News from Resourceful People Group
Under Investing In First Line Managers
Why do organizations continue to under-invest in building the skills and capabilities of their first line managers? We know this is the case from multiple studies that tell us that less than half of first line managers receive training as leaders and all too often this only takes place long after they are appointed. And yet, as Gallup research has shown, managers are by far the biggest source of variation in team engagement. Hence the quote we are all familiar with…people leave managers not organizations. So this inaction is a bit of mystery. Could it be that senior leaders don’t fully understand the context in which their first line managers are operating and are therefore no longer clear on how to develop them? Or that performance expectations for the role have become confused? Clarifying our expectations of the first line manager role can help us get this right. What we need from first line managers in a dynamic and frequently unstable environment is the capability to: ▶️ Connect: Managers are the glue connecting team members’ day to day work to organizational goals. They are key to aligning these and helping team members find meaning and value in their work. ▶️ […]
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Clarity is often misunderstood 😕
Many leadership teams feel they can’t move until they have certainty — more data, more assurance, more agreement. In complex environments, that moment rarely arrives, yet the instinct to wait remains strong. What’s often missing isn’t certainty. It’s alignment. Clarity comes from shared understanding — not just of what matters now, but of how we each see the situation, respond to pressure, and make sense of uncertainty. This is where teams often get stuck. Different perspectives, different risk thresholds, different emotional responses — all present, but rarely surfaced. Conversations stay polite. Assumptions go untested. Energy spreads thin, and progress slows without anyone quite knowing why. 👀 Team self-awareness changes that 👀 . When teams understand how they individually and collectively show up — their preferences, blind spots, stress responses and adaptability — clarity becomes easier to reach. Not because complexity disappears, but because it’s being navigated 🧭 together rather than in parallel. Tools like AQai – Adaptability Assessments & Coaching and Insights Discovery don’t create clarity on their own. What they do is make the invisible visible through our own unique SCRUM UP ® program. Ultimately, these tools give teams a shared language — and, through our experience at Resourceful People Group Ltd, […]
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It’s Not a Lack of Confidence
Most leaders aren’t struggling because they lack confidence …. They’re struggling because the world has become harder to read. 🔶 Information is incomplete. Risks feel higher. Consequences feel more visible — for leaders and the teams around them. 🔶 So decisions slow down. They get revisited. Sometimes they quietly unravel. Good decision-making today isn’t about certainty ➡️ It’s about sound judgement under uncertainty — together. Confidence doesn’t come from knowing everything ➡️ It comes from understanding how we decide when the pressure is on. That’s where self-awareness really matters.💠 EQ helps leaders and teams recognise what’s happening emotionally — stress, assumptions, reactions.💠 AQ helps them adapt when the ground keeps shifting — staying open and effective when there’s no clear answer. When EQ and AQ are strong, decisions don’t just move faster.They move with more trust, clarity, and commitment. When pressure rises, do your leaders and teams understand how they decide — or do they just hope for the best? At Resourceful People Group Ltd, this is one of the key spaces we spend our time in — helping leaders and teams build self-awareness, adaptability and confidence in complex environments, using evidence-based tools such as Insights Discovery, Korn Ferry ESCI and AQai – […]
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Graduating Success – Metaruption
🎉 Well what a day of celebration ! 🎉 I had absolute pleasure of being the Guest of Honour at two of the graduation ceremonies at the University of Bedfordshire Business School last Friday. It was fantastic to see such a wonderful group of graduates receiving their degree certificates, being celebrated by the faculty and their loved ones on a range of both general and specialist business topics, including Masters and also Doctorates. I was given the task (of not only dressing up & proud to show off my The University of Huddersfield colours from my own graduation – many moons ago !) of speaking at both ceremonies. As well as attempting a few jokes I took the opportunity to talk about the concept of ‘Metaruption’ which is a term coined by Roger Spitz, and it is also the Reinvention Academy word of the year for 2026. In summary, Metaruption is what happens when change doesn’t arrive one thing at a time but 🧨 “BANG” 🧨 all at once, it’s not just disruption but stacked, overlapping, relentless change. I linked this with the fact that when we graduate we may want / try to have a ‘perfect plan’ but in […]
