NBS Training and Coaching

28/10/2026

I still come across managers who use the feedback sandwich.

You know the one.
Say something nice.
Slip in the thing they need to improve.
Finish with something nice so nobody feels too uncomfortable.

I've heard it called a few other things over the years, none of them particularly appetising.
And I understand why people use it.
It's what they were taught.
It feels less confrontational.
And it gives the manager a bit of a script to follow.

The trouble is, it can make the message rather confusing.
The employee walks away remembering the compliments while the manager thinks they've addressed the problem.
Then three weeks later they're having exactly the same conversation.

I'd much rather see a manager explain what they've actually observed, why it matters and what needs to happen differently.
Then listen to the response.
Not a second-hand complaint.
Not a vague comment about attitude.
Something specific that can actually be discussed.

Feedback doesn't need to be brutal.
But it does need to be clear.

And if you need two compliments to disguise what you're trying to say, perhaps the conversation needs a bit more work before you have it.

John WIlliamson
NBS Training & Coaching
https://www.nbstrainingandcoaching.co.uk/

16/09/2026

I was thinking this morning about how much of my working life has involved conversations.

Sales conversations.
Management conversations.
Training rooms.
Coaching sessions.
Difficult conversations.
And quite a few conversations that started with somebody saying:

“We need some training.”

After doing this for as long as I have, I’ve become increasingly wary of that sentence.

Because sometimes they do.

But sometimes the problem isn’t training at all.

The manager knows they should tackle poor performance. They’re avoiding the conversation.

The salesperson knows they should ask another question. They get uncomfortable and start talking instead.

The recruiter knows they should keep developing existing clients. They get busy filling jobs and forget.

People often know perfectly well what they’re supposed to do.

The interesting bit is working out why they’re not doing it.

That’s probably the biggest change in how I approach training these days.

I’m much less interested in turning up with 100 slides and telling people things.

I’d rather find the bit that’s getting in the way, put people into situations where it actually shows up, and work on that.

Because knowing something and being able to do it when it matters are two very different things.

That’s the sort of work I enjoy.

Recruitment. Sales. Leadership. Communication.

Less “here’s a course”.

More “what are we actually trying to change?”

NBS Training & Coaching
Less Beige. More Brave.

https://www.nbstrainingandcoaching.co.uk/

10/09/2026

No, I wasn't in Duran Duran.

Although judging by the hair, I was clearly waiting for the call.

This was me in the 80s, around the time I was starting out in sales.

Long before LinkedIn, CRM systems, automated follow-ups and AI.

What I did have was a job that forced me to learn how to talk to people.

All sorts of people.

Different ages. Different backgrounds. Different personalities. Some easy to deal with. Some considerably less so.

I learned how to start conversations with complete strangers, listen properly, deal with objections, handle some pretty difficult customer conversations and ultimately learn how to sell.

Not from a sales methodology or a clever acronym.

Mostly by doing it, getting it wrong occasionally, adjusting and doing it again.

I didn't know I was learning "communication styles" or "behavioural skills".

I certainly wasn't thinking about sales methodology.

I was simply discovering what worked, what didn't, and how differently people responded depending on how I approached them.

Looking back, a lot of what I now teach started there.

The tools have changed enormously since this photo was taken.

People really haven't changed quite as much.

They still want to be listened to.

They still don't like being sold at.

They still respond differently to different approaches.

And difficult conversations still need to be handled well.

Forty-ish years later, I'm still working with salespeople and managers on many of those same skills.

Just with considerably less hair.

NBS Training & Coaching
Recruitment. Sales. Leadership. Behaviour.
Less Beige. More Brave.

08/09/2026

I realised today that my job has become quite difficult to explain when somebody asks, “So what sort of training do you do?”

In the last few months alone I’ve worked with recruiters on sales conversations, managers on difficult conversations and accountability, hotel teams on conflict and personal safety, and I’m currently developing work around workplace behaviour and the new employment legislation.

Which is quite a mixed bag.

But actually, the common thread is pretty simple.

Most of the time somebody knows roughly what they should do.

The difficulty is doing it when there’s another human being sitting opposite them, pushing back, getting emotional, disagreeing with them or simply not behaving as expected.

