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Human Skills for a World That Won’t Sit Still
Let’s face it, the world of work isn’t what it used to be. Change is constant – from the surge of AI to shifting political landscapes, economic pressures, and organisational restructures… the list goes on and on. And yet, amidst the uncertainty, some individuals and teams are adapting. They’re staying grounded and moving forward with…
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Breaking Barriers for Women in Leadership
Supporting Women from Middle Management into Senior Leadership Roles For many women, the journey from middle management to senior leadership feels like a labyrinth. It’s not through lack of ambition, talent, or drive. It’s about navigating the invisible barriers – systems, practices, and biases that often go unnoticed but have a profound impact on progression.…
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How to Spot and Develop Your Workplace Influencers
By Mike Pearson Every organisation has them – you know, the ones that people naturally gravitate towards. They often set the tone in meetings, ease tension during difficult conversations, and seem to know exactly what’s happening across the business. And yet, they rarely appear on an organisational chart. These are your workplace influencers. Influence isn’t…
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Balancing Brains and Heart in Modern Organisations
By Mike Pearson There’s no doubt that skills-based organisations are on the rise. The shift is clear – businesses are moving away from traditional roles and job titles and instead focusing on the specific skills people bring to the table. It’s an approach that promises agility, innovation, and a competitive edge. But as technical skills…
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Human Sustainability: The Key to Thriving in a Rapidly Changing World
By Mike Pearson We’re living in an age of unprecedented change. Technology is evolving at lightning speed, workplaces are becoming more flexible, and expectations are higher than ever. In the midst of all this, one thing remains constant: people. And if we want our organisations to thrive in the future, we must focus on something…
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Collective Imagination: The Human Advantage in a World of AI
When we think about the future of work, it’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of artificial intelligence and automation. We constantly hear how machines are going to do this faster, and that smarter, and generally more efficiently than us humans ever could. And while there’s some truth to that, there’s one thing…
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What Does It Mean To Be Human?
By Dr Kear Brain, Chartered Clinical Psychologist & Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) To be human is to suffer, to face mortality and the truth of impermanence. To be human is to breathe and grieve and love. As humans we have an innate capacity for connection and a fundamental need for belonging – to find our…
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The Synergy of Souls and Circuits: Winning with AI
As we stand on the cusp of an AI revolution, it’s becoming increasingly clear that artificial intelligence is not just reshaping the workplace but redefining the very essence of our professional and personal lives. However, as with any transformative force, there will be winners and losers (and I don’t mean like a scene from Terminator).…
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Leveraging Election Year Challenges to Enhance Workplace Trust and Inclusion
As 2024 unfolds, we’re entering what many are calling the biggest election year in history. With over 60 countries holding elections and more than 3 billion people expected to vote, the political climate is bound to spill into workplaces around the globe. While some may see this as a distraction, forward-thinking organisations can seize this…
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Putting People First: The Essential Strategy for Success
With the workplace continuing to evolve at a rapid pace, a fundamental question arises: Are companies truly embracing a people-first approach, and what does it really mean? In today’s tech-driven world, job-specific skills have long been the focus of recruitment and professional development efforts. However, a notable shift is underway, placing increasing emphasis on skills…
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Shifting Sands, Solid Foundation: HR’s Blueprint for Change Resilience
By Mike Pearson In the throes of the modern workplace, where change is the only constant and burnout feels like an ever-present spectre, Human Resources finds itself at the forefront of a transformative movement. A crucial aspect of this transformation lies not only in making pivotal decisions for change but also in meticulously considering the…
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Start a ‘Ta-Da’ List Instead of a ‘To-Do’ List
Ever experienced that familiar end-of-day frustration when you glance at your to-do list only to find it has mysteriously multiplied? The struggle to feel a genuine sense of accomplishment in your workday becomes even more challenging. Traditional to-do lists, a hallmark of many people’s productivity practices, can quickly transform from helpful tools to overwhelming burdens.…
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Why for many, psychological safety isn’t working and what to do about it
