Hints and tips for MS Office and other applications. Contributions from our team of talented trainers.
Throughout our careers, nothing will have any greater impact on us than change. For most, we enjoy the security of routine and the known boundaries in which we operate. Let’s begin to look at the 4 steps to managing change and dealing with uncertainty in a positive way. Change can have substantial effects across so […]
How do some people influence us so easily? They seem to effortlessly sway us into an agreement. Those razor-sharp, crystal cut people skills that acknowledge our importance and make us feel so special. You might call it the what’s-in-it-for-me clause that all great marketing and sales gurus just to seem to find in each of […]
For starters… We all know the basic prep needed… Research the company, the role and the person who will interview you. Refresh your CV and make sure it fits the role. Collect your interview suit from the cleaners and do a dry run travelling to the place of the interview. And don’t forget to set […]
We all love to chat. And yet being the lead in the conversation is not what makes it engaging. Having the passion to get to know someone and build a relationship is a great skill in leadership, and underlying all that natural enthusiasm is the ability to lead a conversation and discover the other person’s […]
How to Structure Your Presentations Efficiently Once you have decided on the purpose of your presentation and identified your audience, you need to prepare the structure and content in order to go from storyboard to creating a successful talk. Structuring can take time. You can get it done efficiently so you can maximise practice time […]
Real Strategy: 3 Case Studies. Strategy confuses most people. Perhaps that’s why there are a lot of confusing articles out there in cyberspace, championing “killer” strategies that, in fact, do doing nothing more than list taglines or explain successful tactics. STL takes a look at three strategies that will demystify strategy and inspire your leadership. […]
This blog will help you to successfully handle tough questions during your presentation. How do you respond to unexpected/challenging questions? A fearful scenario You’ve prepared fully for your presentation and it’s flowing smoothly as planned, with the audience hanging on every word. Suddenly, out of the blue, someone interrupts you with a comment or question, […]
Are you getting the best out of your OneDrive for Business? With storage of more than 1TB per user, OneDrive provides a fantastic cloud service to work with your documents and images. Read these tips to learn how to maximise your use of this amazing application! Add Content Quickly You can easily create new documents […]
Emails, emails and more emails – we’re bombarded by them almost constantly! We waste so much effort in Outlook taking time to read, time to organise, time to process and time to action. Follow the quick steps below to embrace some of the fantastic features of Microsoft Outlook and learn to manage your email time […]
If you’re working from home and not using MS Teams to co-ordinate your efforts, you’re possibly not being as productive as you could be. In this article learn more about Microsoft Teams and how this super-app could save you and your team not just time, but also probably a few headaches too! 1. Improve your […]
Why use What if? Have you ever wanted to quickly demonstrate how your data changes in different scenarios? The What if parameter in Power BI is a powerful tool that allows you to do just this, by dynamically transforming your data. For example, maybe you want to know how much your profits will increase if […]
I can use What If analysis, how can I make this even better? In Part 1 we learnt how to create a simple What if parameter in Power BI. However, you will have more options for analysing your data if you create the parameter tables yourself. This lets you not only work with nonlinear incremental […]
At time we are all faced with people who are displaying anger and aggressive behaviour. It can be, at best, uncomfortable and, at worst frightening and potentially dangerous. In Ten Tips for Managing Anger and Aggressive Behaviour, we’ll look at ten things that can be done when confronted with this type of behaviour to minimise […]
What is negotiation? And when is the right time to walk away? Ideally, negotiation should be a discussion to achieve the best deal for both parties by working towards a Win-Win result and subsequently maintaining a long-term trusting relationship. However, have you ever regretted paying so much more than you intended for goods or services; […]
How to Handle Questions Confidently How do you top off a successful presentation? You need to ensure your audience goes away not only feeling informed but impressed and won over. The end of your presentation gives audience members a window to engage with you and ask questions. For you, this is an opportunity to restate […]
When it comes to bringing a team together and giving them the same ambition, goal setting can be a powerful tool to sketch out time frames, responsibilities, the how and why, as well as the mechanism to measure success. Yet it is more than just scrawling out notes with headings and getting it agreed and […]
How to Deal with Mr. Angry You know Mr Angry, don’t you? The person who doesn’t respect the needs, opinions and feelings of others. The person who never apologises for things, even when they are at fault. The person who seems to take great satisfaction in being right (and making you look bad). Often rude […]
