – a coach or a mentor.

http://www.word-smiths.co.uk/books/coach-mentor-success.html

Most business people now get the importance of networking. They are aware of it’s value in connecting with individuals and other businesses all over the world and for broadcasting marketing information. What many don’t understand is that networking is also about developing long-term relationships and creating a strong brand image. The point is to sell through people rather than directly to them. It’s easy to say – but difficult to do well. And more importantly, how can we busy professionals find the time to fit it all in?

Step forward networking guru Heather Townsend with her well structured and effectively written bible of business networking strategies, tips and techniques. This is a practical and engaging seminar from an acknowledged expert in a rapidly developing field. She tells us all the basics and then addresses our problems. There is no doubt that she has vast experience and heard all these questions before. The book covers everything the fledging or moderately experienced networker needs to know. For example:

• Why networking is crucial to long-term business success
• How to spot and create networking opportunities
• How to use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
• How to get best value out of blogging
• How to build a community
• How to prepare for, behave at and follow up networking events and other face-to-face opportunities.

It adds up to an impressive overview of what we should all be doing to make sure that others notice us in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

One big problem is that people may confuse social networking and business networking. The result is that they spend too much time engaging in light-hearted banter about recipes or items in the news. Heather points out that, although there is a place for repartee, business networking must be properly planned and evaluated or it will waste our valuable time.

There’s too much in this book to take in at a single sitting. Having read it all and grasped the main points, my plan is to dip in and implement appropriate aspects over the next three months. The big challenge at the moment is to manage my time better, as networking does become addictive! As in many aspects of business life, success depends on following a tried and tested process, being persistent and applying discipline. It’s much like my fitness programme, but that’s another story.

Well done Heather, I give you five stars for a great book.

PS Do follow me on Twitter! https://twitter.com/#!/wordsmithsuk

Hi Susan

Thanks for your message and for the positive feedback on our audiobooks. Here are some answers to your questions:

1) How do I read without reading every word (speed reading…)? How do I get the message or decide which words to leave out?

This is a very common question: many beginners find it difficult to ‘decide which words to leave out’. The answer is easier than you might think. In reality you just have to trust your brain to find the key words – the words which will unlock the meaning of the the sentence or on the paragraph. Just let your eye rest on the page and select for itself which words to focus on.

It helps if you prepare your brain for what is to come by doing a high speed skim of the whole book or document before you start (as explained on the audio). If it’s a long book or document you can also do a quick preview by scanning through the first sentence of each paragraph or quickly skimming and dipping (both techniques also explained on the audio). Don’t forget to use a guide (pen/pencil/finger) to keep you focused and keep you moving forward as you read.

2) I am reading without letting my eyes take a break, or a shorter break and I notice that my eyes just stop and take the break anyway. How does a person read without the eyes taking a break?

Actually it is important to take breaks when speed reading – otherwise you will go into overload! If you don’t control the rate at which you take breaks, your attention will start to drift – which may be why your eyes are stopping.

When you are starting to learn, speed read for a maximum of five minutes at a time before taking a short break to allow your brain to process what you have read. The break should just be for a minute or two. Then get back to it and do another five minutes and so on. Set a timer to make sure that you don’t go on for too long.

Gradually increase the time to 10, then 15. then 20 minutes as you become more used to the skills and more comfortable with the faster speeds. Never read for more than 20 mins at a time without taking a brief break. During the break, have a drink of water or do some eye exercises. But don’t get too distracted from your reading or you may never get back to it!

There is more info on my blog

http://wordsmithsuk.wordpress.com/tag/speed-reading/

3) What is Mind Mapping?

Mind Mapping is a system of note-taking that mirrors the way in which the brain works. I attach an e-book that explains this technique in more detail.

Good luck – and happy speed reading!

Jane Smith

PS If you are enjoying your audible purchases would you mind giving them a rating and/or a positive review? It wouldn’t take you long and it would really help us to spread the word about our publications. Thank you so much!

Blog readers – contact me jane@word-smiths.co.uk if you would like to have a copy of my full-colour ebook on Mind Mapping. I would love to answer your questions – so keep them coming!

