Positively booming: Firms are increasingly turning to self-help gurus for motivational tips

VOLCANIC ash shuts down European airspace, stranding passengers across the globe, and Iceland warns there could be more to come. The UK's economy has only shakily recovered from the worst economic crisis in living memory and unemployment continues to rise.

Add the risk of terrorism, global warming, political upheaval and everyone, according to Scotland's business guru Jack Black, is stalked by fear – and it is not doing any of us, or the economy, one bit of good.

"What everybody is wanting is that people should become increasingly flexible, and they must be more innovative and creative. They have got to collaborate and all the time they have to do much more – but in the background there is fear of stuff like terrorism, global catastrophe and economic crisis," says Black.

Another guru, Dr David Fraser, thinks if there was ever a time people needed a confidence boost, it is now.

"Business is difficult, and it is getting difficult to find new customers. People are scared they will lose their job or their business will go down, and they realise they need to raise their game," he says. Fear that the UK is losing ground to emerging markets in China and India is also a cause for worry. "They work harder. They want what we've got. We need to get better at what we do," he says.

The antidote, if you listen to the growing number of motivational gurus, is accentuate the positive, using a range of techniques that help people overcome personal and operational problems that prevent them from working effectively. If the message is simple, the practice is not – but this can be provided in a host of seminars, stage shows, books, CD-Roms and specialist services. And the rising number of gurus purporting to sell the message shows that people – and businesses – are buying it.

"We have never been busier," says William Holden, chairman of Sewells, which is "enabling positive change", employs 30 and boasts a client roster of some of the biggest companies in the UK, including Shell, Kellogg's and Barclays Bank.

As in any growth industry, competition is getting fierce. In Scotland, Black is arguably the incumbent "guru". He set up his firm, Mindstore, 24 years ago. Black says when he started, most people he met were sceptical about his ideas that changing attitudes could change lives. Now, following the increasing familiarity in the UK of American-flavoured theories about the effects of positivity, his message is more widely accepted and more people are attempting to target the Scottish corporates in the market for some motivation.

Fraser, a management consultant and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) specialist, has just published a new book, Relationships Made Easy. He calls it the Scottish version of the self-help classic How To Win Friends And Influence People, and argues that improving relationships with colleagues and clients can lead to improved business.

In Glasgow, Stevie Kidd, chief executive of logistics and training firm KDS, is planning a seminar in September, where he promises to "share his fortune-making secrets" with a corporate market audience. It's a move upmarket for Kidd, who has been applying motivational techniques with some success in his work training the long-term unemployed in Paisley. Using NLP, Kidd claims his four-week courses have enabled hundreds to land jobs in healthcare, logistics and food manufacturing.

Ideas promoted by business gurus are not new. They are mainly American, and have taken longer to translate to the more reticent and, as Fraser argues, less confident Scots and Britons. Holden, a trained geologist, began his career as a motivational specialist while director of a large multi-national insurance firm. He says he imported and translated American motivational techniques for a European audience.

The US has a much longer history of what at the turn of the 20th century was called "new thought". Napoleon Hill wrote what is often referred to as the first motivational bestseller, Think And Grow Rich!, published in 1937, just as the US was beginning to emerge from the Great Depression.

The timing of Hill's successful book and the emergence of the latest batch of positive-thinking gurus in the UK may be no coincidence. But cynics point out that often the most effective way to "think and grow rich" is to write a book promising to make people wealthy and sell millions of copies. Not all followers of NLP and the like become teachers or gurus, but it seems to be an occupational hazard. Kidd initially launched a logistics and delivery business before aiming to become a 150-a-ticket motivational guru. Fraser has shows like Black's – for 800 at the SECC on 15 May – in his sights. "That is what I am working on," he admits.

But what do these techniques do, and are they effective? Holden argues that his techniques involve "fundamental principles of human behaviour" that can be encapsulated in an old proverb: "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." But he also says changing the way people think cannot happen overnight.

"How do you get 140,000 people in your organisation to change? The answer is one at a time," says Holden. "They expect you to throw pixie dust over 140,000 people, but it doesn't work like that."

But he does think that creating a workforce that is engaged, willing and positive as opposed to demoralised and stressed can create an edge in corporate competition.

Holden insists part of the "magic of what we do is to connect personal values with corporate values"."We agree key outcomes – do you want ROI? Sales? Higher customer satisfaction? Before we embark on any work with clients we agree criteria. And we meet them or surpass them," he claims.

But Black dismisses the need to deliver "key performance indicators" or even do a lot of marketing. Much of his business comes from word of mouth, as people who took his course years ago move into senior roles in human resources or management. Recruitment works this way too. Black, whose Mindstore operates franchises in Germany and Switzerland, is currently recruiting a new chief executive. He says now is a good time to recruitgood people who, having been made redundant, want to try something new. One candidate he has in mind is, of course, a former Mindstore customer.

For Holden, it is often as simple as ensuring everyone in a company knows what they have to do. He says firms, particularly those that are restructuring and downsizing, find it easy to invest in new, more efficient systems but fail to bring their staff with them.

"What a lot of businesses find is they have a new strategy but it is not happening. They come to us to rewire people," says Holden.

"When you ask people at the top what their vision and strategy for the company is, of a board of 12 you will often get three who can tell you. Then you ask 150 people further down the line and you will get 150 different answers. If you give managers the leadership skills to articulate that, you get people along on the journey – they need to know where they are going."