In the dynamic landscape of today’s workplace, fostering a culture that encourages both psychological safety and psychological bravery is essential for performance and wellbeing. Organisations that help their leaders create this sense of belonging which empowers their people to share ideas, speak up, give feedback, and challenge the status quo, will innovate, and adapt to…
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Why 2024 should be the year we stop saying ‘Human Resources’
By Katie Jacobs For all the value it delivers to organisations, is there a more poorly named function than HR? In an era where people crave more than ever to be seen and treated as individuals, to describe them as merely ‘Resources’, working to maximise the fortunes of the company, can leave a bad taste.…
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Why human leadership is good for people and the planet
By Katie Jacobs From extreme weather events to the cost-of-living crisis, the case for business leaders to take environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues seriously has never been clearer. But with so many competing priorities on the table – global economic and political instability for one – it can be tempting to let ESG slip…
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How human leaders create more inclusive cultures
By Katie Jacobs Wherever you live and work in the world, it’s likely the society around you is becoming more diverse, driven by factors like globalisation, immigration and the increasing accessibility of travel. But while our communities and workplaces may be becoming more diverse, that doesn’t automatically play out into greater levels of inclusion. People…
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Embracing change and challenge: Building a growth mindset
By Katie Jacobs Without meaning to get anyone reading this too depressed, there’s a lot going on in the world right now that can make it hard to remain mentally strong. Financial insecurities for many, the destablishing speed to technological change (will I be replaced by a robot?), and a barrage of worrying headlines, from…
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The biggest impact on your people’s wellbeing? It’s you…
By Katie Jacobs We’ve all heard the adage ‘people don’t leave organisations; they leave managers’. It’s a bit of a cliche, but it’s nonetheless true. Individual leaders and managers have a huge impact on people’s wellbeing. In fact, according to a recent study of workers across 10 countries by The Workforce Institute at UKG, managers…
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Protecting wellbeing in the public sector and blue light services
By Katie Jacobs Those who choose to work in the public sector are often driven by a strong sense of purpose and a desire to help others. But while having purpose and meaning is linked to wellbeing and positive emotions, those who spend their lives looking after others can sometimes neglect to show themselves the…
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Banking in the age of uncertainty: how can human leaders make a difference?
By Richard Nicholson In the ever-changing world of banking, leaders have a crucial role to play. By prioritising their teams and fostering a people-first culture, they can drive productivity and help navigate uncertainty. But can it really be that easy? We all know the challenges faced by leaders are plentiful: reducing costs, preparing for long-term…
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Five ways to balance performance and wellbeing
By Katie Jacobs It would be hard to find an organisation today that doesn’t at least ‘talk the talk’ on the importance of wellbeing. After all, there’s no shortage of evidence that wellbeing IS a business issue. Take research from Deloitte, for instance, that found for every £1 employers invest in supporting their people’s mental…
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Creating the conditions for inclusive conversations
By Katie Jacobs What do leaders need to focus on to succeed in today’s challenging work environment? According to 90% of HR leaders surveyed by Gartner, it’s not finances, strategy or operational excellence – although we aren’t for a moment suggesting you completely forget about these. It’s the more human aspects of leadership that make…
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Keep your ‘human’ switched on throughout the employee life cycle
By Emily Murton I’m sure most of you have heard of the ‘employee life cycle’, otherwise known as the ELC. Every interaction, every touch point, and every stage of this cycle contributes to an employee’s perception of the organisation, and as leaders, we must consider how to humanise each stage to ensure continued motivation, performance…
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The future of leadership? It’s human
Are human skills becoming obsolete? With the increasing pace of technological advancement through AI tools such as ChatGPT, it’s not an outlandish question to ask. AI can now write essays on almost any topic, unpack complex ideas, solve tricky maths problems… and even construct jokes (admittedly, not very good ones). Despite these innovations, many of…
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Finding team flow: It’s all about positive human connection
How much time do you spend online? If you’re the average ‘global internet user’, then it’s almost seven hours per day, according to 2022 research. And for people who spend the majority of their working days looking at a screen, that might even seem like a conservative estimate. While technology is undoubtedly a force for…
