Making assumptions in business can have drastic effects. Take the job interview situation as an example – so many assumptions are made as a result of a very brief interaction. Some interviewers go even further and say they ‘knew’ as soon as the candidate walked in that they were right or wrong for the job. […]

As important as it is to create a culture of feedback in an organisation, the problem of how difficult it can be to receive feedback still exists. Unfortunately, the tendency is to think of feedback as a negative thing – telling people they have done something wrong, or that something needs to be improved. Feedback […]

The office is a hotbed for producing drama queens – people who have a tendency to cause and magnify the seriousness and gravity of any given situation. What I find interesting is that most drama queens would never define themselves as such, and in some cases will even accuse other people of it! Here is […]

Last year I ran a presentation skills workshop and one of the things I began to notice was that a serious cause of anxiety in the workplace is the issue of ‘status’. Status presents through many channels in society, but in the workplace the existence of an organisational hierarchy makes status an explicit thing. And […]

We all know the feeling – we have been ploughing through work all day and we feel a yawn emerge. All of a sudden we find it a lot harder to concentrate and to work quickly. It is so predictable that advertisers are now using “3.30-itis” in their campaigns, and social media platforms like Twitter […]

It is very common to talk about aligning people to a vision, aligning priorities and ensuring everyone is agreed on the focus. Despite countless metaphors such as “making sure we’re on the same page”, “singing from the same song book”, “dancing to the same tune”, there is a real lack of consensus in most teams […]

Overload is something we invariably feel at some stage or another, or maybe we see it in our team, or our management group, or maybe it has become a constant for us, and everyone around us. Anyone who has been through a university degree will attest to the fact that workload is not a constant […]

How do you feel when you see or know something that is wrong and you do decide to speak out about it – and then the public hears it? The focus can come down on you. So how do you cope? When you choose to put the spotlight on a wrongdoing, or something questionable, it […]

If you have ever had that feeling of massive mental relief after finally dealing with something that has been lurking in your mind for a long time then you’ll be familiar with the theme of this blog. Mental logjams are something we all face, and often don’t even realise how much mental capacity they’re taking […]