That’s the bit I enjoy working on.

Not another 147-slide PowerPoint telling people what good looks like.

Getting them to actually practise the messy bit.

Twenty-odd years into training and I still think that’s the interesting part of the job.

03/09/2026

I was thinking today about all the things I've tried over the years that haven't worked.

Things I've attempted and got wrong. Things I thought would work that didn't.
Things I really wanted to achieve and, for whatever reason, didn't.

We're very good at putting a positive spin on failure.
“FAIL means First Attempt In Learning.”

“You learn more from failure than success.”

And there's truth in that. I've learned an enormous amount from things going wrong.

But do you know what?
It still bloody hurts sometimes.

It can knock your confidence.
It can make you question whether you're good enough.
And occasionally it makes you wonder why you're bothering in the first place.

I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.
What matters, I think, is what you do next.

I've been incredibly fortunate over the years to have people around me that I've learned from. People who've challenged me, guided me, shared their experience or occasionally told me that what I was doing simply wasn't working.
I'm very grateful for them.
And I'm still learning now.

That's one of the things I enjoy about training and coaching.
Whether we're talking about management, sales, recruitment or communication, people aren't going to get everything right first time.

A new manager is going to have a conversation that doesn't go quite as planned.
A salesperson is going to completely misread a prospect.
A recruiter is going to handle an objection badly.
Someone is going to say the wrong thing.

That's why development shouldn't just be about teaching people the “right” answer.
Give them somewhere to try things.
Let them get some of it wrong. Give them useful feedback.
Have another go.
Build the confidence and capability before the situation really matters.

That's a big part of what we try to create at NBS Training & Coaching.

And I'm certainly not claiming I've finished learning either.

Although there is one decision I think I absolutely nailed first time.
Buying this Hawaiian shirt.
I'll accept no criticism.
Probably.

If you've got a team that could do with somewhere safe to practise, get things wrong and get better, that's exactly the sort of development we like doing at NBS.
And yes, I'm keeping the shirt.

NBS Training & Coaching
Recruitment | Sales | Leadership | Performance Development
Less Beige. More Brave.
https://www.nbstrainingandcoaching.co.uk/

02/09/2026

I've been sent some extraordinary briefs during my years as a trainer.

“Communication skills.”
“Management training.”
“Sales training.”
“Customer service.”

I once received a PowerPoint of around 170 slides for a one-day course.
Apparently that was the training.

The older I get, the less interested I am in the title of the course and the more interested I am in what caused somebody to ask for it.
Because:
“Our managers need communication training”
is very different from:
“Our managers are avoiding difficult performance conversations.”
Now we've got something to work with.
One describes a subject.
The other describes something happening in the business.

That distinction has probably changed the way I design training more than almost anything else.

John Williamson is professionally curious about what happens between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

Discover tailored training and coaching programs for sales, recruitment, leadership, and communication to enhance team performance and skills.

01/09/2026

A while ago, a recruitment business came to us because they wanted their consultants to become more commercially confident.

They didn't want aggressive sales training.
They had people who were good at the relationship side of recruitment, but some of them weren't as comfortable when the conversation moved into business development.

They needed to be better at asking the right questions, recognising opportunities, handling objections and having commercial conversations without suddenly sounding like they'd swallowed a sales manual.

So that's what we built the training around.
Not generic cold-calling scripts.

We used situations their consultants were actually encountering and worked on consultative questioning, client conversations, objection handling, follow-up and how to move a conversation forward while still keeping the relationship at the centre of it.

Lots of practice. Lots of discussion. And importantly, practice that actually sounded and felt like recruitment.

What I particularly liked was what happened afterwards.
The initial piece of work didn't just become a training day that disappeared into the diary.
It led to further conversations and further development work because we'd started to uncover what was really happening underneath the original request.

That's something I've become increasingly convinced about.
Sometimes a client asks for "sales training", but the useful work starts when you get underneath that label.

* What are people actually struggling with?
* Where are conversations breaking down?
* What are they avoiding?
* What can they already do?
* What needs to change back at their desk?

That's the bit I'm interested in.