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The three conditions that create TeamFlow
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” That quote from American businessman Henry Ford might be almost 100 years old, but it remains as relevant today, if not even more so. With many of us having settled into a hybrid way of working – according to Accenture’s 2021 Future of…
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The secret to high-performing teams: it’s flow
Here’s a little nudge to shake up how you think about developing and investing in some very important people: your team. Traditional team building and development approaches tend to be based on a deficit model (focusing on what’s lacking), strictly hierarchical and with a belief that creating high-performing individuals is what will add up to…
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Ten micro-actions to boost your wellbeing
At the start of a new year, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by messages around creating a ‘new you’. While aiming to make positive changes to our lives is not in itself a negative, the fact is that many of us set unrealistic goals, setting ourselves up to fail. We try to achieve too much,…
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A guide to inclusive cultures
By Renay Lloyd Integrating strengths-based processes into talent management systems can help companies manage biases and drive innovation and inclusion. At Bailey & French, we’re seeing more of our clients across the public and private sectors wanting to allocate more time, resources, and budget, to building inclusive cultures – and rightly so! Diverse and inclusive…
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Why now is the time to priortise your own wellbeing
How are you? It’s a question so many of us brush off with a simple ‘fine’. But with the year fast coming to a close, a period where many of us can feel burned out, let’s take the time to consider how we really are, by creating the space to focus on our own wellbeing.…
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Building purpose-led leaders and organisations
Organisations are not islands in society. The decisions leaders make and the behaviours people display can have profound impacts. Picture a stone being dropped into a calm pool, causing a ripple effect that grows ever larger: this is the effect a company can have within its community. Responsible businesses and purpose-led leaders recognise this and…
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Creating cultures of inclusive leadership
When it comes to creating inclusive organisations, leadership really matters. According to 2020 research published in the Harvard Business Review, what leaders say and do makes up to a 70% difference as to whether someone reports feeling included at work. And individuals that feel included are more engaged, motivated and productive – enabling people to…
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The real cost of not engaging with your people
By Oriana Knopf The great thing about the topic of employee disengagement gaining traction again – most recently rebranded as ‘quiet quitting’ – is that it puts the focus back on the support that employees and leaders really want – and need. In 2013, Gallup estimated that employees who are actively disengaged cost the US…
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Finding flow in a hybrid world
Work is a thing you do, not a place you go. That phrase has become more meaningful to many of us over the past couple of years, as those with location-agnostic roles (jobs that can be done from anywhere with a decent Wi-Fi connection) have moved from office-based working to home-working… and back again. Most…
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The power of being yourself at work
Do you feel like you can be yourself at work? Considering that over the course of our lifetime, the average person spends 84,365 hours working, it’s an important question to ponder. If you’re unable to show up as your authentic self, that’s 9.6 years you spend pretending to be someone you’re not. Not only is…
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How to face the future with confidence
If there’s one thing many of us have been in short supply of over the last couple of years, it’s confidence. The world we live in has been so volatile and so uncertain – a pandemic, a war on European soil, an unstable British government and now a probable looming recession – that looking to…
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Should I stay or should I go now?
By Anthony Fitton So, the great resignation continues… and with it the great regret – with many returning to old roles and others moving on too quickly. Then there are those who remain but are feeling a bit stuck. Either way, there’s a big cost to businesses: recruitment and onboarding, loss of productivity and of…
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How a focus on human strengths can boost productivity
In the UK we work hard… very hard. According to a study by the TUC, we work the longest hours in Europe: 42 hours per week compared to Germany’s 40 hours, France’s 39 and Denmark’s 37.7. That all adds up to two extra weeks of work a year. But despite logging that additional time, we…
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What does human leadership really look like?
