Blog tag: company culture
Why your team’s stress levels start with your nervous system
As a leader, you’ve earned your authority, but your lasting influence depends on something less visible: the state you bring into the room. If you’re driven by results, consider this: your team’s performance ceiling is capped by your stress levels long before it’s capped by their skills. And if what…
Help! My team is so afraid of making mistakes that we’ve stopped innovating
Today, it’s no exaggeration that ceasing to innovate means being left behind. Fear of making mistakes is a common blocker to innovation. This isn’t only a business challenge, it can also take a toll on mental health by contributing to workplace anxiety and burnout. What people actually fear are the…
The silent saboteur: Why what your employees aren’t saying is costing you
Picture your last team meeting. Everyone nodded along to the new strategy. There was no pushback, no difficult questions, and everyone seemed completely aligned. A harmonious, well-oiled machine, right? Wrong. That seamless agreement might just be the biggest threat to your organisation’s success. Welcome to the world of “artificial harmony”…
Help! My team is too “nice” to be honest
Having a “nice” team can feel like you’re doing a good job as a leader. There are no shouting matches, the atmosphere is pleasant, and everyone seems to get along. However, having a “nice” team can imply a superficial harmony and if you dig a little deeper, you might find…
What’s stopping you from creating an empowerment culture?
When your people are free to lead initiatives and make decisions on their own they are more engaged, more innovative and productive. But here’s the problem. Delivering real empowerment is fraught with challenges. Organisations claim to want to empower their employees but can they really? The utopia of empowerment is…
Is the term ‘psychological safety’ at risk of being weaponised in organisations?
We all know that teams and individuals work better when they have the freedom to speak up, sharing their ideas, questions, concerns or even mistakes freely, without fear of punishment or humiliation. Psychological safety has become a widely used term, largely thanks to Amy Edmondson’s brilliant research and work in…
Managing burnout back in the physical workplace
Burnout has been one of the most talked about organisational topics throughout the pandemic. As business and government press for a return to office life, the organisations that stand the best chance of successfully managing burnout will be those that recognise what has happened to their people while they’ve been…
Building sustainable behaviours in organisations – the roles leaders and HR can play
The high profile of sustainability in business means you may be thinking this is another blog about doing business without negatively impacting the environment. It’s not – although minimising environmental impact is an important consideration for any business. We’re talking about building organisations that last by embedding sustainable behaviours within…
Resetting your boundaries when back in the workplace
One of the benefits of remote working has been the ability, at least to some extent, to set and protect our personal boundaries. We were able to keep at a distance those intrusions which caused a drain on our time, brought unwelcome criticism or were just downright nosy. If you’ve…
Return to work leadership priorities – wherever you’ll be based
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…