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What’s the intent of your question?

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As a child growing up I was one of those very annoying kids who asked questions all the time. The question often started with why. ‘Why this?’, ‘Why now?’, ‘Why do I need to..?”, and the list could go on. In some cases, the question was based on natural curiosity. At other times, the question […]

How to not let remote working kill your team’s culture

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Working from your home office, the local café, or wherever you choose. There’s no doubt that flexible working is a big plus. With the average Australian commuting more than an hour a day to get to work, cutting the need to travel to work can shave hours off your working day. Not to mention the […]

Is your learning mantra just rhetoric?

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There are hundreds of quotes and sayings about the importance and value of learning. We hear phrases like learning culture, fail fast, and learn your way ahead, as well as processes such as agile that are based on a learning mantra. It can be easy to talk about the importance of learning, but are you […]

What’s the story you’re telling yourself?

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We frequently hear and read rules and guidelines about what we should or shouldn’t do. We’re told to drink eight glasses of water a day, get so many hours of sunshine and sleep a day, and so on. Interestingly, many of these rules for living aren’t based on substantive evidence. For example, the concept of […]

How are you mastering your tyrannies of progress?

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Life is never a smooth straight line. There’s always ups and downs, which means days when you succeed and days when you don’t. What sets a person up for continued success is what they do on the days when things don’t go according to plan. Newly crowned World Number 1 tennis champion, Ash Barty, is […]

Three steps to get back in the game

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With retirement ages rising and longer life spans you are likely to move in and out of the workforce more frequently and to find yourself at some stage in your career needing to get back into the game. It could be because of time taken out of the workforce for child rearing, illness, lifestyle reasons, […]

What is your leadership promise?

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Good leaders. Bad leaders. Throughout your working life you will no doubt come across both. It’s rare that a person wakes up each morning with the intent of being a bad leader. Most people aim to do their best, but they are hampered by a lack of awareness, environmental factors and pressures that don’t bring […]

Which frame are you choosing?

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There is a famous Native American story, which goes like this… One evening, an old Cherokee tells his grandson that inside all people a battle goes on between two wolves. One wolf is negativity: anger, sadness, stress, contempt, disgust, fear, embarrassment, guilt, shame and hate. The other is positivity: joy, gratitude, serenity, hope, pride, amusement, […]

What to do when you are blindsided by change

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You don’t see it coming. The new boss; your role being made redundant; your project being cancelled; a major workplace change; or some other form of change that is unexpected. Change can be hard, and it’s even harder when you feel blindsided by it. You are going along quite happy and contented and aren’t expecting […]

What’s your risk appetite for career change?

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Did you know that those entering the workforce now are likely to have at least 17 different employers, and five different careers during their lifetime? Wow. Sounds exhausting. Career change is inevitable for all of us. But when you’re tired and over your current career, it can seem too hard to change careers. You absolutely […]

Are you a taker, faker or maker?

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Throughout your career you will come across people who are easy to work and those less so. Those who will enable your progress, and those who will hinder it. People who will inspire you, and those who will drag you down. It is often when you experience unexpected career changes or challenges at work that […]

Have you stopped listening yet?

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As the world and organisations become more complex, the need for dialogue, understanding and the willingness to check your assumptions and listen to points of view you disagree with becomes even more important. A case in point. In November last year, there was controversy in the Australian Senate when a One Nation motion invoking the […]

Want impact? Be kind even when it’s hard

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We all experience those situations where someone does something unreasonable, unfair or just downright mean, and our immediate reaction may be to fight back or retaliate in some way. In many cases, a better response is to respond with kindness. Recently, one of my team members received an unnecessarily narky email from someone. Rather than […]

How to survive a horrible boss

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Hollywood has made an industry creating movies and TV shows that portray a horrible boss. Think Miranda Priestly, Gordon Gekko, Katharine Parker and Montgomery Burns to name a few. Whilst the reality may not be as extreme as what’s portrayed on the silver screen, sadly many people find themselves working for people they don’t like […]

Six ways to find more joy at work

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The alarm goes off or your iphone pings to signal the start of the working day. Do you jump out of bed excited or roll over and wish you didn’t have to go to work? For many people it’s the latter. It’s unrealistic to believe it’s possible to love every minute of your working day. […]

Are you too quick to judge?

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When we meet someone for the first time, we very quickly make an assessment as to whether we like them, trust them, want to work with them or want to do business with them. This assessment is made on a raft of factors. Many of which are quite superficial. It might be a glance, their […]

Who is making up your mind for you?

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Consider this scenario… You’ve just been appointed to a new leadership position and you are excited about the opportunity, looking forward to meeting the new team and relishing the chance to demonstrate your value by making changes and getting progress underway. At this point, there’s one unexpected thing that can derail your progress, which may […]

Are you being too nice?

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When you think of someone who is nice what characteristics spring to mind? Perhaps it’s someone who is helpful, kind, generous and thoughtful. They are usually positive traits. However, as a leader if you are always seeking to be nice it can cause problems, particularly if the motivating drive behind your ‘niceness’ is a desire […]

Why your discomfort isn’t a reason to not say something

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There are times in life when we shy away from saying what needs to be said because we are putting our discomfort ahead of the needs of the other person. When someone around us – a work colleague, friend or acquaintance – experiences something unexpectedly bad we often don’t know how to react. They may […]

Are you visible enough?

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Meetings, meetings and more meetings are a constant feature of the modern organisation, providing a challenge for leaders as to how and where they spend their time. It can be really easy to have every workday filled with back to back meetings, and little time for interaction with your team. You become the invisible leader. […]