• They believe that their eyes read much faster than is actually the case (the average adult reading speed on even light material is between 150 and 240 words per minute
• They assume that the eyes glide smoothly from left to right when they read.

But what the eyes actually do is to move in little jumps.

There are 130 million light receivers at the back of the eye – this in an area no larger than a thumbnail. Each of these light receivers decodes hundreds of light bundles of energy per second. Some cells respond to specific colours, others to overall light intensity. At the centre of the retina is the fovea –a tiny area in which the cells are much more tightly packed than elsewhere. Here, 2,000 cones and rods are crammed into a space less than a tenth of a millimetre square.

Our perception is much sharper and finer at the fovea than anywhere else on the retina. When you look directly at something, the light from that object falls directly on the fovea, so you can see it clearly. If you’re looking at a line of print from a distance of two feet, you can see only a few letters perfectly at any one time – this is your focused vision. The area around the outside of the fovea, where the vision is less clear, is your peripheral vision.

If our eyes really moved over print in a smooth manner, they wouldn’t be able to take anything in. This is because the eye can only see things clearly when it can look at them directly: it has to hold them still. So for the eye to take in words, it has to pause on each word, or group of words, before moving on. To read a whole sentence or paragraph, they have to move in a series of quick jumps and stops.

The jumps themselves are very quick, but the stops (or fixations) can last from a quarter of a second to one and a half seconds. People who normally read slowly have to jump after each word – and they tend to stop for longer and back-skip more often than faster readers. This is hard work and very boring.

You can use what we know about reading eye movements to help you read faster.

1. Take in groups of words Each time you let your eyes rest, take in as many as three to five words at a time. It’s not just faster: it also makes comprehension easier. This is because, when we read a sentence, we don’t read it for the individual meaning of each word, but rather for the meaning of whole phrases.
2. Make shorter fixations A fixation is the time you allow the eye to rest before moving on. The time for each fixation can be reduced to at least a quarter of a second. Eventually you should be able to read a whole line of text in less than a second. You need not fear that this is too short a time, for your eye is able to register many words in a micro-second.
3. Keep moving forward People back skip because they lack confidence in their ability to understand what they are reading in one go. But you should be able to take in at least 90% of the information the first time you read it. If it’s important to understand the other 10%, you can always go back over it a second time.
4. Keep your eye on the page If you discipline yourself to keep focused on the line of text, and don’t allow your eye to wander off the page, you will be less distracted and less likely to lose concentration.

War and Peace

This story illustrates a common problem for people who are starting to learn how to read faster: their speed improves at the expense of comprehension. The result is that they feel that the whole thing is a waste of time and they give up. It’s not real reading if you can’t understand anything – so what’s the point?

But in fact it’s relatively easy to get the eyes to move faster using some of the ideas described in earlier articles in this blog. The difficult part is to get your brain used to absorbing information when your eyes are moving at a faster rate.  Remember, it is the brain that does the reading and not the eyes. And for adults the brain has been in the habit of reading in a certain way for many years. However, with continued and consistent practice, your brain gets used to the new way of reading, and you will soon notice an increase in comprehension.

At first the faster reading feels strange and somewhat scary – it’s like careering downhill on a bike with the brakes off. But after a while you become used to the higher speed, you get in control again and soon it feels more comfortable and very exhilarating!  You have to relax, let your eyes go and harness the brain’s ability to take in a huge amount of information very quickly.

When you are starting to learn to speed read, it’s important to practise the techniques as often as possible: looking for key words across and down the page, moving your eyes as fast as you can, harnessing the power of your peripheral vision and, most importantly, using a pen or finger to guide your eyes. Initially the words may seem blurred, but in time the brain catches up with your eyes and comprehension gets better.

Don’t start to learn on complex or highly technical material; use novels, newspapers or journals as practice material when you are beginning. This is because it’s important to perfect the eye movements and get your brain used the new speed before working with more difficult reading matter.

In future posts I will describe some exercises to help you stretch your speed and your comprehension. Watch this space over the next few weeks.

And please post, email, or tweet your questions about speed reading – I will enjoy finding out how you are getting on.

My audio book ‘Speed Reading for Success’ has helped many people to master these
skills. See what you can do!

Find details and a sample on our website

www.word-smiths.co.uk.

