Author Archives: Paul

Paul Wright

Bringing a broad experience of 25 years from many diverse organisations Paul’s areas of expertise are the design and delivery of highly interactive but pragmatic Brain Friendly learning experiences, drawing on lessons and synergies from NLP.

As well as the UK and Ireland Paul has worked in France, Germany, Spain, America, Mexico and India and is passionate about ensuring that he brings about a positive difference to every delegate and every organisation he works with.

Clients describe Paul as a consummate professional with a high degree of integrity who delivers on his promises.

Participants describe his sessions as learning with a punch; great fun, very interactive but always focussed on delivering the outcomes.

Paul’s other passion is his music. When not writing in his studio at home he can occasionally be found playing an old Les Paul guitar in bands around Oxfordshire.

Brain Friendly(ness) as a way of life?

In his book "Blink" Malcom Gladwell makes several references to the work of  Dr. John Gottman. Gottman is well respected for his research on relationship stability by using scientific direct observations published in peer reviewed literature. This makes him a man worth listening to. While most of his work has been around predicting whether couples are likely [...]
Posted in Reflections | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

ROI and double standards

Last time we talked about Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluation and how important it is to use more that just level one especially in today's economic climate . While I was writing that piece I found myself getting more and more annoyed and, as I worked through why, the keyboard was taking more and more punishment, the [...]
Posted in Reflections | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Evaluation is NOT hard…

... but it is essential A couple of weeks ago Ally and I spent an extremely enjoyable day with the Brain Friendly Learning Group, a UK networking group for brain friendly trainers set up by Stella Collins. In the morning we ran a session about music in the training room (there will be much more on this [...]
Posted in Practice | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

10 ways to split big groups into small groups or pairs

As trainers we are constantly looking for fresh and interesting ways to subdivide our groups into smaller groups and over the years I guess we all have our favourites. So what are yours? As a starter for 10, here are my top 10 (in no particular order!) that I have begged, borrowed, designed and stolen: A continuum of [...]
Posted in Practice | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Dale’s Cone of Learning figures debunked

Edgar Dale was a US educationist and professor of educations at Ohio State University. In 1946 he developed his most famous model, the cone of learning.Since then it has been quoted frequently, far and wide as the definitive evidence for how we retain information when delivered in various styles and mediums and has informed how to design training courses in specific ways. This is unfortunate, because the figures we associate with the model are meaningless. In this post, Paul explains why and encourages to be careful when sharing 'facts' with others.
Posted in Theory | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments