Blog - TA Barker Associates

Mastering the Art of Managing Your Manager: Building a Productive Relationship

Leave a Comment / Tracy-Anne / 26th July 2023

Introduction: In the business world, we have become accustomed to receiving guidance and direction from our managers. However, another skill, often lesser-known but important nonetheless is the ability to manage up. That is manage your manager. At first glance, it might sound counterintuitive at first, but cultivating a positive and collaborative relationship with them can […]

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Using technology to aid a Learning Culture

Leave a Comment / Tracy-Anne / 24th April 2023

How can we engage more with learning and create a learning culture for the ‘whole’ organisation? This was a question posed by a HR Director I met with recently. Along with the advice much of which is included below, I thought it would be a good blog article for you all. The advancement of technology

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Help your team to help themselves

Leave a Comment / Tracy-Anne / 5th January 2023

How to create a solution-focused culture is a key topic for managers. When business pressures increase, stress and anxiety can increase dramatically. As leaders and managers, we know that one of our responsibilities is to solve problems and help our team to solve problems, But, managers regularly tell me they feel like they spend

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Building Rapport

Leave a Comment / Tracy-Anne / 25th August 2022

Don’t force it, keep working on it! I want to share this topic today, to help and guide you in building rapport. It was something I was thinking about after I met up with a friend for coffee recently. We started out as work colleagues but soon became good friends and maintained our relationship, long

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Stress at work

Leave a Comment / Tracy-Anne / 22nd June 2022

By guest contributor – Jody Woodbridge Image courtesy of: Helen Lopes Pexels.com According to the CIPD Health and wellbeing at work 2022 survey report, ‘stress continues to be one of the main causes of short- and long-term absence. With workloads, Covid -related anxiety (such as fear of contagion), non-work factors such as family, relationships, personal

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It is pretty nerve-wracking!!

Leave a Comment / Tracy-Anne / 25th March 2022

Planning, Preparation and Patience are key Difficult conversations or conversations that are difficult, require thought, care and attention. This was a topic on a recent webinar delivered by Tracy-Anne. In 1999 Douglas Stone published a book on this subject and a phrase we like is: “Difficult conversations are almost, never about getting the facts right.

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The Hidden Team Members

2 Comments / Tracy-Anne / 17th February 2022

“Understanding their contribution is paramount” This was a response a good friend and colleague Gill McKay. She said on a post recently in response to a question I posed about encouraging team members, enabling and supporting them. It is certainly no good banging the desk, demanding results, or shouting. These are all tactics that will

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The Boss lady X Factor

Leave a Comment / Tracy-Anne / 7th November 2021

Earlier this year a colleague shared the really interesting ‘McKinsey Podcast’. In it Tera Allas, shared her research on the impact of the relationship with our boss, the satisfaction on work and life in general. Thinking about the message logically, it should come as no surprise. The research says that more than 70 % of

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Investing in Training and Development.

Leave a Comment / Tracy-Anne / 24th August 2021

Updated 27th July 2023 There continues to be a lot of social media chatter about the expectations of employer training programmes. In my experience, employer training is usually led by the job role you are performing. Ensuring that you have the skills and knowledge to remain current and up to date in your role. Often

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Achieving High Performance

Leave a Comment / Tracy-Anne / 16th August 2021

Updated 27th July 2023 What is it and how can you get it right? What do we mean by Achieving High performance? The definition of high performance is “producing results much better than expected” or being able to operate to a high standard” Most of us would probably say that we are always striving to achieve

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