Often, when I talk to my career coaching clients who want to progress into People, organisation, culture, and/or development roles, I get the question:

What is the difference?

While these are usually conflated and, in some cases, used interchangeably, there are some key differences.  

Thus, in this article, I want to focus on two key positions: People Development Directors and Organisational Development Directors.  While both roles focus on enhancing an organisation's capabilities, they have distinct roles and responsibilities.

While People Development Directors focus on the growth and development of individuals within the organisation, Organisational Development Directors take a more comprehensive approach, addressing the broader organisational structures, systems, and culture to ensure overall effectiveness and alignment with strategic goals. Here is a simplified breakdown of the key differences taken from what I understand them to be and some desk research on various...

Through my interaction on LinkedIn, I reconnected with a former NHS boss. She saw my work on LinkedIn doing my research and the conference that I was organising for 19 March 2022. She got in touch, and we had a chat about the persistent issues within the NHS, the development of the ICSs, and the pressures brought about by the pandemic. It has led to major recruitment, retention, and transformation challenges within the NHS and the broader health and social care sector. I shared some of the findings of my PhD research into highly skilled migrant women and my understanding of the broader workforce transformation, recruitment, and retention topics through my immersion into the various literature on organisational leadership and Human Resources Management (HRM). We also discussed why I held the conference on highly skilled migrant women and leadership, how organisations are missing the trick by recruiting workers...

Are you always being told you're not good enough? Are you being told that your goals are too big, you can't achieve them? Or maybe people just dismiss you whenever you tell them you want to do something with your life? 

I recorded the response on my podcast channel on Youtube and Itunes

Here is the rest of the transcript: 

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you're in the right place.  The Happily Imperfect Leader is any person who is willing to push through their fears, defy their stereotypes and imperfections so that they achieve that great goal that they set for themselves.

 Too many people are just sitting there in the name of waiting for the right time or the perfect moment to achieve something. That fear that they have of being Judged for their imperfections is so great; it stops them, it just stops them from moving forward or working alone.

I make a lot of mistakes; my vocabulary is not great, I can't even pronounce certain words......

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where the stress at work stresses you out so much that you take the stress home messing up the rest of your evening?

Watch my FBlive here

I recently had an interesting conversation with someone who was in and pressured situation at work; it was about managing workplace stress. Especially this time of year when there are deadlines to meet. Your boss is stressed, and that stress is trickling down to your level as a senior manager, your team is beginning to feel the stress, the environment is changing, and morale is going down.

How to do you stop that and turn things around? Here is what I learned and what I have done in such situations:

If no one is going to die, or the building is not going to collapse, don't sweat it. The best you can do is tell the person that is stressing you out that the work will be done, with the crucial tasks completed within the deadline. Say it with a smile on your face, if they are ranting at you, try to keep as...

How I Learned to Read and Write Differently.

On November 28th, 2006, I moved to England at the age of 12 with my Mother and Brother. My mum had been offered a job as a nurse in England, so my brother and I had to move with her. This was going to be my first Christmas in England, and I most definitely expected Snow as I had seen in films I watched back home in Zambia. Can you imagine my shock when I woke up on Christmas morning, and there was no snow but a whole lot of rain? Shocking! I was somewhat disappointed. Nonetheless, my first Christmas in England was amazing. The streets are decorated with beautiful lights.

‘Christmas trees everywhere and a whole lot of chocolate to munch on’.

We spent our first Christmas with Aunty B and her family, who made the experience unforgettable. Christmas was short-lived, and I was supposed to start school in January.

I was excited to start school, ready to make some friends and be a regular kid. However, nothing could have prepared me...

I'm back with day two of my alphabet challenge. The three words that I'm going for with letter B are Believe, Bravery and balance: so, what do I mean by that?

I will start with believe, so whenever you are thinking of starting a business or whenever you’re thinking of doing anything new in life you have to start with belief, believing in what you are doing, believing in yourself.

It may be a difficult road ahead, trust me it will be so much easier if you can believe that you can achieve whatever you want to do, no matter how ambitious.

 And yes by the way, make the goal ambitious and just start. So, believe in yourself believe in the capabilities that you have and where you don't know; as they say wing it until you know it. The most important thing is believing.

The second word is bravery, it takes a lot of courage and bravery to do anything that is new. A lot of people get stuck where they are. They're not happy but they just get stuck there because they don’t feel...

Featured Thought Leader Interview:

Breaking Down Barriers in a Male Dominated Water Sanitation Industry.

“Passionate about providing access to clean water and sanitation's to Zambians led me to Water Engineering”.

Mwape Chibwe Founder and Director Global Water Resources (Z) Ltd

Today's interview is with my dear friend Mwape Chibwe. She's based in Zambia. She is an Entrepreneur, she has built a business from ground up and she works in a predominantly male industry.  So today, I just want to find out a bit about where she is at, what she has gone through and her achievements. Amina Chitembo.

Amina: Can you please just introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background?

Mwape: My name is Mwape Chibwe, I live in Zambia, it is where I was born. I went into my tertiary education and did a Secretary course, which was not what I had intended to do, what I wanted to do was an Engineering career, but because of the result that I achieved at my A’levels,...

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I have been given a challenge today to say something positive from the alphabet, every day for the next 26 days as you know the alphabet has 26 letters so from A to Z, I don't know what I will say at letter x but I will give it my best shot.

So my positive words have to do with authoring and have to do with setting up your business and being positive in life as you know “miss positive here ” we  will try no matter  how hard life is we’ll try and be positive. So my first letters today obviously A, so it's Affirmation.

Affirmation is always important, you have to affirm yourself every day, life is too hard already as it is waiting for people to affirm you can be very difficult. So all I can say to you is give yourself a Affirmation every morning which means say something nice about yourself every morning.

I look in the mirror and I say, thank God I'm awake today, thank God I'm breathing today and thank god I am who I am and thank God,...

How to deal with Negative Voices and Fear

Hi everyone, it’s Amina here. Nice to talk to you again, I hope you're having a lovely time wherever you are. I had a lovely weekend and I'm sorry I've been quiet for a couple of weeks. That's because I have been training a new team member. We've been quite busy in the office trying to get everything sorted out for her to be ready for work. So now the induction is over and I'm back to recording.

Today I want to tackle an issue that I seem to get a lot of questions about. This issue is;

How do you deal with negative voices, and how do you deal with fear?

So, negative voices first, whenever you start something new there will always be people that would tell you you're crazy, there will always be people that do not believe in what you believe in and that's just a fact. Most of the times people like that, are the people that are closest to you … Those that you expect to support you and to understand what you're doing.

So, for...

Hi there, it's Amina here, thank you very much for joining me. Today I'm talking about Diverse Cultures Publishing, I want to explain a bit more about the concept of co-authoring what that means, what it entails, what's in it for you and why you should consider it.

The aim of our organisation is to encourage people that wouldn't otherwise be able to for whatever reason write 300 pages of a book on their own. And those wanting to leverage the camaraderie of having to write with other people so that they can increase their reach.

The concept of co-authoring came to me in 2010 when I first wrote my first chapter with a lady in the US called Linda Ellis Eastman. With Linda, I submitted a 15-page chapter in one of her books. I didn't even know how it was going to work because for me.

All I knew before that, was, I must think about what to write, the 300 pages I had to write, I had to find a publisher and an editor. I'm going to have to think of how it's going to make it to book.

However,...