By Heather Campbell >> Watching Charlie Brooker’s 2014 Wipe (BBC2) at the end of last year, I enjoyed this short film by Adam Curtis, the controversial documentary filmmaker. In his film, Curtis suggests that politicians disempower voters by disseminating confusing and contradictory information. Whatever you think of his perspective, mistrust is certainly increased as a result of all this confusion. I find much the same in business too. Business is complex. And the communications that are shared in organisations about already complex matters often ...

By Heather Campbell >> Travelling by train today, a woman in her mid-twenties sat in the seat in front of me. Shortly after she sat down, she began to sob loudly – enough to draw the attention of the people in the carriage around her. The woman sitting beside her – who it turned out had a daughter of a similar age – asked what was wrong. Their conversation was loud enough that I could easily hear what was being said; I ...

By Heather Campbell >> Over the last few weeks I have had the good fortune to run a series of workshops in Malaysia – an enjoyable and educational experience. Enjoyable because the people I met and worked with were consistently charming, considerate and had a great sense of humour. Educational in that I learned about the culture in Malaysia and, as always, in doing so, learned so much about our own. It is, of course, only when we step outside our culture ...

By Heather Campbell >> Senior leaders have to paint a compelling vision for the future while pragmatically establishing the steps to get there. Customer Service teams must give customers personalised care and attention while still hitting strict call-time targets. Managers are expected to be tough decision-makers and also collaborative explorers. Head versus heart, masculine versus feminine, soft versus hard – getting the balance right between each is critical to business success. Recognising the importance of this – perhaps too late – RBS is now ...

By Heather Campbell >> If you, a 21st-century leader, could travel back in time around 2,500 years, and have a chat with Sophocles, he’d share with you a few lessons that are still relevant today. If your time machine wasn’t reliable enough to take you so far, you could stop in much more recent history, catching up with the Quakers in the US of the 1950s. Or you could just cast your mind back a few years, to the start of the ...

Uber, the increasingly popular taxi app, is making headlines again due to the fact that, as well as allowing passengers to rate their experience at the hands of each driver, it also allows drivers to rate their passengers. So, if you take a ride with an Uber driver, you can be rated on things such as size of tip, attitude and clarity of communication (just don’t say Melville Street when you mean Melville Place or you may be marked down!). ...