Everyone talks about leaders needing to have a clear direction, a company vision, compelling goals don’t they – but what if these things were overrated and/or not the only answer? Here’s more – what if these sorts of leadership and management books were wrong, and something else was needed to get your team on board […]
Getting The Work Done Willingly And Well! Practical ways to motivate Motivation: the art of getting people to do what you want them to do, because they want to do it. Sounds good? Dwight D. Eisenhower certainly thought so – he said it! Let’s talk about motivation – what can a manager do to motivate […]
BUILDING CONFIDENCE AND ASSERTIVENESS AT WORK: Wikipedia describes confidence as “a state of being certain either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective.” The Latin word from which confidence derives (fidere) means “to trust”, either in oneself or someone in whom you […]
New Managers need to learn and develop certain skills if they are to be successful when leading others and to ensure they help nurture improved productivity, efficiency and performance from their team. Attending an Introduction to Management training course (part of our management training courses London) would be a useful method to up-skill new Managers […]
The ability to give and receive feedback effectively is an extremely important skill for any Manager or Leader. This article will focus on 5 different ways Managers can give more effective feedback to their staff: Ask before giving feedback Some Managers are worried about offending their subordinates when giving feedback so they procrastinate feedback conversations […]
With so much at stake in corporate development, leadership is perhaps the single greatest key in finding the correct decision and then making it count. Here are four principles to help you develop a strong leadership presence and authority. Planning – Finding all the information required can be a challenging process however the best guide […]
The flexible back-and-forth pattern of text conversations is at odds with the literal, efficient and measured approach most professionals have come to expect from business writing in the workplace. Email writing requires a bottom line, results oriented approach. Here are 4 Tips for Powerful Emails which will turbo-charge your productivity and write emails for results. […]
What is the STAR? The STAR technique is a process that helps you to respond efficiently and effectively to those tricky interview questions that ask you to reflect on your experience. It will help you to ace every interview. These types of questions will often begin, “Tell me…?”, “Describe a situation…?” or “Give me an […]
Four Key Interpersonal Skills for Better Relationships The nicest people in our lives have interpersonal skills in abundance. They are attributes that make the toughest requests reasonable, the toughest situations bearable and the scary challenges that we face seem exciting. Below we look at four of the most powerful interpersonal skills for high performing teams […]
Even with the best of intentions on both sides, negotiations can stall as we have seen in recent times with the spluttering Brexit negotiations. Sometimes there are sticking points that initially seem impossible to overcome. There are advanced strategies, however, that high performing negotiators can use to problem solve and get around these roadblocks. The […]
Counterproductive emotions can affect decision-making, performance, and profitability in an organisation. Emotional Intelligence at work means being able to build powerful and trusting relationships with colleagues whilst enjoying greater confidence and security. Using ‘Emotional Intelligence at work’ to Understand Ourselves Before we can work better with others, Emotional Intelligence requires us to look within and […]
5 Tips to “Wow” Your Audience As a presenter, your goal should be to engage your audience, keep their attention and get them to take action or agree with your point of view. You are most likely to keep the audience’s attention if you remember that you – not your props or slides – are […]
Tooltips pages can add visually powerful information to your reports and dashboards. Not only are they visually stunning, they’re also incredibly simple to implement! Follow our guide below to enhance your Power BI dashboard, and instantly reap the rewards of greater analytical power. An Example of Tooltips: The tooltips will appear when you hover over […]
Excel charts are great visual tools to show changes in data. You can build dynamic charts in Excel with a few easy steps. Below is an example of a table which can be used to build an interactive chart. The Quantity column’s values are simply entered into the cells, but the Revenue figures are the […]
We all wish we could do more with the time we had, but our inbox tends to get in the way of the productivity boost we’re craving. Here, we’re going to take a look at 10 effective email management tips that can help you save time, get productive, and even get a step closer to the […]
Office 365 has been around for a long time, but should your business start using it? The short answer is yes, particularly if you care about productivity! To embellish on this, here are 15 reasons your company needs to use Office 365, starting today: Improved Planning With the calendar requests feature, you can schedule and plan […]