Decision making

Mind Mapping can be of tremendous value when you are trying to make a decision. The next time you have to make an important decision, try using the main branches of a Mind Map to identify the options available and to explore the implications of each alternative. The process of free association around each one will enable you think deeply about them and, in some cases, to clarify your personal feelings.  You may find, as many people do, that the very act of Mind Mapping actually helps you to identify the decision you want to make, or recommend to others.

Time management

There are several advantages of planning your day or your week in Mind Map form:

• It gives you the chance to think through each task. This can make even the most daunting tasks seem less unpleasant – good news for procrastinators!
• The Mind Map helps commit your tasks to memory. You will find that you can fit things in to little ‘windows’ of time that appear unexpectedly during the day, that you are less likely to forget to do things and that less time is wasted.

Taking notes during meetings, presentations, speeches

This is one of the most valuable uses for Mind Maps. Some people feel it is also one of the most difficult because you are creating the Mind Map while other people are speaking – and unfortunately you can’t rewind the tape if you happen to miss something. However,  the reward that you will gain from being able to do this type of Mind Mapping makes it well the effort of persevering. This is because you are not only making a record of what is being said, you are also organising the information in a way that will make it easy to remember, integrating it with the things you already know and adding your own comments and reactions as you go along. When you are Mind Mapping from the spoken word, get your central image from the topic of the meeting, speech or presentation. This image should be strong enough to take your mind right back to the meeting when you review your notes – so make it as colourful, humorous and exaggerated as possible. You may be able to prepare your main branches from the meeting agenda or any printed materials provided by the speaker. If this is not possible you will have to listen hard to work out what the main themes are as you go along.

Don’t worry too much if your Mind Mapped notes end up looking messy and disorganised. They will still probably be ten times as good as pages of linear notes. If it is very important to have a clear record of the event, you can always do a neat copy later by way of review.

Taking notes from written material

The technique is very similar to taking notes from the spoken word except that it is a lot easier because you have more time to think. You can either use the chapter headings or sub-headings of a report for your main branches or you can look for particular points of your own.
You will retain much valuable information from books and reports if you Mind Map them and then review your Mind Maps at regular intervals. If you are using Mind Maps as a study tool, you will save yourself hours of tedious note taking and revision and studying will be an enjoyable rather than a tedious occupation.

Planning written material

Any kind of written material can be prepared using Mind Maps – letters, memos, reports, books. What happens is that you do all your thinking
before you actually start writing, rather than during the process of writing. The result that you can develop all your ideas and see where they relate to each other before committing them to paper. In this way you will avoid producing over long rambling letters, reports that repeat themselves endlessly or other kinds of papers that are poorly expressed and seem to be going nowhere. Instead, your finished product will be focused and concise, you will waste little time in revising and editing and the piece of text should be easy for others to read.

Planning presentations or speeches

There are many advantages of using Mind Maps to prepare your speeches, presentations or training sessions: It is much easier to memorise your presentation when it is on a single piece of paper with all the Mind Map features (ideas clustered around the main theme, pictures, key, words, symbols, colours and so on) You will not have to keep referring to lengthy notes written on paper or cards (there is therefore less risk that you will lose your place or that the audience will lose track of what you are saying) Because you do not have to read from written notes you will be able to maintain eye contact with the audience. Your presentation will be natural and relaxed, rather than stilted and formal You will be able to maintain the structure and the focus of the presentation even if questions or comments from your listeners force you to stray off the point temporarily. In short, a Mind Mapped presentation allows you to be flexible and informal while at the same time maintaining the required structure and clarity. The net result is that you will feel confident and relaxed while giving a presentation an you will be able to communicate effectively with your audience.

Group Mind Maps

Mind Maps can be created by a group as well as by individuals.  It is a good idea for the group members to do an individual Mind Map before contributing to a group Mind Map. In this way individuals will have thought through their personal ideas before the group effort begins. There are many benefits of group Mind Mapping, including:

• All members will feel that they have made a contribution and will therefore be willing to commit themselves to the outcome
• Associations will be triggered, not only by one’s own ideas but by the ideas of other people in the group.
• They in turn will be inspired by your ideas and the way you express them
• They are great fun!

