Monthly articles on career success, leadership and productivity
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Do you perceive conflict where there is none?
It’s easy to get stuck in our own story, perceiving conflict when none exists. Even when we try to keep a professional lid on our behaviour, our subconscious mind is still tick, tick, ticking, often making irrational guesstimates, and reacting to others from lopsided...
Are you a Shoveller or a Shifter?
Pop tarts don’t benefit us in any way, although I'm sure they taste great. There is a work equivalent of pop tarts: low value tasks with no benefit, involving extra layers of touch points and bureaucracy. Is your diary...
How to support an upset colleague
Hi Zena, Members of my team have been shouted at by angry customers recently. It’s nothing they’ve done wrong; these people just seem to think they can take out their bad mood on us. We are well trained,...
How to blow the doors off 2025
What will you do differently next year? I was taught that it is trite to start an article with ‘in these volatile, unpredictable and challenging times,’ but in this case, I’ll make an exception. All we can control is where we focus our time and energy, and our...
The thirty stage interview process and other mind-numbing bureaucracy
Senior candidates at one global tech company have to undergo a thirty stage process before a hiring decision is made. This is a classic example of productivity drag: the sludge in the system that gets in the way of getting things done. It's what I...
Tech firms are cancelling meetings and you should too
Last year Shopify cancelled all meetings with more than two people. Their workforce of over 11,600 employees was fully remote. 12,000 calendar events were deleted at one stroke. Wednesdays became totally meeting-free. In research shared...
How to spot a hopeless manager
These characteristics were identified at a highly entertaining brainstorm. It’s not so entertaining if you are working for one of these people and relying on them for your career development. They see 'people stuff' as an annoying distraction. Enlighten them. Tell...
Are you burnt out and in need of a holiday?
Burnout is defined as a ‘state of vital exhaustion’. You feel like you have run a marathon in a wet fur coat. The demands of work, which sometimes seem unreasonable, are compounded by long sedentary days spent in front of screens. Here’s some...
Management 101: everything you need to know about being a manager
It's not easy to juggle your own priorities with managing other people. Are you an accidental manager: someone who has been given a team to manage without being shown how to do it? Are you squandering precious time checking that your team's work meets...
Have mental health days gone too far?
I’ve been running two leadership programmes recently and the topic of mental health days has come up in both. Participants said that people in their teams routinely take days off when they felt stressed or overwhelmed. The pandemic normalised...
DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender)
DARVO (Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender) is a form of manipulation used by bullies to deflect responsibility onto the person they have abused. Deny – The person accused of the abusive behaviour denies it, throwing doubt on the other person’s account of the...
Why is your colleague so lazy?
Help! I’ve got a lazy colleague who doesn’t pull his weight. The only deadline he’s interested in is 5.30, when he’s out the door, leaving the rest of us to finish the work. He looks busy and is on Teams all day, but he doesn’t do much. This was...