Charts from a dropdown list in Excel Many people who use Excel can generate a chart or two on their spreadsheets. This is a relatively easy task to perform in Excel. These charts will either sit in data sheets or in their own sheets. Don’t you sometimes wish you had a button to click in Excel […]
What’s New in PowerPoint 2016 If you are currently using Powerpoint 2013, you will know what a big improvement it is on earlier versions, with some great new features such as the ability to insert pictures and videos directly from websites such as Bing Images and YouTube, and the Merge Shapes tool which allows you […]
The 2016 version of Office is available to preview now and this look at what’s new in Word 2016 focuses on two main features: Insights Real-time collaboration Word has been around for many years so much of its functionality is already established. New releases of Office tend to focus on expanding Excel’s repertoire – but this time the […]
Here’s what’s New in Excel 2016 With the launch of Office 2016 in the Autumn of 2015, you may be wondering about the new features in 2016 and what’s changed. With Excel at the core of many businesses, it would help to have all of the new features explained. We have compared the different versions of […]
An easy to update Gantt chart in Excel Building a Gantt chart in Excel is pretty easy. But what if you needed to update any of the tasks? This would usually mean lot’s of time consuming manual editing of cells. But there is an easier way…. Step in Excel and the ever flexible conditional formatting function! Yes […]
By Ann K. Emery With an estimated user base of 500 million people worldwide, many of us use Excel at work and personally for home budgets, projects, to-do lists, and more. It doesn’t take too much use of Excel before you reach the point of trying to express your data visually. This is where Excel charting […]
Quickly create drop down lists in Excel with automatic sorting The Drop Down list in Excel is a great automation tool. You can turn any data list into a drop down list which makes it easier to place items in cells. Drop down lists show the data in the same order in which they appear […]
Creating an Excel Dashboard – Election Special Video What is an Excel Dashboard? Dashboards are essentially reports in Excel that help you visualise and analyse complex pieces of data. In the following video we look at an example Excel dashboard to guide us through the mind boggling data being produced by the current UK general […]
The UK general election is almost upon us and it’s a tight race! It’s the most unpredictable election in memory and has already produced some lively debates and political speed-dating as potential alliances are considered. There are so many sources from which to gain the latest on likely election winners, and one such are the bookies. There are some […]
Say goodbye to copy and pasting. Connecting Excel to website data There are times when having live data in Excel can be really useful. You may need the latest currency exchange rates, monitor your stocks, track house prices, the possibilities are endless. Once you have established the data links you can refresh the data, also […]
Make sense of someone else’s workbook When you are given a workbook that has already been created it can be hard to work out which cells contain manually entered values and which cells are the result of formulas. So how do you show formulas in Excel? Below is an example workbook, at first glance it’s not easy […]
Save yourself from errors with the BODMAS rule A question we often hear is “Why do we need to put Brackets in Excel Formulas?” Some formulas that you use won’t need brackets. If you write the formula =5+2+10, It will calculate the result as 17. There were no brackets in that formula, and it still […]
How to remove duplicates from a column of data in Excel It’s not uncommon when adding or importing records that you may need to remove duplicates in Excel. Whilst filtering and deleting records to make a list of unique items is an effective solution, there is an even easier way. Simply follow these steps to remove duplicates […]
How to use SpecialCells method in Excel VBA SpecialCells in VBA is a really useful method to deploy in Excel. It returns a Range Object that only covers the type of cells you specify. You can use the SpecialCells in VBA Method to return a Range Object that only holds numbers, text, blank cells, formulae, cells with […]
What’s the difference between Count and CountA in Excel? The Count function is one of the 400 functions in Excel. Count as the name suggests, counts the number of cells selected that contain numbers. You can use the Count function to obtain the number of values within a range, rather than the total of those values. If we wanted to count the […]
Quickly and easily delete blank rows and columns in Excel It’s not uncommon to end up with blank cells or rows in an Excel worksheet. If you need to delete these to maintain accuracy, especially when calculating the average value, the quick way is to filter out all blank cells / rows and delete them […]
Refine your filter options with the Advanced Filter in Excel For most filtering of data Excel AutoFilter is perfectly adequate. Here we’ll look at some benefits for moving beyond the AutoFilter by using the advanced filter in Excel. A Recap of AutoFilter Benefits For ease of use, it’s hard to beat the Excel AutoFilter feature. Just click […]