Contact me if you would like a copy of my free ebook ‘Mind Mapping for Success’. And please send me copies of your own MInd Maps – I would love to see them!

The other day I read a story about a police officer who responded to a domestic violence call after having completed a course of ‘humour training’. As the officer walked to the front door, she heard the sound of an argument inside. Suddenly a television crashed through the window, landing in the garden. She knocked on the door. “Who is it?” yelled an angry voice. “TV repair,” the officer replied. Her riposte amused the quarrelling husband and wife and made handling a tense situation easier.

So comedy training does work – and I’ve always wondered how it’s done. The author is Gerry Maguire Thompson a comedian and trainer who runs courses on how to use comedy and improvisation to teach self-presentation and public speaking. These events are probably top of the list if you want to learn how to make your own training events more fun. In his preface, Robert Holden says that Gerry can help people ‘to use humour, play, creativity and fun to find your perfect self’. This is a big promise – but how far is it fulfilled in the pages of this book?  It starts off quite well with a quick tour of the essence of comedy, and why comedy is a useful tool for learning and development. Then Gerry moves on to provide some guidelines for running a comedy based training session. Most of this is valuable stuff for trainers and facilitators – how to create the right ambience, some useful icebreakers, a few guiding principles and how to run a wide range of training activities for developing presentation skills.

Unfortunately, things start to go downhill when Gerry gives us a lecture on comedy genres – stand-up, sketches etc. It’s all too general to be useful in the context of the topic being addressed. Then we get  ‘teaching people how to be funny’, which is another generic session on tricks of the trade.  These later sections exemplify the key problems with the book: who is it for and what is its specific purpose? After looking at it a few times I’m still not sure if the book is aimed at trainers who are trying to teach others to be funny. Or is its purpose to help trainers and facilitators to inject a bit of humour into their own courses and events? Or is he simply telling learners how to use comedy as part of their development? If it is the former then the target audience is going to be quite limited. And if it is either of the last two,  it doesn’t succeed because there is too much general information with few clues on how to make it work.

I don’t want to be too negative as some of the activities described here would be useful additions to many training courses and other events. However, the book would be most valuable as a handout pack on Gerry’s training courses. You probably have to hear the content delivered by the author himself in order to understand how to put it into practice.Anyway, I’m still waiting to ‘find my perfect self’. Where did I put it?

The day after finishing this book I popped into a Starbucks in Bristol to assess to what extent Howard Shultz has indeed succeeded in his mission to be the ‘undisputed coffee authority’ and ‘ignite the emotional attachment with our customers’. Well it was 4/10 on the first aim and maybe 6/10 on the second. This was a reasonable cup of coffee in a nice atmosphere with efficient baristas who did at least make eye contact as they served you.

Howard Schultz is the man who built Starbucks up from 11 stores in the US to thousands across the globe. In doing so, he brought Italian coffee and its associated culture to the whole world. The company thrived and two decades later Shultz stepped down as CEO leaving others in day-to-day control of the enterprise. However, when the economy entered the 2008 recession, Starbuck’s revenues entered a downward spiral. ‘Onward’ is the story of how the elder statesman rode to the rescue and, with all guns firing, helped the company regain its former success – without losing its soul.

In this book, Shultz works hard at describing the nuances of bringing the company back into profit: this complex tale spans 40 years of rags to riches, back to rags and once again to riches. There were endless meetings, sleepless nights, store closures, layoffs, improvement ideas, cost cutting drives and a massive technology revolution. But success did not arrive instantly. Sales (and Starbucks’ stock market value) only began to rise again with the recent economy improvements.

Shultz is aware of how difficult it is for most people to appreciate the nuances of what he did to re-invigorate this well-known coffee shop chain. But he insists that Starbucks is not simply a coffee company that serves people ‘it is a people company that serves coffee’.

How you react to this book will depend on who you are. There may be much of interest to MBA students, management trainers, executive coaches and business leaders: those who look for leadership models and innovative theories. Starbucks managers, partners, shareholders and other stakeholders (including regular customers) may also find the story interesting  - if only to measure Shultz’ words against their own experience. Some will find this tale enlightening and motivating. Others may find it hard to recognise the passion that Howard describes in their personal experience and daily routines.

