Monkey Puzzle Blog

Once again, Gareth Southgate is winning plaudits for his leadership style. And this time, it’s taken England all the way to the final of Euro 2020.

While his famous waistcoat from the World Cup 2018 has been dropped, there’s been no change in the effectiveness of Southgate’s leadership, both off and on the pitch. Once again the results are there to see. From World Cup semi-finalists in 2018 and regardless of whether we go all the way in Euro 2020, Southgate has re-established the England team as world-class achievers. 

Many of the stressful situations we get ourselves into happen because we don’t have as good a grasp of our time boundaries as we thought - if we’d even considered them at all. As a consequence, interactions with others can end up being frustrating and unfulfilling, and what we really want to achieve doesn’t get done. Sound familiar?

Much has been made of the impact of the pandemic and the effects of remote working on the wellbeing of employees this past year. As we tentatively return to some semblance of normality, it will be the resilient organisations that will recover the quickest.

Could it be that predictions about the end of office life have been a little premature? New YouGov research shows a sizeable percentage of the UK wants a return to office life just as it used to be before the pandemic. With lockdown restrictions lifting, the topic of exactly where we’ll soon be working and how much time we spend there is very much a current talking point.

We are all trying to manage and deliver more, at work and at home. With so many demands on our time, it can be difficult to know how to ensure everything receives adequate attention. Invariably something crashes. Increasingly as we cope with the fallout from the pandemic, the risk is it’ll be us.

Mental health and wellbeing are now urgent leadership priorities. Failure to tackle the problems caused by the pandemic isn’t an option for any organisation that wants to do the right thing for its people and also remain productive. With growing incidents of workplace stress, burnout, isolation and loss of engagement, every organisation will have encountered at least some of these issues first hand.

The arrival of Covid-19 transformed far more than our workplaces in 2020 and is thought to have brought forward remote working by 10 years - all in a matter of a few weeks. As the year went on, we waited for the ‘new normal’ to arrive - and we’re arguably still waiting. In the process, much changed about the way we now work. What started in 2020 was barely the tip of the iceberg.

The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically altered the blog content covered by Monkey Puzzle across 2020. Many of our additional articles addressed the impact of the virus on the mental health of the workforce, and with good reason. It affected everyone, at all levels, both inside and outside of work.

We are often asked how we know when someone is ready for personal development. Of course, people can develop at any point in their lives, but people often want to know how they can be sure it will be worth it and if they’ll get the most out of it.

Even before the outbreak of Covid-19 and the global pandemic, workplace anxiety was gaining recognition as a significant issue for organisations to manage. Mental health charity MIND reported that 1 in 6 workers are dealing with mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, or stress. These conditions can stop people from performing at their best if employers don’t take steps to understand and manage the issues.

For a sector so dependent on the productivity and engagement of its people, the tech sector has always been at the centre of a paradox - technical people aren’t known for being natural people managers. As a tech leader that puts you at disadvantage, especially when there’s a huge amount resting on getting the best from your people.

Coaching is such a broadly used term it’s hard for people selecting coaching or experiencing coaching to know what to look for - or for some to understand why they are receiving it. Indeed, when we are training coaches, they often report experiencing mixed reactions from the people they are commissioned to work with. Some feel pleased about being coached, others less so.