Training is an intervention. Not a diagnosis.
And when you get the diagnosis right, the training becomes considerably more useful.

If you're running a recruitment team and there's something your consultants should be doing but consistently aren't, I'd be interested to hear what it is.
It isn't always a training problem. But it's usually worth finding out what the problem actually is.

John Williamson

NBS Training & Coaching
Recruitment Sales | Leadership | Performance Development
Less Beige. More Brave.

nbstrainingandcoaching.co.uk

28/08/2026

Thoughts from the coffee shop....

There’s going to be a lot of noise around the Employment Rights Act 2025 over the next few months.

New rules. New dates. Updated policies. HR briefings.

But there’s another question I think businesses need to be asking:

Are your managers actually ready to manage differently?

Because a new policy won’t suddenly make a manager better at addressing underperformance early.

It won’t make an avoided probation conversation happen.

It won’t help somebody respond appropriately when an employee says a customer has made them uncomfortable.

And it won’t improve the quality of the notes, evidence or conversations that should have been happening for the previous four months.

That’s the bit I’m interested in.

The Employment Rights Act creates the reason to look again at management practice.

But the real work is making sure managers have the confidence and practical skills to deal with situations properly when they happen.

Employment law tells an organisation what it must do.

Managers still have to do it.

John Williamson is a recruitment and leadership performance trainer, helping teams improve BD, conversion, and manager capability through practical, behaviour-focused training.
https://www.nbstrainingandcoaching.co.uk/

27/08/2026

I was reminded recently of a conversation I had with a salesperson about “eating the frog”.

If you've not come across it before, the idea is simple.
Do the thing you're most likely to avoid first.

In sales, that's rarely updating the CRM or answering emails.
It's usually the call you've been putting off.

The prospect who said “call me next month” three months ago.
The client you need to ask for a decision.
The conversation about price.
The follow-up where you're half expecting another no.
The BD calls you've somehow managed to postpone until 4pm.

We can be incredibly productive while avoiding the one thing that might actually produce a result.
And that's what I was discussing with this salesperson.

Their problem wasn't that they didn't know what to do.
They knew perfectly well.
The problem was everything else suddenly became more appealing when it was time to do it.

So sometimes the answer isn't another sales technique.
Eat the frog.

Do the uncomfortable, commercially important thing first.
Then you can update the CRM.

John Williamson
NBS Training & Coaching
Recruitment | Sales | Leadership & Management

Less Beige. More Brave.
https://www.nbstrainingandcoaching.co.uk/

26/08/2026

Interesting piece on LinkedIn News about recruiters apparently going “old school”.

As AI makes it increasingly easy to produce a beautifully written CV, perfectly tailored to a job description, some employers are apparently putting more emphasis back on conversations, referrals, networking and live assessment.
I don't think that's going backwards.
If technology gets increasingly good at making candidates look right for a job, how good are your consultants at finding out whether they actually are?
Because that's a very different skill.

It means getting beyond the polished answer. Asking another question. Probing something that doesn't quite add up. Understanding what somebody actually did rather than accepting what the CV says they did.
Exploring motivation properly.
Recognising when the candidate with the less impressive CV might actually be the stronger person.
And ultimately making a professional judgement.

There's a commercial question for recruitment agencies here too.

If a client can advertise a job and receive hundreds of polished, AI-tailored applications themselves, what exactly are they paying a recruitment fee for?
Not CV production.
Judgement.
Knowing the market. Knowing the candidate. Asking the question the application doesn't answer. Spotting inconsistencies. Testing whether someone's claimed experience has real depth.

That's where good recruiters earn their fee.

Use technology where it improves the recruitment process.
But don't outsource the very capabilities clients are paying recruiters for.
The better AI gets at presenting candidates, the better recruiters need to become at assessing them.

John Williamson
NBS Training & Coaching
Recruitment & Leadership Performance Training
Less Beige. More Brave.

LinkedIn News article that prompted this:
https://lnkd.in/eq4mQqyM

Storyline image
Recruiters turning old school

'A human approach is becoming more and more important' as AI-tailored resumes proliferate, says one recruiting firm exec.