By contrast, ordinary readers (like me) are likely to find the story rather tedious and overblown. Do I really need to know all this detail – everything from breakfast sandwiches, types of coffee, the roller coaster of emotions and what seems like every word of every speech over a period of three years? Can it be true that serving a cup of coffee is more about  respect, dignity, passion, authenticity and community than simply grinding beans and serving the cup with a nice smile?

In the end, how you react depends on how far you agree with a corporate consultant’s comment: ‘They have to stop taking themselves so seriously. Let’s face it – it’s still coffee, it’s not brain surgery’.

Have you read this book? What are your thoughts? I’d love to know whether or not you agree with me.

Look at the following example:

• The riot was stopped by the police (passive)
• The police stopped the riot (active)

Notice how the passive voice tends to sound formal, old fashioned and bureaucratic, whereas the active is more personal, shorter and more dynamic.

Here is another example:

• The acceptance form should be completed before the papers are transferred.

This is ambiguous because we don’t know from reading this who should do the actions. The meaning of the sentence is much clearer when you use active verbs.

• We will transfer the papers when you complete the acceptance form.

Here are some more examples of how to turn a passive verb into an active verb.

• This matter will be considered by us shortly (passive)
•  We will consider this matter shortly (active)
• The mine had to be closed by the Health and Safety Commission (passive)
• The Health and Safety Commission had to close the mine (active)

Passive verbs cause several problems:

• They can be confusing (because we are not sure who is doing what)
• They often make writing more long-winded (you need more words to express this form)
• They make writing less lively (they are passive not active).

Using passive verbs

Although the active voice is recommended for most communications, there are times when it is preferable to use a more diplomatic passive style. This reduces the impact of negative information. Using the passive voice can make the information you are sending seem less abrupt or aggressive, softening the impact of what you are obliged to say.

White space

Most people feel daunted when they are confronted with pages of densely written typescript. The amount of white space surrounding the words or graphics is almost as important as everything else. Ask yourself the following questions.

• Do the pages look clear and uncluttered?
• Is there enough space between the paragraphs?
• Are the margins wide enough?
• Is there enough space for headings?

Headings

Every document needs a heading or headings to help readers to find their way through the text. These signposts guide your readers, ensuring that they do not lose track of the message you are trying to communicate.

It is important that your headings are consistent, so that:

• Main headings always look the same
• Subheadings are less prominent than main headings
• Subheadings follow a clear pattern.

If you write on a computer, you can select the heading styles for your document before you start. This ensures that they will always be consistent.

Highlighting

It is best to use bold if you want to emphasise particular words or groups of words. Other ways of making things stand out, such as:

• CAPITALS
• italics
• underlining

can be difficult to read because they alter the shape of words.

Graphics

Pictures, graphs, charts and diagrams serve a number of different purposes:

• They break up the text and hold the reader’s interest
• They look attractive on the page
• They can often communicate an idea more effectively than words alone.

But don’t use graphic elements for the sake of it. Like the words you use, each picture must earn it’s place on the page and contribute towards getting your message across.

Fonts

A font is defined by the shape of its letters, called the typeface. There are many fonts available on word processors, but the two main categories are those with and without serifs. A serif is a small stroke added to the ends of letters. A typeface without serifs is called sans-serif.

Fonts with a serifed typeface are often used for the main text, while sans-serif fonts are used for the headings. As a general rule, avoid using more than two or three different fonts in a single document, as too many fonts make the layout look busy and cluttered.

Golden rules of page design

The power of word-processing and layout programs, and the ease with which anyone can now attempt complex, multi-font layouts, make it more important than ever to remember the golden rules of good page design:

• Simplicity
• Clarity
• Consistency.

One of the best ways to learn is to look at the documents that other people produce and to learn from their good and bad points. And always use a style sheet when you are writing. Please get in touch if you would like me to send you an example of a style sheet.

jane@word-smiths.co.uk

Word Smiths have launched a new service called WS Design. Our print services include:

• Typesetting
• Layout design
• Print management

Get in touch with Nick at WS Design, if you would like more information about these services.

nick@word-smiths.co.uk