Braver Leadership: Mental Fitness for Age of AI

Ideation is part of but not the start of the creative process. Your job as leader is to observe, wonder and question why and what if.  Organisational surveys repeatedly show most workers believe their bosses tap into less than 50% of their available skills. In this episode we look at how you as a leader can demonstrate and help others to ask the right questions in the right way...

Many organisations strive to be more innovative but they miss the point that innovation stems from creativity.  Without creativity in an organisation's culture set up and DNA, innovation will not only struggle to emerge but you'll miss the bigger benefits on offer.   Not everything that can benefit your organisation stems from bringing the world something it has never seen before. &...

If you're a parent you'll probably remember being advised to let your children grow in their way but be careful of comparing them with others. Yet it was so tempting to do look over the fence and then feel regretful for doing so. If you're leading a company it's equally easy to peer over the fence and be beguiled by innovation theatre or to find comparisons with companies that are not like yo...

Creativity is sometimes tricky and the environment around us matters.  Sometimes we're in a white room of silence unable to even find the will to make a mark and sometimes things are so crazy it's hard to hear our selves think above the noise. When we're trying to be creative often we feel like we're waiting for the thunderbolt to strike but in this episode I'm introducing you the incremental...

Many of us grow to believe that some are born creative and others are not.  As far back as the ancient Greeks came the notion that some people are selected for creativity and others exist solely to admire the great works.  In today's episode we're up for a bit of myth busting and look at the ideal conditions that as leaders you need to create and foster if you want to see creativity at w...

Welcome to season 2 of Energy Leader where week on week I'll help you to build skills and tools within our leadership style to be more productive and have more energy to devote to your work and wider life. It's season 2 and we're shifting gear into looking at Creative energy.  Creativity has been cited by many sources as the number 1 skill required of modern day leaders and yet 5 in 10 of us...

In this episode we follow on from exploring limiting beliefs to look at the power of assumptions and interpretations.   We live in a world with imperfect data, so when we're faced with a scenario and we don't know all the facts, enter onto the stage assumptions and interpretations to come to the rescue and fill in the blanks.  Sometimes we're right but often of course we take unconn...

In the last two episodes of season 1 of the energy leader podcast we'll look at some quick energy fixes for you the person and if you're a leader of people for your team as well.   Our brains are cognitive misers.  They are very good at learning patterns and then repeating behaviour when the same event occurs without asking your permission.  Most of the time this is helpful bec...

In a previous episode we looked at the concept of the 50 minute meeting.  Neuroscience shows that brains are not geared to concentrating for long periods of time and the 50 minute meeting is often enough for optimal focus.  Assuming you've mastered the 50 minute meeting, that gives you ten minutes every hour.  This episode explores choices for you in using your ten minutes between t...

In experiment after experiment scientists have proven that being productive, creative, accurate and producing consistently good results comes from harnessing good energy.  Yet our workplaces and working lives are filled with energy sources that whilst giving us a quick jolt to keep us going, ultimately are not sustainable and create unwelcome side effects.  In this episode I look at the...

The world is awash with productivity literature imploring us to find ways we can cut down on the unnecessary activities in our work life, squeeze every ounce out of every second of every day and essentially wanting us to behave a little like machines. We’re not machines. Even if we were we recognise that the most precious machines in our lives tend not to function without being given regular care...

When Covid struck, like millions around the world I switched to a life of working from home. I’d already been working from home a fair bit but for many it was a rapid adjustment which forced big changes on personal energy levels. On the upside – no commute and few regrets there. But it also meant a big change in making personal contact and connections and a lot more screen time. You’d think that r...

When was the last time you made a decision?  You may not realise it but you’re making decisions all the time. There are the “fully aware big ones” that you may agonise over or talk through with people before picking a path.  But almost every hour we’re awake there are micro-decisions and most of the time we’re not even aware we’re making them. Yet the consequences of...

Did you know 25% of those who make a new year resolution will have given up by the time the first week of January is out?  Or that the average person makes the same resolution ten times in a row without success.  We're told it's all about will-power but it turns out will-power is an extremely unreliable partner when it comes to making things happen.  Listen up in this episode where...

Most of us recognise there's a world of difference between running a 5k parkrun and running a marathon.   We're also likely to accept there's a different recovery time and if we don't build in that time to recover, there's likely to be stress and load on our ligaments and eventually an injury that will stop us running altogether.   It's a reminder that as humans we are not mach...

At school most of us at some point will have been told to be more focussed and be less distracted.   So why is it that we find distractions so difficult to control?   These days we are surrounded by distractions and we welcome them into our lives often through technology we buy.   Sometimes those distractions can seriously knock us off course and use a lot of our ener...

Have you ever noticed how some days you finish up feeling lethargic and it's been one challenge after another and dread the next morning repeating it all again, yet other days you're filled with enthusiasm and energy and can't wait for tomorrow to come?   Our lives are filled with things that zap our energy yet around us are also things that make us go zip.   Having our own sen...

Look at the bookshelf for productivity books and there are thousands, each imploring us to make every moment count, to drive more action into the available time. Often the drive to productivity tries to emulate being a machine rather than a human being with a pulse.  Often as we strive for greater productivity we seek to eliminate "unnecessary downtime" which often also then translates into s...

Welcome to the Energy Leader podcast the place where we master our energy levels and beat burnout. One of the things we’ve become used to is toughing things out when life gets hectic at work. Working hard can be deeply motivating and satisfying but overworking can be dangerous. In this episode I’ll be taking a look at how over-work creeps up on us and leads us towards burnout and then one simple t...

From the moment we wake to the time we eventually fall asleep we face a daunting list of things that need to be done. From the first electronic chimes of the alarm telling us to get up to the first blue flickering of our phones we face a torrent of information, messages, notifications, emails all demanding our attention and our energy. Our minds start to swirl in a soup of decisions, things we nee...