By Holly Holm-Powell “The shift from survive to thrive depends on an organisation becoming, and remaining, distinctly human at its core. This isn’t just a different way of thinking and acting. It’s a different way of being.”Deloitte, 2021 Over the past couple of years, our leaders and managers have really had to step up and…
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Why you can’t have performance without wellbeing
For the last two years, we have been living through a health crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has brought home to many of us just how fragile and precious our physical health – and the health of our loved ones – is. It has also taken its toll on our mental health, whether through anxiety about…
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Human Connection
Due to the pandemic, almost everyone has had to adapt to a new way of working. This presents significant challenges for us as individuals, teams and organisations. Working remotely can have it’s benefits, but also risks the loss of human connection and lack of opportunity to build high-quality relationships. It’s important for us to consider…
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The power of coaching for our wellbeing
What is wellbeing coaching? There are many different forms of coaching available, either through work or in our personal lives. This incudes executive, business, life, career and group coaching. You may be familiar with some if not all of these, and you may have experienced them personally. Wellbeing coaching is also one of the options…
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Mental Health Awareness Week: What can we do to support our mental health as we continue to navigate the pandemic?
What comes to mind when you think about the mental health impact of COVID-19? Likely, you will reflect on the negative impact that the pandemic has had on the wellbeing of millions, if not billions, of people around the world. This is only natural given our negativity bias as human beings, and although it’s important…
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Humanising the Return to Work
As we slowly emerge from lockdown, it’s important to explore how we can support people in their return to a hybrid human world of work. Currently 9 in 10 leaders across Western Europe believe hybrid working is here to stay (Microsoft). At the same time, 45% of teams report feeling less connected during COVID and…
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What can we do to help people flourish and thrive?
As we start to look ahead, beyond the pandemic What comes to mind when you think about the wellbeing impact of COVID-19? Likely, you will reflect on the negative impact that the pandemic has had on the wellbeing of millions, if not billions, of people around the world. This is only natural given our negative…
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Other Awareness to Become Stewards
Once we have spent time developing our self awareness, this is a great platform to fully understand others around us at work and beyond. Stewardship is a concept that Peter Block wrote eloquently about: it means giving people at the bottom and the boundaries of the organisation choice over how to serve a customer, a…
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Self Awareness to Develop Authenticity
We need to listen to, guide and empower people as human beings Emotional intelligence has been correlated with great leadership in a large body of research over the last 20 plus years. There are many ways we can develop our emotional intelligence and several models have been developed to explain what it is. We are…
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5 Tips for Team Resilience & Performance
Why is team resilience such an important topic at the moment? Studies have shown that there have been major rises in anxiety and depression since the start of COVID-19. This coupled with the impact on the economy, many people still furloughed, rise in unemployment, it’s becoming clear that mental health is going to be a…
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Getting into Flow with Respectful Relationships
What have the last eight months taught you about the value of relationships at work? With so may of us working at home and only communicating with our colleagues virtually, it’s likely that relationships have become even more important, helping with team cohesion, wellbeing and performance. There’s plenty of evidence that social interactions make us…
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How To Achieve a Micro-Action Mindset
How to achieve a micro-action mindset… It’s quite normal to set ourselves goals and within a short space of time forget them or find they haven’t be achievable. Why does this happen? Most of the time we’ve tried to achieve too much, too quickly. Science has shown that a simple solution is to break down milestone targets…
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Today, We Need Platforms for Cohesion More Than Ever
The past seven months have seen the UK undergo a mass home-working experiment. During lockdown, some 20 million workers were estimated to be working from home (for comparison only about 1.7 million people classed themselves as home-workers pre-COVID). We have been forcibly stripped of human contact, in our social and work lives. For many of…
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Why is it Important to Know Your Character Strengths?
Written by Dr Andrea Giraldez-Hayes What do you spend more time doing, thinking about your weaknesses and trying to fix them or thinking about your strengths and building upon what is working? If you are like most people, the chances are that you are in the first group. However, it should not be the case.…