We need to listen to, guide and empower people as whole 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 […]

Do you recognise the feeling at the end of the day that you look at your to do list and it seems to only have gotten longer? It can be really difficult to feel a sense of accomplishment about your workday when it looks like you didn’t achieve anything. Traditional to-do lists, a hallmark of […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

A workplace where everyone, no matter what their status, is treated with dignity and respect is a workplace where good stuff happens. According to a 2004 Gallup study of 50,000 workers across 27 countries, respect is the number one driver for workplace engagement. It is perhaps the most fundamental ingredient for positive workplace performance, because it […]

Written by Paul Berry, Performance Psychologist Consultant A thriving field of academic research is concerned with understanding the factors that explain and underpin outstanding performance. Across a wide variety of performance domains, including elite sport, space exploration, the military and the performing arts, the ability to sustain high levels of motivation has consistently been found […]

Written by Dan Collinson, Learning & Development Consultant We’ve all heard of the phrase ‘play to our strengths’, but in practice we tend to spend more time focusing on weaknesses and trying to fix them. By doing so, we are setting up teams for competency rather than enabling them to thrive. In an era of […]

There is plentiful evidence for the value and impact of goal-setting in the workplace. According to a CIPD report: “It is now generally accepted that goal-setting is effective and valuable for steering and improving performance.” The basic concept at the heart of goal-setting is that having a specific and appropriately challenging goal will lead to […]

How are you? A question I’ve always found difficult to answer, especially at a start of a business call. Do people truly want to know how I am? Or, is it just a formality? But now, more than ever, we should ask questions that truly allow us to connect – especially at the beginning of […]

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” That quote, attributed to automotive business magnate Henry Ford, perfectly sums up why taking risks, trying new things and stretching ourselves is so important for a high-performing workplace. After all, without people feeling comfortable to think differently, how can organisations achieve innovation? It’s also […]

Meaningful Human Connection is about tapping into what’s most authentic and real about us humans, what connects us and what makes us different. The first few works and sentences of each new interaction matter the most to set the foundation for that connection and in so many situations this always starts with ‘how are you?’ […]