Workplace

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Is Your Team Made Up of Rockstars or Superstars?

Reading Time: 3 minutes I love the distinction that Kim Scott makes in her book ‘Radical Candor‘ [non-affiliate link] between rockstars and superstars. And I think it has huge implications for how we lead, manage, and shape teams in our workplaces. Rockstars vs Superstars – the definitions 🌟 Rockstar: a solid, stable performer on a gradual growth trajectory, or …

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Podcast Appearance: How to Use Your Genius Strengths to Do More of What You Love

Reading Time: 18 minutes My friend Karl Craig-West hosted me on his podcast to talk about how to use your Genius strengths to do more of what you love. We talk about how you can figure out and use your Genius strengths, how to spot and collaborate with other people’s strengths, and how to use your unique strengths to …

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How To Get Off The Hedonic Treadmill

Reading Time: 6 minutes Every New Year people hit the gym and jump on a treadmill to undo their Christmas excesses without understanding the real issue: getting stuck on the hedonic treadmill.  Thankfully, once we become aware of how the hedonic treadmill operates, we can implement strategies to minimise its impact, or even help us jump off it. What …

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How Can We Deal With “Wicked Problems”?

Reading Time: 2 minutes I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the concept of “wicked problems”. More and more, we’re facing complex and challenging issues as individuals, partners, parents, work teams and as a society. So what should we do when we’re faced with a problem that doesn’t have a simple solution? Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as finding …

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The Best and Wisest Piece of Advice I Ever Received

Reading Time: 5 minutes Back in my early 20s, I was given a piece of advice, and told that it works in every situation that humans face.  I initially couldn’t (or rather, wouldn’t!) accept the idea that it could apply in every context. And I tried really hard to imagine a situation in which it wouldn’t work… but even …

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A diagram of the 5 principles of Appreciative Inquiry

The Link Between Appreciative Inquiry and Strengths

Reading Time: 4 minutes Appreciative Inquiry is a method for solving problems and implementing change by focusing on the positive. It emerged from the work of David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva in the late 1980s, and has since been used by businesses, teams and organisations around the world. The Ai (1) approach is perfectly aligned with the strengths-led approach, …

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Kindness: a better business strategy

Reading Time: 3 minutes Kindness. It’s a scorned, if not outright rejected concept in business – it’s too soft, too weak. We can’t be kind, because to be in business is to be tough, competitive, strong. Logic and rationality rule the roost. We don’t do feelings or soft, fluffy stuff. We’re here to do the serious stuff of business; …

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Why we need to ditch certainty and embrace uncertainty

Reading Time: 8 minutes Certainty is highly prized; so much of what we do and say revolves around creating certainty for ourselves, or projecting an aura of certainty for others to see. We avoid and even despise uncertainty. Part of this is because our brains are wired to prefer certainty. The problem is not uncertainty itself, but our unfamiliarity …

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Work-life balance or work-life harmony?

Reading Time: 8 minutes So much has been written about work-life balance, but there are a number of problems with the concept. Work-life harmony offers a framework that acknowledges there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Definitions Before we go any further, let’s look at some definitions: Balance Balance requires us to know the relative “weight” or value of each item. …

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