The typical manager spends 30-50% of his or her time dealing with workplace conflict (IML Australia). This equates to around 20 hours a week (and we don’t know if it’s being handled well or not), so if conflict is inevitable, what can we do to understand it better and make it as productive as possible? […]
Counting (on) The Cost of Trust
Anne and I of recent have seen patterns where teams are under pressure to perform and deliver, often in complex, chaotic and fast-paced environments and the one thing that can make or break the cohesiveness, resilience and performance of a team is the levels of trust, for each other, for colleagues and for their boss. […]
Can I give you some Feedback?
In our many years of managing, we rarely met an employee who was not anxious about receiving feedback, especially of the ‘constructive’ kind. With advances in brain imaging technology we are learning more about how feedback is received by the brain and the degree to which it achieves the goal for which it is intended. 1 […]
Why Storytelling can be a Leader’s Secret Weapon
Before the advent of the Gutenberg press, business and trade was conducted orally. We shared stories. We then ‘progressed’ to creating rational, analytical and factual memos and reports for the communication of everything important. 600 years or so later and we are relearning what our early ancestors perfected around the campfire, that we can’t engage […]
Getting to Grips with Unconscious bias
Unconscious bias seems to be getting a lot of airplay these days in the field of diversity and inclusion. So just what is unconscious bias, can we eliminate it and if not, what can we do to mitigate it? The standard definition is that unconscious bias is a bias that we are unaware of, and […]
Exploring the Predictable Dynamics of Change
Our aim with this article is to share with you our experience combined with the latest findings from neuroscience about what we can predict about behavioural responses to change and how we can plan to minimise the perceived threat to people. Whilst we aim to keep it brief we also want it to be of […]
The Key to Building a Tribe from a Team through Social Capital
What makes a good team great? What makes one team gel and another continually end up in conflict? When pondering the dynamics of high performing teams, it can help to look at our brains and from the earliest possible perspective together with the latest findings in social science and neuroscience. We are tribal in Nature […]
Strategies for Building Certainty in Chaos and Change
Tomorrow, Saturday 10th October is World Mental Health day and only someone hiding under a rock would be unaware of the impact mental health challenges are having on business today. One of those challenges is that we have never operated in a more uncertain environment than in today’s complex and volatile working world and we […]
Gratitude in the Workplace and why it Matters
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” William Arthur Ward Today (21st September) is world gratitude day so I thought it appropriate to write a post about the role of gratitude in the workplace and why it’s one of those ‘soft’ things that’s really hard in that it’s […]
How to Foster Curiosity in Leadership
“I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted…I am only very, very curious” Albert Einstein How high does curiosity rank in your business or personal values? How do you develop the traits and attributes of curiosity in your people? Without curiosity in our organisational culture, we risk staying in our comfort zones, sticking to the […]