About Leadership Toolbox
Leadership Toolbox
The Leadership Toolbox is a one stop shop for some just-in-time resources to help you in your management studies or work.
It incorporates current thinking on a topic, advice on how you might act and resources to support those actions.
We hope it will meet many of your needs for personal and team development.
We are always adding more elements and welcome any suggestions for new topics.
Our story
A team led by Dr Peter Block 
The Leadership Toolbox pools the talents of a diverse group of academics and people development professionals.
These highly qualified educators have helped develop the education and careers of hundreds of young workers from around the world.
They provide a complementary set of capabilities in learning & development to help you develop your skills as you make the transition from higher education to your first job and beyond.
Peter has significant international experience with special interests in skills policies, organisational learning & development, and people development issues.
In recent client engagements he has assisted a Hollywood major studio, a multinational manufacturer, a national broadcaster of a smaller nation state and conducted a review project for the Public Media Alliance (PMA). Until 2019 he led the international MA in Global Media Business in the UK and at the Communication University of China in Beijing for the University of Westminster.
Prior to that he managed a global business development department in the Business Consulting Services of IBM, formally PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting.
Peter began his career in broadcasting as a trainee engineer at Thames TV and went on to set up three production companies.
In academic roles he established and managed a Media Production BA and a MA degree in Media Management.
His book Managing in the Media provides a general text for the aspiring media manager.
Over his many years working in industry and during his time as an academic, Peter was frequently approached with urgent questions such as:
- ‘How do I interview someone? I’ve never done it before!’
- ‘I’m about to be interviewed, can you help?’
- ‘How should I run a meeting?’
- ‘What are the basic steps to running a project?’
Feeling like he could further help young managers and aspiring management students to develop their skills for the ever-changing workplace,
he started taking short notes – which went on to become the 5 minutes on… posts that you can read here.
But Peter soon realised that people go further by improving their overall management skill set.
After all, just surviving a situation is hardly ideal.
The growing collection of support materials needed a home, and The Leadership Toolbox was born along with the more detailed learning modules you can find on this site.
The most recent exciting development is the introduction of the one 2 one coaching support service.
What next?
5 minutes on…
Our 5 minutes on… short reads allow you to gain a quick overview of a topic before deciding whether you want to dive deeper into the subject. They’re great for when you have a few minutes spare between lectures or to skim over during your lunch break. They are short, hopefully sharp, summaries providing a subject overview/introduction. They may not answer all your questions but we hope you will find them helpful, provocative, stimulating and informative.
Dive deeper on…
If after reading one of our 5 minutes on… short reads you have an appetite to learn more, you can go on to read a related Dive deeper on…learning unit. These often require a couple of hours of your time but are well worth your investment, containing the latest thinking from leading academics and writers on management
The topics are cluster under the the themes set out below. Some topics span several themes and will appear under more than one heading.
The clustering seemed logical to us, but it may not to you so you can just jump to a topic using the main menu.