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Who’s Watching Your Change
👀 If change only works when everyone is watching, it isn’t really change 👀 Most organisations don’t struggle to launch initiatives. They struggle to embed them. Over time, people become tired — not only of change itself, but of change that quietly fades once attention moves on. Behaviour doesn’t shift because habits don’t shift. And habits don’t shift without time, reinforcement and leadership consistency. Change becomes real when it starts showing up in everyday decisions — not just in programmes and communications. So that is why here at Resourceful People Group we believe that a combination of improved Emotional Intelligence and Adaptability Quotient (EQ & AQ) through using tools like Insights Discovery AND the AQai – Adaptability Assessments & Coaching sub dimensions of 🔶 GRIT, RESILIENCE, MINDSET, MENTAL FLEXIBILITY, HOPE, UNLEARNING, EMOTIONAL HEALTH and TEAM SUPPORT 🔶 (to name just a few) are so key to your success. Failing to recognize and ‘leverage’ these are often where the real challenge sits in both people and within the wider organisation. We have many case studies of making a real difference both in small & large teams, both in the UK & worldwide. Contact us to find out how we can make […]
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Employment Rights Act (ERA) – Don’t Get Bitten
Are you still thinking that the ERA is just another routine piece of regulation and not something to be too concerned about? If that’s how you are looking at it, you may be about to get bitten. The Government’s own analysis of the economic impact of the Act states ‘‘we expect the policies within the Act to impose a direct annual cost on business of around £1 billion per year.” The ERA is a generational set of changes in employment law – some 20 plus of them over the next two years – that fundamentally reshapes employment rights and poses significant challenges for your existing people management practices. Let’s highlight just a few of them and their potential impact on your business: ▶️ Entitlement to Statutory Sick Pay from day one of an absence – from April 2026 – means an increase in costs and potentially also an increase in short term absence. Are your absence management procedures fit to deal with this and understood by your line managers? ▶️ Unfair Dismissal protection after six months’ employment – from January 2027 – means removing poor hires becomes much more challenging. How reliable is your hiring process? How structured is your […]
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Consistency Under Pressure
Leadership capability is easiest to see when things are calm. What’s harder — and far more revealing — is consistency under pressure ♨️ . We regularly see capable, experienced leaders whose judgement, communication and behaviour shift noticeably when stress increases. Not because they lack skill, but because pressure exposes patterns that rarely show up in development programmes. 👀 Teams often experience this as unpredictability. Leaders often experience it as frustration with themselves and potentially creating psychologically unsafe environments and unproductive cultures. The real work isn’t about working harder. It’s about understanding how we show up under pressure — and then 🔶 UNLEARNING & RELEARNING to respond intentionally 🔶. Here are RPG we work with clients using a range of tools including AQai – Adaptability Assessments & Coaching & Insights blended with our extensive experience in manufacturing, engineering, education (further & higher), media, service sectors (to name just a few) to help our clients & their teams make valuable changes in their leadership styles, behaviour and ultimately their performance ✅ ✅ ✅. So here is a final question for you if by doing the above we could ultimately generate a real return on Investment …for example just imagine if we could […]
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It’s Not About Performance….It’s About Clarity
Many organisations don’t have a performance problem — they tend to have a clarity problem, and then the subsequent inability to implement the necessary change. Leaders are surrounded by data, opinions, dashboards and well‑intended initiatives, yet still feel unsure where to focus. Everything feels important, so energy gets spread thin and progress slows almost without anyone noticing. Clarity isn’t about certainty or perfect answers. It’s about alignment. Agreeing what genuinely matters now, making a plan and giving people permission to stop doing things that don’t add value. Without that clarity, even strong leadership teams can start to feel fragile and resist change. Decision‑making slows, confidence dips, and conversations become more cautious than they need to be. When clarity improves, momentum often follows and change can happen surprisingly quickly. As we start 2026 is it worth reflecting on a) how clear the focus really is, and b) do you have the necessary skills to make the change where you work?
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